Kottke had a link up this morning about amazon’s new addition to their a9 engine – Yellow Pages. Intrigued, I clicked over. They display little pictures of the businesses in the search results. Massively cool. Their how-we-did-it video [qt] tells us that they mounted cameras on lots of SUVs and then drove around the major cities taking snaps. Amazing.
So, I entered a local pizza joint’s name. Search came up with it along with a picture of the store front. I clicked on the “walk up and down the street” arrows to see what else they had. And I keep clicking around the block when I see THE ENTIRE SEPOY HOUSEHOLD on amazon.com!! It must have been sometime in October and we seem to be returning from lunch. Maybe a sunday? How massively weird is that?!
I don’t know about you but I am freaked out by the internets lately.
update: first, welcome to kottke readers. second, here is the search, with a bit of hesitation.
{ 19 comments… read them below or add one }
alas, my neighborhood is too ghetto to make it on the map.
last I checked, I was the one on the south side of chicago, mr hep-cat.
Perhaps a link to that a9 search result is in order.
Are there any legal implications of this? Maybe you could squeeze some cash out of A9.
Granted, they’d just take another photo and you’d be out your legal fees. Still, I wonder what the law says here.
Agree with mark.
mark: hmmm.
nick: City of Chicago is in the process of putting 2000 street cameras to watch us all the time. That being a public street and all, I doubt A9 has anything to worry about.
I do hereby request an A9 tshirt for all of us, though.
and welcome to all the kottkies.
I would really like to know next time the A9 camera truck is gonna roll down the street. I’d put on a chewbacca outfit and pose in front of my favorite haunts.
Whoa! NOW the search war is heating up. This is fascinating.
A bigfoot sighting would be perfect. Someone needs to dress up as a yeti, Waldo, or an alien and follow the truck around the city.
Can’t see anybody in the photo. Is the link correct?
um, freaky because I saw this link on kotke, and thought… what an odd coincidence, I’ll look at this guy’s picture. Turns out it is the pizza place AROUND THE CORNER FROM MY HOUSE, weird!
i agree this IS odd. similar to hacim – i thought – i’ll look at this guys picture and wham – its about a half block down from where my wifes booth is set up during the 57th street art fair.
we’ve gotten pizza from that place. great bakery stuff further east on the block and a phenominal bookstore at the other end of the block. but of course amazon wouldn’t appreciate THAT. ;-)
very odd.
odd coincidence? i haven’t seen chicago in years. but i did spend hours yesterday morning strolling around paris and marseilles, trapped by ming the mechanic’s link to similar function in french yellow pages(http://www.pagesjaunes.fr/). anyway it’s all too cool, maybe there’ll be a photo-of-every- building-in-the-world map in my lifetime. well, maybe not
From a Brit’s point of view it’s nice to see a Chicago street. Where you the family in the car?
Here is my little story. I am a regular reader at both kottke and chapati mystery. First I was at kottke and I read this yellow page thing there then I came at Chapatimystery and read about his amazing coincidence then the other day I visited kottke and here was this link to chapatimystery. So I came back here and looked at the streets of Chicago to find Sepoy clan returning from lunch.
Wow, Sepoy. What next? I tried my own neighborhood, but it looks like they haven’t stalked us out properly yet–most businesses had no photos.
I found my mother-in-law on A9:
http://www.aripaparo.com/archive/001244.html
you also might want to check out the “a9local” tag on flickr [http://www.flickr.com/photos/tags/a9local/]. It consists of a9 yellow pages shots of interesting people and “action shots” (skateboard tricks, etc). Maybe you will see someone you know. (I found my car)
I just found the link here on kottke.org… funny thing is, I am a University of Chicago student and I am five minutes down that street right now. Small world!