Author: Jeff Barr

My Big River uses AWS and Ajax technology to make it really easy to create links to specific Amazon products. Simply go to the site and start typing, and the best match will be displayed in a matter of seconds. The match is displayed along with the HTML needed to link to the product. You […]

IBM’s developerWorks recently published a series of articles on how to directly call SOAP services from the browser, as part of an Ajax-style application. Read Part 1 and Part 2 to learn more. (via WebServices.org). You may also enjoy their recent article on Mastering Ajax. — Jeff;

The RSS feed for this site is now routed through FeedBurner. This will allow us to collect some useful statistics on how the feed is used and how often the various items in it are clicked. If you have subscribed to the original feed you are welcome to stay subscribed. However, subscribing to the new […]

This is pretty cool, and you have to try it! If you are in the US, pick up your phone and dial 888-937-4462, enter an ISBN or UPC code, and Ringfo will tell you all about the product. If you need an example ISBN, try “1-4116-2551-X” (use the # key to represent the X). To […]

MotionMall is a free service for blogs and for web sites. The service makes it easy to create interactive, Amazon-powered banner ads using a step-by-step wizard interface. The product has a direct link to the Amazon Associates program; the product is supported by a click-sharing payment model.   Here is an actual ad, created in […]

I was traveling last week and didn’t have time to blog about the launch of the Alexa Top Sites service. Using this service, your application can retrieve sites ordered by their Alexa Traffic Rank. This data can be retrieved globally or on a per-country basis. Cost is just $.00025 per URL, or a quarter for […]

The Von Kempelen vk Voice system provides professional-grade text to speech services using their network of “human talkers.” In a nutshell, they transform text into spoken words using a higly qualified Mechanical Turk workforce. The service can accept text in a wide variety of formats including RSS, email, and web forms, and they are ready […]

DPA Software’s HIT Builder is now accessible for beta testing. Using this site, it is now possible to create, manage, and collect results from Mechanical Turk HITs without writing any code.The site features both “Pro” and “Wizard” interfaces, with clean and functional tabbed dialogs to lead new Requesters through each step of the process. The […]