While attending the WSST Annual Spring Conference this last weekend, I made sure to check out the Outstanding Science Trade Books for 2010 session.  Highlighting fantastic science books from Science Books & Films (SB&F) and NSTA’s Outstanding Science Trade Books, the organizers of the session also brought in hundreds of books from the collection housed at UW-LaCrosse.

Watching other people scribbling down book titles on scratch paper, I realized that there must be an easier way to remember these fantastic books (for my kids and kindergarten teacher wife).  I simply opened the Amazon Mobile app on my Blackberry, toggled to the Amazon Remembers tab, and started taking pictures of book covers.  They were instantly sent to my Amazon.com account, which promptly found all 13 book titles and displayed them in “Your Lists” in my Amazon account (see below).  Of course, I also got prices and a way to order each book.

Granted, I was searching for books – an Amazon specialty.  Still, this app has a lot of potential in that it identifies products from a crude smartphone picture.  Think about how Amazon could use this app to simplify our lives in making products that rely on personalized user input.  For instance, Amazon could make its own unviersal remote control.  The user could simply take pictures of all of their devices (TV, DVR, Blu-Ray player, etc), send them to Amazon and could send you a personalized remote – already pre-programmed.