Amazon has launched a new way to browse its online store in the form of WindowShop, an interactive website that provides a graphical means to browse the latest music, movies, games and books.
The service, available in beta form at WindowShop.com, uses a tile-wall interface filled with images and on-the-fly audio/video samples. It's undeniably similar to the Cooliris plug-in, but Amazon's deployment has the advantage of being backed by a huge catalogue of content.
It's visually impressive, but is it any good? Though the service will offer customers a means to discover new content, and possibly encourage impulse purchases, it's currently lacking basic features. There's no search functionality, and the only way to find content is to slide across tiles - using a keyboard's arrow keys.
WindowShop is categorised using columns and new content is added every Tuesday. At present, it's little more than a fancy way of browsing what Amazon.com has to offer. However, WindowShop has plenty of potential for the future. It may be a bit of a gimmick with a keyboard and mouse, but it could be something special with a multi-touch interface.
Multi-touch is becoming more and more common in consumer devices and will feature in Microsoft's Windows 7. Browsing Amazon's WindowShop at the touch of the finger, we feel, could make it a whole lot more interesting.
Amazon WindowShop is currently available for Amazon's U.S. store and can be viewed at WindowShop.com.
