Zoomii.com is a nice completely javascript version by a friend from a canadian startup. Focused completely on books. Zoomii's really impressive. Its speed makes google maps feel slow.
Very nice indeed, excellent speed, unique presentation; I don’t accept the comparison to Google maps.
Zoomii deals with a total of less than 200k items in its inventory compare that with how many geocodes and frames are necessary to represent a street chunk.
It is surprisingly practical. It's fun to browse through. They propagate a lot of the most important Amazon information through, so that you can look at more than just the covers. And I'm sure it makes the designers of book covers, who work really hard at their art, very happy to see online stores like this.
Having said that, here are some reasons why I prefer Amazon's usual interface:
* Used book prices
* links to other editions (including Kindle, audio, etc.)
* "Customers who bought this item also bought" (with ratings) -- I use this to get a quick grasp of the popular titles in any given genre.
* The customer ratings, which are of course being gamed these days, but which continue to provide additional perspective in some cases.
And, of course, what this is really missing is the ability to open up the book and page easily through it. That's the real killer app for a physical bookstore, and zoomii seems to have less of it than Amazon.com, not more. Amazon offers "Look Inside" for many books, which I don't think is really a great substitute for looking inside a physical book, but it's better than nothing.
Is Amazon's interface cluttered? Yes. Is it so cluttered that I'm willing to give up these bits of it in exchange for less clutter? No.
yep that was the first thing I recollected as soon as I saw this. I even commented on zoomii blog that this would get propagated to lot of shopping websites. good news really
I wish I could see my Amazon wishlist with that interface, Amazon's UI for the wishlist is terrible.