{"id":198,"date":"2004-09-19T22:22:41","date_gmt":"2004-09-19T21:22:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wp.devco.net\/?p=198"},"modified":"2009-10-09T17:15:33","modified_gmt":"2009-10-09T16:15:33","slug":"a9com","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.devco.net\/archives\/2004\/09\/19\/a9com.php","title":{"rendered":"a9.com"},"content":{"rendered":"

Slashdot<\/a> carries the news that a9.com<\/a> has finally launched. A9 is Amazon<\/a>‘s search engine that uses Google<\/a> for search results and image searches, IMDb<\/a> for movie information and GuruNet<\/a> for Reference lookups.
\nIt features a nice DHTML interface complete with drag and drop facilities. The whole idea here is to combine useful search related stuff into one page. It remembers all your searches. It tracks everything you click on and it provides a Diary facility to let you annotate your searches and sites you visit. Using all this information it can provide you with recommendations for sites that will interest you etc. It links all of this with your amazon.com account and no doubt use this gathered information to suggest books for you to buy etc.
\nThe history of sites you visited and searches you ran can be edited by you, and I tested this it does stop entries from appearing in your history, but I also noted that by deleting a specific topic from your search history it does not undo what it learnt from you, it still knows you are interested in what you searched for even if you deleted the historic record of those searches!
\nSome tasty bits from their T’c & C’s:<\/p>\n

\nUse of Third Party Service Providers: We may, from time-to-time, employ other companies and individuals to perform functions on our behalf. Examples include sending e-mail and analyzing data. They have access to personal information needed to perform their functions, but may not use it for other purposes.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\nWe work closely with some third parties. In some cases, we will include offerings from these businesses on A9.com. In other cases, we may include joint offerings from A9.com and these businesses on A9.com. Click here for examples of co-branded and joint offerings. You can tell when a third party is involved in the offering, and we share customer information related to those transactions with that third party.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\nFor reasons such as improving personalization of our service, we might receive information about you from other sources and add it to our information.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

On the point of what information they record as provided by you they say the following:<\/p>\n

\nYou provide most such information when you use A9.com to search or otherwise communicate with us. For example, you provide information when you enter search terms; set bookmarks; download and use our toolbar; communicate with us by phone, e-mail, or otherwise; and employ our other services. As a result of those actions, you might supply us with personally identifiable information or information about things that interest you.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

So if you are still considering using a9.com<\/a> at this point, they also offer the following advice to you:<\/p>\n

\nIf you would prefer not to be recognized on our site, we recommend that you use our alternate service located at generic.A9.com. On generic.A9.com, we will not recognize your A9.com or Amazon.com cookie. Information we gather on generic.A9.com will not be used in our data analysis (other than to detect abuse) and will not be used to personalize the services we offer you.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

While I like what they have done, I think I will stick to generic.a9.com<\/a> for now.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Slashdot carries the news that a9.com has finally launched. A9 is Amazon‘s search engine that uses Google for search results and image searches, IMDb for movie information and GuruNet for Reference lookups. It features a nice DHTML interface complete with drag and drop facilities. The whole idea here is to combine useful search related stuff […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[10],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.devco.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/198"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.devco.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.devco.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.devco.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.devco.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=198"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.devco.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/198\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":759,"href":"https:\/\/www.devco.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/198\/revisions\/759"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.devco.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=198"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.devco.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=198"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.devco.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=198"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}