Amazon Yellow Pages? Where did this come from?

As you can guess, I'm a big fan of testing new technology. I especially love testing out new searches, particularly when it makes my life a little easier to find information quickly and intuitively. So, through some obscure way, I ended up at Amazon's Yellow Pages (to be honest, I stumbed upon Amazon's A9 service, which led me to there). Yes, Amazon is getting into the realm of business directories.

Ho hum. You can probably find dozens of yellow page directories out there, including the Yahoo! Yellow Pages, which I was using almost exclusively -- until now. Hello, directory! Not only can you look up businesses and their map locations, but you can also:

• see what businesses are located along the same street of another business
  
• see pictures that people have uploaded of the business or street
• see the businesses' payment options (visa, mastercard, etc)
• and, finally (the wow feature...drum rolls please), you can have amazon call the business at the click on a hyperlink. They use this eStara's technology to call you first and then the business. On the one call I tried it on, it actually worked!

Ok, so you might think that the click to call is a bit gimmicky, but it does save me the hassle of having to type the number by hand :).

The downside is that the service, like the A9 search, is still in beta. As such, only a few businesses or streets have pictures associated with them. Also, When I searched for my favorite coffee shop, Coffee Etc/Old Pueblo Coffee Roasters, it returned the old, old, old Coffee Etc on Cambell and Glenn (remember that one???). Well, at least, someone had uploaded some good pictures of that strip mall that the old, old, old Coffee Etc used to live.

Also, I was bit disappointed that I couldn't leave recommendations for a business. Um, hello, wasn't that one of the primary features that made Amazon so famous, the fact that you could read the recommendations by other customers or even post one yourself??? Well, it is beta after all, and maybe they'll add it later.

Hopefully, Yahoo! Yellow Pages will get its act straight (its service hasn't changed in years) and take a clue from Amazon. Otherwise, I'm using Amazon's Yellow Pages from now on.