The Eighty-Twenty Solution

Bill Clementson posted about a Lisp Comic Book. Truth be told, Why's (Poignant) Guide to Ruby probably blazed the trail here, though there's also prior art in Mr. Bunny's Guide to ActiveX. Though, come to think of it, The Little Schemer is pretty cartoony, too. Maybe Lisp really is the pioneer, after all.

I've signed up for the MNS Messenger interface to Amazon that Riaan mentioned. It's really pretty neat; it's not a natural language agent, but is menu driven instead. I plan on playing with this interface a bit, I'm very curious to see how the wishlist and purchasing gets handled.

Never give out your password or credit card number in an instant message conversation.

Gordon Weakliem says:

hey

Amazon Messenger says:

Hello and welcome to Amazon Messenger.

Please note usage of this service is subject to our terms and conditions: http://www.insidec.com/amazon



Please type MENU to continue.

You can provide feedback by typing FEEDBACK.

Gordon Weakliem says:

menu

Amazon Messenger says:

Type the NUMBER of your choice.

Your current domain is amazon.com. Change it by typing DOMAIN.

I want to search for:

1 a CD by artist, title or key word

2 a BOOK by artist, title or key word

3 a DVD by actor, title or key word

4 The best deals on an iPod

5 electronics

6 a general Amazon search

Type the NUMBER of your choice.

Give us feedback by typing FEEDBACK at any time.

Gordon Weakliem says:

2

Amazon Messenger says:

Type the name of the author, book or even topic.

To return without searching, type MENU.

Gordon Weakliem says:

Practical Common Lisp

Amazon Messenger says:

Page 1 of 1 pages found for this search.

1 Practical Common Lisp by Peter Seibel (Hardcover): $49.99



Type the number of the title you would like to view.

Type MENU to get back to main menu and exit.

Gordon Weakliem says:

1

Amazon Messenger says:

$49.99

Customers who bought this book also bought or looked at the following:

The ANSI Common Lisp Reference Book

ANSI Common LISP

Hackers and Painters: Big Ideas from the Computer Age

Object-Oriented Common LISP

Object-Oriented Programming in Common Lisp: A Programmer's Guide to CLOS



Practical Common Lisp by Peter Seibel (Hardcover) at $49.99

1 Add this book to my Amazon Messenger shopping cart

2 Add this book to my Amazon Messenger wishlist

3 Return to the list

4 Return to the main menu

5 eMail this product to a friend/yourself

Please type the number of your choice

You can see the full detail about this book here: http://www.amazon.com/gp/redirect.html?tag=insidec-21&location=/exec/obidos/ASIN/1590592395%3FSubscriptionId=0VCF7QAGAAWW10JGNT82

Gordon Weakliem says:

feedback

Amazon Messenger says:

Suggestions! Fantastic.

What functionality would you like to see added? Or what comments / feedback can you give us?

Gordon Weakliem says:

I'd make the related items display a menu, so once I've pulled an item, I can browse into related items.

Amazon Messenger says:

Many thanks for that! I will look into it immediately.

Type menu to continue.

I was just listening to a CD on my computer, when I noticed something funny about Windows Media Player 9; it now displays a button labeled "Buy CD" while playing a music CD. What does that say about Microsoft's expectation that I've actually paid for the CD that I'm listening to? Ironically, Media player doesn't actually know where I can buy a copy of Virtoso Double-Bass Concertos.