Saturday December 09, 2006

I've found the following short format works well for pointers to Amazon merchandise. It is certainly much more compact than the URLs you'll get by cutting and pasting from your browser window. The format is:

http://www.amazon.com/o/ASIN/XXXXXXXX

where XXXXXXXX is the ASIN (Amazon Standard Identification Number) or ISBN (International Standard Book Number) of the item, which you will find on the item's description page.

For example, the ASIN of a random object of desire like the Sony KDL-46XBR2 46" Bravia XBR 1080p LCD HDTV is B000H6I7EI, and so the compact reference would be http://www.amazon.com/o/ASIN/B000H6I7EI.