Mab is an application to search products on Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.de and Amazon.jp sites, showing results in a handy interface, typical of desktop programs, without distracting you with plenty of images and texts not concerning what you are effectively looking for.
First of all, you find a Search Toolbar to select the site you need and to set criteria's research. Secondly, you have to select theCatalog(sometimes a catalog can be no available on a certain site). Infact, different sites have different catalogs, for example, “English Books” is valid only for Amazon.de and Amazon.jp, and “Baby” only for Amazon.com and so on. After that, you decide theSearch Typewhich is determined by the catalog you selected. For instance, if you are looking for a CD in the catalog Popular Music, you can't use Author but Artist. Finally, selectingSort, you can decide the products to be showed first among those corresponding to set criteria. Don't worry if the combination among the Amazon site, theCatalog, theSearch Typeand theSort Typeis incorrect, MAB will alert you with an “alert box”. Clicking onSearchyou start the research. If you want additional results, you have to click onMoreand you will have them on bottom of the list. If buttonMoreis disabled, no more results correspond to your criteria.
Note
Remind that whenever you select All Catalogs, MAB researches on all catalogs available. This will return up to 3 results for up to 15 products categories with items matching your search terms.
In the results list you will find all the products found during your research session. They can be ordered by clicking on the heading of the columns. Available columns are:
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Ex: tells you if all information on your product are still valid. Information on prices, for example, are valid for 24 hours and then eliminate. Other kind of information are valid foe 3 months. When you bump into some expired information, click on the Refresh button to get an updating.
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Product name:it indicates the name of the product.
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Catalog:it identifies which Catalog the product belongs to.
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Country:it identifies the Amazon site on which you can find your product.
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Our Price:it is the Amazon selling price.
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Used Price: it is the first least expensive used product price.
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Rating:it is the average rate given by all those who made a review.
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Rank:it is the best seller products' position in the Amazon list.
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Released:it indicates the releasing year of the product.
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Label:it indicates the label you gave to your product in order to highlight and catalog the results of your research.
If you want to add or eliminate the columns, you just need to click on the little button on the right hand side of the results' list.
You can save your results on your hard disk only using the installed version of MAB. Files are saved with the extension .mab and are normal XML files that you can open with every editor.
Click onAdd to cart, MAB will add the selected products to your shopping cart, and every time you want to see its content you have always to refer to the Amazon site. Infact, Mab doesn't handle either the login between you and Amazon or the exchange of personal data.
The parameters you can set are.
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Response Type: to select the kind of response you want to get from Amazon. A “lite” response contains essential catalog information suc as a product's name or price, and a “heavy” response contains more complete product information such as sales ranking and customers' reviews. This is the reason why, generally, a research with Response Type set on “Heavy” is slower. You can get all the information about the selected product with a “lite” response too, simply clicking on theLoad Reviewsicon.
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Limit Result:you can use it to set the number of results you want to get every time you click onSearchorMore. The suggested number is 20, a higher number could slightly slow the research.
It informs you about the researches' results. In the Status Bar you find:
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Listed products: number of products loaded at the moment.
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New: number of new products loaded in the current list.
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Duplicated: number of products never loaded because duplicated.
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Reloaded: number of products whose information have been reloaded.
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Products found:number of products found on Amazon on your criteria basis.
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Products retrieved: number of products found by the last research.
Whenever MAB downloads information from Amazon about found products, it eliminates all the products already downloaded. Doing so, you can do many researches without downloading duplicated information. MAB records all retrieved products, so, when a product a product gets eliminated from the results' list, it will be automatically skipped if found following to further researches. To reload a cancelled product, you need to open a new document and do another research. Thanks to this procedure, crossed researches will be always precise and the results' list won't get full of duplicated products.
The keyboard shortcuts for MAB are as follows:
Table 1.
| enter | Search |
| canc | Delete selected products |
| esc | Stops any connection currently in progress |
| Alt + f | Open File menu |
| Alt + e | Open Edit menu |
| Alt + t | Open Options menu |
| Alt + w | Open Windows menu |
| Alt + m | Get more records from the last search |
| Alt + h | Open Help menu |
| Alt + a | Go to the Amazon page |
| Alt + d | Add products to shopping cart |
| Alt + g | Go to Google |
| Ctrl + n | New search list |
| Ctrl + w | Close current list |
| Ctrl + s | Save current list |
| Ctrl + r | Load Reviews |
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How can I carry out a research writing more Asin/ISBN as a Search Term?
You can use up to 10 ASIN/ISBN in one search for "heavy" Response Type, and up to 30 ASINs for "lite" Response Type. ASIN/ISBN in the Search Term input box should be separated by commas.
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What are Amazon Web Services and Amazon Associates?
Amazon gives to all developers the opportunity to browse the catalog using the Web Services technology. Web services are applications whose logic and functions are accessible using standard Internet protocols and data formats such as XML (Extensible Markup Language), and SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol). Using these services, Associates can create applications capable of interacting with Amazon. If you like MAB and you wish to support its development, just before buying something remember to select the item directly from MAB. In this way Amazon Associate can give a fee to support the programmers who use their Web Service.
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How can I copy and paste the most relevant information about a selected product?
You have to click on Text Summary. This can be done from the Edit Menu or from the Context Menu. The Context Menu can be activated pressing the right mouse button on the selected product.
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How to see the bigger image about the selected product?
Just click on the small image and the bigger one will be showed in a pop up window.
