New Shop with Sherlock" Web Services Software Makes Christmas Shopping Easier for Macintosh Users

Bellevue, WA -- December 11, 2002 -- Macintosh users can now use the power of Web Services to get their Christmas shopping done more easily. The free Shop with Sherlock" plug-in works with the Sherlock 3 program in Macintosh OS X 10.2 Jaguar" to find books, music, electronics and other products at Amazon.com, with other stores coming soon. Shoppers can keep several personal shopping lists for friends, family, and others, and easily see how the totals add up.

Bellevue, WA -- December 11, 2002 -- Macintosh users can now use the power of Web Services to get their Christmas shopping done more easily. The free Shop with Sherlock" plug-in works with the Sherlock 3 program in Macintosh OS X 10.2 Jaguar" to find books, music, electronics and other products at Amazon.com, with other stores coming soon. Shoppers can keep several personal shopping lists for friends, family, and others, and easily see how the totals add up.

Shop with Sherlock is one of the first third-party plug-ins released for Sherlock since the software development kit was made available in November. According to Ravi Pandya, president of ieCommerce Inc, The powerful tools built into Macintosh OS X, along with the established Amazon.com Web Services Application Programming Interface, made this very easy. I was Vice President of Engineering for Jango, an early shopping agent startup that was acquired by Excite in 1997. At that time, I managed a team of a dozen people working for a year to build this kind of service. Now, it can be done in a few weeks by a single developer. Thats progress!"

Shoppers select the category of products they are looking for -- books, music, electronics, etc. -- and type in a few keywords for author, title, artist, or product name. Shop with Sherlock uses Amazon.com Web Services to quickly find all the products that match. Shoppers can then click on a product to see more detailed information, including pictures, customer reviews, and related products. Shop with Sherlock gets only the information they need and presents it in a simple layout. Its easier to use and takes less download time than normal web pages cluttered with promotional information and other links.

Shop with Sherlock has the potential to do much more, since it can combine the power of your own Macintosh together with Web Services from anywhere on the Internet. It could eventually provide features like:
- Looking up addresses in your personal Address Book to ship gifts
- Checking birthdays and anniversaries in the iCal calendar service, and automatically checking gift and wedding registries
- Managing shopping lists and budgets across many different online stores

This is just the beginning of a faster, easier, and more powerful way to shop!

Sherlock 3 is an innovative software application released by Apple Computer Inc as part of Macintosh OS X version 10.2, code named Jaguar". Sherlock 3 is Web services for the rest of us", providing fast and easy access to practical information on the web. For more information about Sherlock, go to http://www.apple.com/sherlock".

Shop with Sherlock is a trademark of ieCommerce Inc. Shop with Sherlock is not endorsed by Apple Computer Inc or Amazon.com Inc. All trademarks used are the properties of their respective owners.

For information: http://www.shopwithsherlock.com
Contact: info@shopwithsherlock.com
Phone: 425-688-9123

(c) 2002 ieCommerce Inc. All Rights Reserved.