I was intrigued this morning by Amazon.com's new iPhone application, particularly the experimental "Amazon Remembers" feature that lets users submit photos of stuff they own and get related product recommendations in return. But based on my initial attempts, the "experimental" designation is appropriate.

As noted in our initial post on this morning, I'm in the market for a new outdoor barbecue, to upgrade from the portable camping grill that I've been using on my patio for the past few months. So I downloaded the new Amazon app on my iPhone, snapped a photo of my current barbecue, and submitted it for consideration by the service.

The response came back quickly, but not exactly on target. (The service taps into freelance workers through Amazon's Mechanical Turk program.) Amazon recommended not a new barbecue but rather a Nike + Sport Armband for iPod Nano.

I'm not quite sure how they came up with that one. Maybe my picture wasn't clear enough. In my other attempts, I did get good recommendations for a new office chair and a calculator, but a photo of a ballpoint pen in my hand got the response, "We're sorry, we were unable to find a similar product."

Has anyone else tried this today? If so, please comment below about your experience.

By the way, I also submitted a photo of my colleague John Cook, just to see what would happen. For whatever it's worth, Amazon was also unable to find a product similar to him -- which is too bad, given how much news we need to cover around here. I guess I better get back to work.