Google Catalogs

Here's a nifty idea that I just came across--Google is scanning in mail-order catalogs that you can then view online. This saves the mess of having all of the catalogs that you are interested in coming to your house, and then somehow making their way underneath the couch, where you'll only find them months later when you do housework (I'm not the only one who cleans under the couch quarterly, am I?)

The concept is supposed to use OCR to produce a searchable text of the catalogs, but in my experimentation, it doesn't work. It is a Google beta product.

I think it's just cool to be able to browse the scanned versions of catalogs that I have yet to see.

catalogs.google.com