Taking a can opener to Amazon.com

I have recently gotten back into the habit of borrowing books from the library. This has saved me at least a few hundred dollars over the past year, and it would save me more if I were more careful about checking the library catalog before clicking "Proceed to Checkout" at Amazon. I'd read about Jon Udell's LibraryLookup project, which makes it easy to go directly from a book's listing at Amazon to its entry in a library catalog, and I knew there were Firefox Greasemonkey scripts to embed those links for various libraries around the country, but I couldn't find one for Pittsburgh's regional system. So I did what any sensible geek would do: I stole someone else's, and made it work for me.

The Amazon/Pittsburgh Libraries script inserts status information from the Allegheny County Library catalog into book listings on Amazon.com. If the book is found in the catalog, this script will tell you whether the book is available, checked out, or on order, and how many other people currently have holds on it. You can click through the link to the library catalog's entry for that book, and request it online.

To use this script, you'll need to be using the Firefox browser, and you'll first need to install the GreaseMonkey extension. Then you can install the script from its page at UserScripts.org. If you live elsewhere, there may be an Amazon script for your library. If it doesn't exist yet, they're not hard to adapt.

And as long as you're mashing up Amazon, you have to see BookBurro, the Greasemonkey uberhack for online bookstores. Whenever you view a book listing at the major online bookstores (Amazon, Buy.com, Barnes & Noble, AbeBooks, Powell's, Half.com, etc.), Bookburro inserts a dropdown menu of comparison prices at all the other stores. It can also look up listings at libraries sorted by proximity to your zip code, via WorldCat. (Edited to add: BookBurro.org seems to be down right now, but you can install an older version from UserScripts.org. This version doesn't have Worldcat integration, but it works just fine for comparison pricing.)

Seriously, go nuts with the GreaseMonkey. Add Netflix links to IMDB, and vice versa. Bypass the player on the This American Life website. Filter out craigslist posts without pictures. Remove about.com links from Google listings.

Look: You can even find a book about it on Amazon!