amazonian arbitrage

hublog points to priceonia -- a brilliant arbitrage system for amazon purchases.

the service compares item prices amongst amazon's regional sites: america, canada, the uk, france, germany, and japan.

for example, if a german wanted to buy gamma et al.'s 'design patterns', it would be significantly cheaper for them to purchase the book from amazon 'america' than amazon 'germany' -- even with the increased shipping costs (39.84€ vs. 52.90€, or a savings of ~25%).

however, this does not take into account taxes & VAT, but still, it's pretty interesting information.