So how does this economy-stoking magic app work? A complex, supremely intelligent algorithm that can analyze pixels and determine just what it is you want to buy? Gremlins? Google? Actually, if you guessed gremlins, you almost on the money.

When you upload a photo, Amazon's living, breathing Mechanical Turk workers (so-named for one of the first "robots") try to match the photo up to products for sale on Amazon.com. You'll get results back in 5 minutes to 24 hours. The giant kink, obviously, is the potential for human error—how will they tell one giant black HDTV from another, for instance, especially with the iPhone's crappy camera?

Normally, it'd be the perfect time to launch this kind of app—the holiday season—but with the financiapocalypse, I sorta wonder how many George Bush bobbleheads this thing is gonna sell. [iTunes via Bits]

The method can stop thieves in two ways. Those who copy down your credit card information will find that your account number and expiration date is not enough to place an order. And those who actually steal your physical card will find that they still don't know your pin.

While the cards house a 3-year battery, we're just hoping that they can stand up to a good pocket sweat. Because when we're roasting away in the summer sun, we need ice cream money to floweth from our plastic like a refreshing, icy deluge. [ITPro via gadgetell]