Flipping through the categories in Amazon can get a little boring after a while, especially if you're just checking in to see if something catches your attention. So why not browse it in a creative way?

Josh Catone has outlined five different ways that users can check out goods on Amazon. From Flash visualization tools to relationship explorers, this small list covers them. They might not be for you, and they may not be the most effective at hunting for the products you want, but they sure do serve up the information in a creative way.

• LivePlasma uses flash to visualize Amazon's store and links music, artists, bands, movies, directors and actors and gathers information creating a display of related products.
• Flowser also uses Flash to visualize Amazon's store and provides the top three results for each category searched in.
• BrowseGoods lets users move and zoom in on Amazon's product galleries. Its very selective right now with only contains cookware, shoes, sporting goods, toys and watches at the moment. Clicking on an item expands it in an info box.
• TuneGlue, a relationship explorer, mashes data from Amazon and Last.fm, displaying different relationships between musical artists.
• Coverpop uses covers of goods displayed in a collage format, mousing over expands the covers for a closer look, and link out to Amazons page.

All of these sources are just a different way to get a different view of what Amazon has in stock. We have to assume that all of these visualization tools get their revenue from Amazon's affiliate program. Nonetheless, it gets the information to you in a more creative way with the use of API's and mashup techniques, if you're in to that.