That is a page recommender widget. I have no idea what it's for.

Added to the bottom of the right hand column is an "Amazon Page Recommender Widget"

Help your visitors discover relevant pages within your website, using Amazon's own recommendations technology - for free! Drive page views, session lengths, and referral fees by placing this widget on the pages you'd like to be recommended to your users. Amazon's unique understanding of your users lets us target related pages and products tailored to their individual tastes.

How this seems to work:

1. Joe Example is surfin' the internets and comes accross this humble blog.
2. Joe is already logged into Amazon, because he just purchased some books on Thermodynamics.
3. The Page Recommender Widget will give him a list of links to portions of this blog that mention the sorts of things that Amazon thinks Joe is interested in.  
4. The widget will also show Joe a list of things to purchase that he might be interested in.

The trouble I am having is that I can't really expect the widget to work for me, because while Amazon knows what I am interested in, I also know that I am interested in most everything that is on this blog, so if I look at the blog, with Amazon logged in, it will give me a list that is pretty similar to the list of things that it would give me anyway.  And if I'm not logged in, the widget won't work for me because Amazon doesn't know it's me and has no idea what I am interested in.

There's a fine line between clever and stupid.

It doesn't seem to be recommending pages yet, because it needs to learn (by watching the page traffic) what people are interested in.  Considering that the whole stated purpose of this widget is to help "drive page views," I think that seems a bit recursive.


Still, if it does something really clever for you, please leave a note.  And don't be surprised if it disappears.