amazon on SWiK

Open Source and Cloud Computing - O'Reilly Radar

Tue, 19 Aug 2008 16:54:38 -0700

But just "paying attention" to cloud computing isn't the point. The point is to rediscover what makes open source tick, but in the new context. It's important to recognize that open source has several key dimensions that contribute to its success: 1. L

BIRT Web Services Example - Designs & Code - BIRT Exchange

Tue, 19 Aug 2008 09:45:08 -0700

Using jgit To Publish on Amazon S3 " Insufficiently Random

Mon, 18 Aug 2008 09:05:46 -0700

Eucalyptus

Mon, 18 Aug 2008 08:06:29 -0700

Amazon ec2 - Getting Started - Creating an image

Mon, 18 Aug 2008 02:06:24 -0700

Serving static files with Django and AWS - going fast on a budget

Sun, 17 Aug 2008 09:05:18 -0700

How to Build Fast, High-Capacity Podcast Sites on the Cheap! - Sitening Blog - Nashville SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and Web Design

Thu, 14 Aug 2008 14:09:42 -0700

Jack Schofield: Is the Kindle ebook reader becoming Amazon's iPod? | Technology | The Guardian

Thu, 14 Aug 2008 04:05:30 -0700

[Think IT] 第2回:amazonがXMLDBを採用した理由! (1/3)

Wed, 13 Aug 2008 15:05:23 -0700

Browser Uploads to S3 using HTML POST Forms

Wed, 13 Aug 2008 11:05:35 -0700

<div class="blogmark segment"><p><a href="http://developer.amazonwebservices.com/connect/entry.jspa?externalID=1434">Browser Uploads to S3 using HTML POST Forms</a>. I didn’t know you could do this: create a regular HTML form that gives people permission

Amazon.com - Universal Wish List

Wed, 13 Aug 2008 06:04:31 -0700

ZFS snapshots to and from S3 - OpenSolaris on Amazon EC2

Tue, 12 Aug 2008 20:05:17 -0700

Eucalyptus | IT Conversations | Technometria with Phil Windley | Rich Wolski

Mon, 11 Aug 2008 22:04:28 -0700

Rich talkes about Eucalyptus which relation and comparison to Amazon EC2, difference between grid computing and cloud computing.

Preparing For EC2 Persistent Storage

Mon, 11 Aug 2008 15:04:16 -0700

WebStore by Amazon: Web Business Made Simple, Sell Online The Easy Way!

Mon, 11 Aug 2008 09:04:09 -0700

s3sync-s3cmd

Sun, 10 Aug 2008 18:09:14 -0700

InfoQ: Is AMQP on the way to providing real business interoperability?

Sun, 10 Aug 2008 06:11:00 -0700

mylvmbackup

Sat, 09 Aug 2008 13:13:12 -0700

Eucalyptus

Fri, 08 Aug 2008 18:09:07 -0700

smashedapples - Google Code

Fri, 08 Aug 2008 15:08:51 -0700

Fast & Easy EC2 Dashboard With Standalone ElasticFox - AideRSS Blog

Fri, 08 Aug 2008 11:10:59 -0700

LibX Firefox Extension for Libraries

Thu, 07 Aug 2008 14:09:10 -0700

Firefox browser plugin that provides links to your library's OPAC from records in Amazon and other e-commerce sites and publications.

AWS Service Health Dashboard - Aug 7, 2008

Thu, 07 Aug 2008 13:17:54 -0700

AWS Service Health Dashboard - Amazon S3 Availability Event: July 20, 2008

Thu, 07 Aug 2008 13:14:08 -0700

Elastra Gets $12M — Is It Amazon’s Enterprise Play?

Tue, 05 Aug 2008 07:14:06 -0700

Elastra, the San Francisco-based cloud configuration startup, says it has secured $12 million in Series B financing from investors including Bay Partners and Hummer Winblad — and Amazon. Elastra is the latest investment made by Amazon in the cloud computing sector. Last month, Amazon helped fund Rails cloud Engine Yard to get a foot in the Rails world.

Amazon — and Google — are, in many ways, acting like VCs. But unlike traditional investors, these companies are also giants in cloud computing. Each investment they make in the space sends ripples out across the industry. Relations between Amazon and EC2-based Heroku, for example, are undoubtedly a bit strained now that Amazon has invested in a big competitor of theirs (admittedly, Heroku is on the small end of the Rails space and Engine Yard focuses on bigger clients; Engine Yard also has promising IM-meets-management technology in the form of Vertebra.)

Amazon’s Intentions

By investing in Elastra Amazon sends a signal — intentional or otherwise — that it’s not neutral when it comes to cloud configuration. That’s cause for concern for other configuration software firms like 3Tera, Rightscale, and Enomalism who want people to choose them for provisioning on clouds like Amazon’s.

So why has Amazon invested, and in turn, risked losing its agnostic stance? Because its own, service-centric cloud offering isn’t a good fit for enterprises and its EC2 “bare metal” doesn’t scale automatically or support enterprise software well.

Amazon needs an enterprise-friendly cloud to woo corporate customers in order to compete with vendors like AT&T, Savvis or IBM (with its BPO-meets-cloud offering). Otherwise, the company may be left with only public web sites and startups as customers.

Amazon’s got a great cloud. But it’s based on next-generation services, not the traditional, component-centric data centers that enterprises like. If a company is building its IT and applications from scratch, it makes sense to embrace cloud architectures and use scalable services like SimpleDB, Bigtable, Mongo, CouchDB or Project Cassandra. These data services scale automatically, without administrators needing to provision new machines.

But these services also require different ways of building applications, and enterprises don’t want to change. As a result, enterprises can’t benefit from the lower cost, faster provisioning and built-in billing that comes from building their applications in these new ways.

Elastra’s Answer

Elastra lets enterprises use their legacy applications, in which they’ve invested heavily, and still reap many of the benefits of cloud computing. An IT administrator defines an application with components they know, such as databases and application servers. They then publish it into a cloud, where Elastra’s management servers handle provisioning and operation of the application, adding and removing servers as needed. “We’re supporting components that enterprises want, components they’re already using,” said Elastra CEO Kirill Sheynkman.

Simply putting traditional enterprise components into a cloud is just the beginning, however. Tracking and auditing software licenses will be the next big challenge. Commercial software companies have a hard time with a cloud model, according to Sheynkman, because, “[T]hey’re used to licensing on a per-CPU or named concurrent user basis. The challenge is the seller’s way of selling, not the buyer’s way of buying.” Elastra’s technology provides a variety of options for licensing.

Elastra now has more than 40 paying customers running databases on Amazon’s cloud using its technology, and plans to announce support for VMware and additional components such as application and web servers. It’s also planning to support clouds other than Amazon.

But Elastra’s plans to be cross-cloud-agnostic might be more difficult now that they have investment from one of the biggest clouds in the industry. Sheynkman claimed that the investment contains no conditions of exclusivity, but did say he expects Elastra will “benefit greatly from the technology and knowledge of what [Amazon] has done.”

So will a cloud that competes with Amazon, such as Rackspace’s Mosso, welcome Elastra’s configuration software with open arms now that Amazon has invested? “That’s a decision Rackspace has to make for themselves,” he said. “If Rackspace approaches us, we’ll consider that.”

image courtesy of Elastra

Shelfari and LibraryThing: Awkward Bookends To AbeBooks-Amazon Deal

Fri, 01 Aug 2008 16:04:46 -0700

Earlier today we reported that Amazon had acquired AbeBooks, an online retailer of rare and used books from independent publishers.

AbeBooks held a major (although not majority) stake in a site called LibraryThing, where the literati can list their favorite books and discuss them. Coincidentally, Amazon has put a reported $1 million into Shelfari, one of LibraryThing’s direct competitors (which also include GoodReads, BookJetty and many others). So it might not be surprising to see Amazon try to join the forces of these two modestly sized startups.

But if the history between LibraryThing and Shelfari is any indication, we’re more likely to see Amazon either place its bets on one and divest its shares in the other, or simply maintain a minority investment in both.

Tim Spalding, the founder of LibraryThing, has publicly denounced Shelfari for using dirty marketing tactics such as astroturfing blogs and spamming inboxes. And he hasn’t minced words or backed down from his charge that Shelfari is a “bad actor”, having repeated Gawker’s description of Shelfari as “basically social networking rapists” and criticized Shelfari’s attempts to fix its invitation system.

While Shelfari has publicly addressed the charges of astroturfing (calling it the “unintended work of an unexperienced but well-meaning intern”) and spamming (the unintended result of “explosive growth” and a poorly designed user interface), it hasn’t used its own corporate blog to lash back at LibraryThing. And since most of this drama occurred nearly a year ago, it’s possible that any bad blood as been surmounted. But factor in the fact that these two startups are based on opposite ends of the country (Shelfari in Seattle, Washington and LibraryThing in Portland, Maine), and it appears unlikely that Amazon’s acquisition of AbeBooks will result in any consolidation of the book-centric social networking space.

In any case, Spalding has publicly asserted that LibraryThing will continue to operate as an independent entity, sending only anonymized user data back to AbeBooks. When reached for comment, he did say that he was open to selling the same type of data to Amazon, but he insisted that he would never sell “core user data” to Amazon and that he really doubts anyone “will propose marriage” between his company and Shelfari.

Josh Hug, co-founder and CEO of Shelfari’s parent company Tastemakers, said he had no specific comments about the AbeBooks-Amazon deal, but he did say that “Amazon has been a very supportive investor and we look forward to continuing to work closely with them.”

Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0

We Know How Many Kindles Amazon Has Sold: 240,000

Fri, 01 Aug 2008 14:04:44 -0700

Ever since Amazon launched the Kindle last November, we’ve been wondering about just how successful it’s been. The electronic book initially sold out and supplies have been tight. The Kindle is such a small part of Amazon’s overall business that the company does not break out how many it’s sold. But we found out anyway: 240,000 Kindles have been shipped since November, according to a source close to Amazon with direct knowledge of the numbers.

Doing a little back of the envelope math, that brings total sales of the device so far to between $86 million and $96 million (the price of the device was reduced to $360 from $400 last May). Then add the amounts spent on digital books, newspapers, and blogs purchased to read on the device, and you get a business that has easily brought in above $100 million so far. (Each $25 worth of digital reading material purchased per Kindle, add $6 million in total revenues).

These numbers gel with what Wall Street analysts have been predicting. And if a new Kindle comes out targeted at the textbook/school market, sales could ramp up higher.

Scott Devitt, an analyst at Stifel, Nicolaus & Co., predicts that Amazon is on track to sell 500,000 to 750,000 more Kindles over the next four quarters (including this one). He estimates that Kindle owners will buy an additional $120 to $150 worth of books and other content for each device, bringing the total revenues over that time period to somewhere between $225 million and $355 million. Based on that, he values the Kindle as a $1 billion business for Amazon.

Back in May, Citi analyst Mark Mahaney was estimating that total sales of Kindle’s this year would only reach 189,000. That number may have already been surpassed (depending on how many of the 240,000 units Amazon sold before January). His estimate called for 467,000 units to be shipped next year, and 2.2 million in 2010, resulting in total revenues going from $60 million in 2008 to $741 million in 2010. It might be time for him to revise those numbers upward. (Below is his model from May):

Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.

Amazon Rents Out Its Checkout Cart

Wed, 30 Jul 2008 09:04:26 -0700

Amazon is outsourcing more of its Web-scale software. Yesterday, it beefed up its payment services with the launch of Checkout by Amazon and Amazon Simple Pay. Other e-commerce sites can basically insert an Amazon Checkout cart on their sites and Amazon’s software will handle one-click ordering for anyone with an existing amazon account, order management, shipping and sales tax calculations, and other features. Or with Amazon Simple Pay, customers can just remotely sign into their Amazon accounts and Amazon will handle the payment process itself.

For both services, Amazon charges a transaction fee that starts at 2.9 percent of the order amount, plus 30 cents per order (it goes down to 1.9 percent for sites doing more than $100,000 a month in sales). And for transactions less than $10, Amazon charges 5 percent plus 5 cents.

Amazon already offers an array of payment services for both consumers and businesses, including a Flexible Payments Web service for developers to build their own checkout experiences for themselves. Hints of these latest additions came out in June. Checkout and Simple Pay are aimed squarely at businesses who may not have the resources or time to build their own payment service using Amazon’s Flexible Payment Services API. Amazon is going after PayPal and Google Checkout by leveraging its own payment software (and the millions of existing accounts tied to its system) and making it available to others.

Amazon is making big strides towards building cloud computing services, from payments to storage to compute cycles. If it can succeed in creating meaningful revenues from these services, they should be higher-margin businesses than shipping books and CDs. (In a related move today, Amazon is simplifying its Mechanical Turk Web service so that non-coders (i.e., business managers) can set up tasks they want to automatically farm out to digital workers across the world.

Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.

AmazonWatcher - Auto-Order Software for Amazon!

Sun, 27 Jul 2008 20:04:15 -0700

Here’s a cool software that will auto-order all those Amazon products still out of stock. I know this will come in handy as I have sometimes encountered products that are out of stock.

AmazonWatcher is a software tool that allows you to monitor the availability and price change on hot items and helps you catch them before they’re gone.

via lifehacker - ghacks

Brought to you by: Zedomax.com

AmazonWatcher - Auto-Order Software for Amazon!

Tipjoy’s Founders on Passing the Hat

Sun, 27 Jul 2008 07:47:08 -0700

Ivan and Abby Kirigin founded their startup, Tipjoy, to give consumers of free content a new way to pay for the stuff they really like: by leaving a tip. While the idea sounds simple enough, what the Kirigins want to do is actually far more ambitious than their quaint company name suggests. With Tipjoy they aim to exploit the commercial power of micropayments, a hip, Long Tail business concept in which consumers pay for things in tiny increments.

Until now, micropayment systems have proven most useful for philanthropy. No more, say the Kirigins. The couple (they are married) believes Tipjoy’s version of micropayments, which involves consumers paying for products in increments as small as 10 cents, but paying — and here is their innovation — voluntarily, is powerful enough to help Tipjoy become the next PayPal.

The Kirigins developed Tipjoy’s model as participants in Y Combinator’s winter 2008 startup class. Below the couple shares some lessons learned through YC’s collective iteration process.

F|R: “Free” is de rigueur in business, and micropayments aren’t worth much, so what is the value of using them?

Abby: We get asked that a lot: “Why would someone pay $1 for a picture when they can get it for free?” But people are happy to give money for content they like, it’s just that in the digital world they want to get it first, then if they like it, they’ll pay. You can think of Tipjoy as a recommendation engine, like Digg, but lots of arbitrary stuff gets [Dugg], because it’s free and easy. We’re using real currency as a passive filter for quality. Even if you pay 50 cents to “tip” a site you like, chances are you’ll have been more selective than if you paid nothing to recommend it.

F|R: Why haven’t micropayment systems worked in the past?

Abby: One reason is that on sites like Amazon or PayPal Donations, no one knew you were doing it. Because the dollar amounts are so small, people make micropayments for symbolic as well as economic reasons. Without visibility for your payment, the act of making it loses some of its value to the giver — there is no social reinforcement. On the other hand, look at Facebook gifts. People pay $1 to give a “gift” to a friend because it’s fun and social, and they get recognition for it on the site.

F|R: By making payment voluntary, don’t you risk never being paid?

Ivan: For content that is free to begin with, unpaid donations aren’t a big problem. So far, our payment rates are around 30 percent, and the TPM (tips per mille), or eCPM, are competitive with advertising, though this varies with the type of content. We know it works. When Radiohead released their album “In Rainbows” using a voluntary payment model they brought in $750,000. We will support other models, which mandate payment and would require a pre-paid account or payment withing 30 days.

F|R: How do you make money?

Ivan: If you’re a blogger and a Tipjoy client, you have a widget on your site that lets consumers “tip” you for your content. Tips go into your Tipjoy account. We hold the money and earn interest on the float until you withdraw it. When you cash out, we take a 3 percent fee. There are many ways to optimize and improve our business model, which is a luxury of handling money.

F|R: Can you share a key lesson from the Y Combinator experience?

Abby: The most important lesson is also YC’s motto: “Make something people want.” Before Tipjoy there was no marketplace where people could voluntarily give money to each other for stuff they like. So we built it.

Ivan: Another great aspect is the weekly dinners at which we could discuss our ideas with Paul and the other founders. The takeaway is that founders should talk up their idea to as many people as possible. It is invaluable to get outside your echo chamber and solicit feedback. One huge mistake founders make is staying too long in stealth mode, which means you won’t get any feedback. Another benefit of launching early is the community of early adopters. Tipjoy didn’t have plugins for all the blogging platforms on launch, but within a week our community had made plugins for MovableType, WordPress and Textpattern.

F|R: You’ve said you will extend Tipjoy’s business model beyond voluntary payments, why?

Ivan: Our goals are pretty big, and while people like to give back, that alone isn’t enough to build a big business. So Tipjoy will ultimately offer many options for how and when users make their micropayments. Now we support tipping. We could also allow up to a week or month for payment in a “pay later” model. Another options is subscriptions: Pay if you want, but the service is only on if you pay. Web services could use that model. But we think the nature of digital content allows for a real innovation voluntary payments. That’s how Tipjoy started and we’re always going to be very excited about voluntary.

amazon on SWiK

Open Source and Cloud Computing - O'Reilly Radar

BIRT Web Services Example - Designs & Code - BIRT Exchange

Using jgit To Publish on Amazon S3 " Insufficiently Random

Eucalyptus

Amazon ec2 - Getting Started - Creating an image

Serving static files with Django and AWS - going fast on a budget

How to Build Fast, High-Capacity Podcast Sites on the Cheap! - Sitening Blog - Nashville SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and Web Design

Jack Schofield: Is the Kindle ebook reader becoming Amazon's iPod? | Technology | The Guardian

[Think IT] 第2回:amazonがXMLDBを採用した理由! (1/3)

Browser Uploads to S3 using HTML POST Forms

Amazon.com - Universal Wish List

ZFS snapshots to and from S3 - OpenSolaris on Amazon EC2

Eucalyptus | IT Conversations | Technometria with Phil Windley | Rich Wolski

Preparing For EC2 Persistent Storage

WebStore by Amazon: Web Business Made Simple, Sell Online The Easy Way!

s3sync-s3cmd

InfoQ: Is AMQP on the way to providing real business interoperability?

mylvmbackup

Eucalyptus

smashedapples - Google Code

Fast & Easy EC2 Dashboard With Standalone ElasticFox - AideRSS Blog

LibX Firefox Extension for Libraries

AWS Service Health Dashboard - Aug 7, 2008

AWS Service Health Dashboard - Amazon S3 Availability Event: July 20, 2008

Elastra Gets $12M — Is It Amazon’s Enterprise Play?

Shelfari and LibraryThing: Awkward Bookends To AbeBooks-Amazon Deal

We Know How Many Kindles Amazon Has Sold: 240,000

Amazon Rents Out Its Checkout Cart

AmazonWatcher - Auto-Order Software for Amazon!

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Tipjoy’s Founders on Passing the Hat