This is going to be huge! Combine it with their other services, and you have maximum scalability for any project. Media Temple (my current host) may lose me after all of this comes out of beta. I am already using S3 for backups and will begin rolling it into all of my upcoming podcast projects. I’ve been flirting with this Ubuntu AMI (Amazon Machine Image) on their EC2 platform, with good results. Keep ‘em coming, Amazon.
Amazon SimpleDB is a web service for running queries on structured data in real time. This service works in close conjunction with Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) and Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2), collectively providing the ability to store, process and query data sets in the cloud. These services are designed to make web-scale computing easier and more cost-effective for developers.
Google Maps Mobile, has just been updated to add a slick new feature that helps pinpoint where you’re at using the Cell Towers for triangulation. If you have a GPS enabled phone, it will use that instead. Its pretty accurate, so far – usually pulling my location up within 3 meters (with my new Blackberry Curve II).
After the jump is a video explaining how it works.
If participating in PayPerPost wasn’t questionable enough morally before, today it’s now a poisoned chalice as Google has commenced punishing PayPerPost bloggers by completely removing their page rank.
This story hits close to home, both as a blogger – and as an Orlando resident – where PayPerPost is HQ’d. I’ve never really seen the benefit – except to advertisers – to use any good will and influence I’ve built up on my sites to push products on my audience that I didn’t believe in. And while IZEA, the company behind PPP and other Social Media Marketing efforts tries to balance their commercial interests with social awareness, Google’s move against them was warranted, in my opinion.
It seems that the Open Document Format, the native format for Open Office.org and contributed to by the Open Document Foundation, as slammed this week – by the ODF – as being too proprietary, and that the corporate backers (such as Sun who adopted the format for its own Star Office package) were more interested in killing Microsoft Office than TRUE Interoperability between Word Processors and the other office productivity tools.
Great video from Future of Web Apps that shows how Ryan Singer, Lead Designer at 37 Signals, approaches form design. It goes back to their software development philosophy dubbed “Getting Real”, which is made up of many small common sense decisions that lead to a more usable product.
comments