Amazon

Amazon just recommended Hadoop: The Definitive Guide to me. My coworker Stu and his use of Hadoop is featured as a case study in the book. How does Amazon know me this well? »

Elasticfox was good while it lasted, but I definitely think Amazon took a step in the right direction with their console. Now almost anyone can play with EC2 without much of a commitment. »

I am playing around with S3’s REST library for fun. I started writing the request signature code and quickly realized something, the .NET HttpWebRequest object doesn’t allow the date header to be set. You can’t send the Date header. No matter what. Unless you implement your own TcpClient… Am I missing something? Does this make sense to anyone? Encapsulation doesn’t mean restricting behavior, it means restricting knowledge of implementation details. Maybe Microsoft had a reason for enforcing this behavior, but I would like to at least know about it. »

I started playing around Amazon EC2 today. After hearing cloud this and cloud that all day long for the past few months, I decided to get some experience with cloud computing myself. Unfortunately, Amazon Web Services aren’t as casual user friendly as I had hoped. Here are just a few thoughts on EC2 after 24 hours of use. Elasticfox to the rescue. Elasticfox is a must have for the trial EC2 user. »

Yesterday I found this gem of an article on Amazon’s website. I wish I had known about it sooner. I got home, and immediately tried it out. After about 1 minute, I was watching an on-demand video on my TV, through my XBox. Before, I thought I had to go through a VGA cable directly from my laptop, which is a pain. This is much better. The quality isn’t HD; it looks to be about DVD quality. »

My digital camera sold within 24 hours. Yes, I did undercut the other sellers a lot ($20 vs. $80). I am happy. Amazon is the new Ebay. No more auctions. Just put something on Amazon for the price I want, and see what happens. »

Amazon is one of my favorite companies. Not because they do everything I want, but because they are easy to use. Their site, although a little too daunting at first glance, is actually really easy to navigate and do things. Today, I decided to use Amazon to sell an old digital camera. I could have used Ebay, but Amazon has some perks that I really like. They have a great reputation. »

I downloaded Amazon’s Unbox this weekend to watch some BSG (yes I am a nerd). Unbox is Amazon’s video download service. I say service because it is much more than just another download. Amazon allows me to re-download videos or transfer them to multiple machines. Obviously, the Unbox player doesn’t allow burning to DVD, but I am over my purist-open-world days. As with any service, there is room for vast improvements. »