Newsletters
July 2007
Newsletter #27
July 03, 2007
Greetings AWS Developers,
Alexa has made some exciting improvements to Alexa Web Search. If you’re building new search services, take a look at this service’s new capabilities. In addition, our evangelist team has gone web scale! In addition to the published events in our newsletter, they’ll be glad to appear in your neck of the woods and are looking for your input on where to visit, so be sure to chime in on their scheduling site below. Finally, please take a moment to read the Community Profile about Jim Taylor, who is a long time AWS developer and huge contributor to our community – congrats, Jim!
Kathrin Jackson
Amazon Web Services
Alexa Web Search Improvements
The Alexa Web Search web service has been updated with a new API and pricing plan. The new API adds the power to post large, complex queries containing thousands of terms, to filter search results using regular expressions, along with a number of other enhancements which are detailed in the Release Notes. The pre-existing API will continue to be supported for existing users until September 1, 2008, though future improvements will focus on the new version of the API.
Updated code samples and new Java and .NET libraries
Migration information for existing Alexa Web Search users
Amazon EC2 Limited Beta Update
We are pleased to announce that we have enabled all accounts on the EC2 waitlist that had an Amazon S3 subscription and a valid payment method. Additionally, we’ve opened up a limited number of additional spots in the beta program. If you’re still looking for access, you can sign up now until these spots are filled. We will continue to open up additional capacity as quickly as possible. Thanks again for your patience as we’ve increased our capacity to support additional customers.
AWS Evangelists-On-Demand
The Amazon Web Services Evangelists are now using an innovative self-service scheduling system to simplify and streamline their trip planning process. Under this new system, you can arrange for Jeff, Mike, or Jinesh to visit your user group, conference, or place of business (for a presentation, a Q&A session, or simply for an informal chat) as part of an upcoming trip by simply adding an entry to a Wiki page and sending a confirming email. Each upcoming trip has a page of its own, linked from the master page. You can also suggest new cities in the section labeled “Possible Trips.” The evangelists will be traveling to New York, Texas, Southern California, Chicago, San Francisco, London, Austria, and Germany in the coming months and would be more than happy to meet you, whether you are an individual developer or part of a larger organization.
Community Profile: AWS “Expert” Jim Taylor
AWS would like to congratulate and thank Jim L. Taylor, who just last week became the first AWS developer to achieve “expert” status on the AWS Developer Forums. This means that he has earned over 750 Developer Connection points by helping other AWS developers overcome their development hurdles. Jim has been an avid user of Amazon ECS for many years, and has begun to explore Amazon S3 and EC2. He has provided invaluable advice to countless AWS customers. We really appreciate his hard work and the knowledge he’s shared with our community – well done, Jim! In his own words…
“When asked to comment on my work with Amazon Web Services and my participation in the Amazon Community it was hard to know where to begin. My main work is with ECS. Three to four years ago I was looking for a way to expand the capability of a project that had been started about 10 years ago but then had to be shelved. There appeared to be no viable options until someone at a conference mentioned Amazon Web Services and it turned out to be exactly what I needed. The possibilities it has opened up for what I do cannot be over-exaggerated and even after all these years there is no one even close to what Amazon is doing on this front. As a result of Amazon’s forward thinking approach and the provision of such services as ECS I have been able to positively and significantly impact the functioning of institutions often left at the mercy of businesses who charge exorbitant fees for similar services. Hopefully I’ve also been able to do a small bit of this same thing for other ECS users through my participation in the forums. It is simply one way I can try to repay Amazon for what it has made possible in my work and is one aspect of my on-going attempt to ‘love my neighbor as myself’.”
Developer Resources: “Intro to AWS” Tutorial Series
Are you new to Amazon Web Services? These four tutorials, written by members of the developer community, introduce Amazon Web Services from the eyes of a developer, walk through a simple example, and link to other helpful resources to get you started.
Introduction to AWS for C# Developers
by Mark Blomsma
by Richard Monson-Haefel
Introduction to AWS for PHP Developers
by Jack Herrington
Introduction to AWS for Ruby Developers
by Robert Dempsey
Solutions Catalog Highlights: What Your Peers Are Building
RightScale
RightScaleSM provides a platform and consulting services that enable companies to create scalable web solutions running on Amazon Web Services (AWS) that are reliable, easy to manage, and cost less. The RightScale dashboard saves time in maintaining, managing and monitoring all AWS activities, while RightGridSM coordinates the auto-scaling of servers according to usage load. The RightImage library provides pre-built installation templates for common software stacks, and RightScale DeltaSets make it easy to customize and manage modifications to machine images. Together with Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2), Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) and Amazon Simple Queue Service (Amazon SQS) – RightScale enables a next-generation platform for deploying highly scalable web applications.
The FTP server using Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) to store files.
GiftPrompter
A totally free service to consumers, enabling them to select the ideal gifts for clients, friends and family. Built using Amazon ECS.
Not listed in the Solutions Catalog yet? Start with our community co-marketing. Check out the AWS blog for more news about AWS developers and their applications.
Revised AWS Customer Agreement
A brief note that on June 22, 2007, we updated the AWS Customer Agreement, which contains both general and service-specific terms of use for our services. We’ve made these changes in order to address feedback we’ve received on a variety of topics, and also to provide greater clarity in certain sections that the community felt could be more clear. Please be sure to review the revised agreement and new trademark guidelines.
Upcoming Events
Don’t forget to let the AWS evangelists know where you’d like them to visit!
NY Tech Meetup – New York, NY
July 10, 2007
Jinesh Varia
Institutional Web Management Workshop – York, UK
July 17, 2007
Jeff Barr
HostingCon 2007 – Chicago, IL
July 23-25, 2007
Jinesh Varia
XML Summer School – Oxford, UK
July 26-27, 2007
Jeff Barr
Contact us for a special discount code.
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