Author: Jeff Barr

Over at Ask Metafilter, a questioner asks “When you imagine XSLT transformations happening in your mind’s eye, what does it look like?” This is a very powerful question to ask, because ancient, procedurally oriented developers like me sometimes have trouble following the non-linear, pattern-driven processing that takes place when an XSLT template is applied to […]

Kevin Daily offers a brief thought on REST vs. SOAP in the case of the Amazon Web Services. We are still seeing an 80% REST / 20% SOAP usage pattern. Kevin correctly notes that the ease with which developers can invoke an XSLT transformation as the concluding step in a REST request makes for easier […]

Have you ever needed to get an answer to a question in a hurry, perhaps something that you can’t find in your favorite search engine? If so, you may want to tap into the internet-scale Mechanical Turk workforce using the new question asking system at Ask For Cents. To get an answer in a hurry, […]

The Valoony Shopping Guide provides dynamic, no-refresh shopping  within the Amazon.de catalog. Changes to the search box, price slider, operating system, and other controls are immediately reflected on the display.

By law, every blog must have at least one cute picture of a dog or a cat, and here’s ours! We’d like to introduce Rufus, the newest member of the Amazon Web Services Developer Relations Team. Rufus is a Rhodesian Ridgeback. Today he has been diligently studying and practicing REST. When he’s a bit older […]

The AMZ Dashboard is a  tool for monitoring sales, reviews, and prices for products on Amazon.com. The program uses Flash-powered graphs to visualize all sorts of interesting info. The site has three main views. First is Summary (click on the image to see a larger view): Then Pricing: And finally Reviews: You can also create […]

As previously noted here, I am trying to hire some additional web services evangelists for positions in the US and Japan. I get asked about the job duties and responsibilities on a regular basis, so I took some time to write about them on my personal blog. Take a look at A Few Words on […]

Mashups are applications which combine data from 2 or more distinct web services into a single application. All 7 of the AWS services are excellent raw materials for mashups, of course. The Web 2.0 Mashup Matrix is a great way to find interesting mashups. You could also use it to find new opportunities — a […]

IBM developerWorks has published two tutorials on how to use ECS with PHP 5: Create an Amazon storefront using PHP, Part 1: Getting content with Amazon ECS This is the first of a two-part tutorial that constructs an Amazon storefront using PHP and the Amazon E-Commerce Service (ECS). The storefront constructed will allow shoppers to […]

The Amazon Web Services team will have a strong showing at the upcoming Mix06 conference in Las Vegas. The conference will be held March 20th to 22nd at the Venetian Resort and Casino. There’s a special discounted rate; more information is available here. First, we will be conducting a session on the use of the […]