Author: Jeff Barr

We’ve just rolled out some enhancements to the Mechanical Turk API; the new API version is 2006-01-16. New features include the use of HIT Types to simplify the process of creating new HITs, better handling of reviewable HITs, the ability to update a Qualification test, and additional information provided to the Requester as part of […]

Users of MrRat‘s venerable Amazon Products Feed can now add price comparison features using the services at Price-Compare.net . — Jeff;

From The Programmable Web comes word of ISBNdb.com, a large database of  books indexed by ISBN. Of interest to developers is the fact that there is a complete (and free) REST API. Items in the site are organized (and accessible) via book, subject, category, author, and publisher index. Several (ok, many) ECS developers have asked […]

Ajax Magazine is running a multi-part series on the use of PHP and Ajax to create an AWS-powered application: Part 1 is already up. It creates a basic site with dynamic search functionality. Part 2 adds price  comparison across the 6 Amazon sites supported by ECS. Part 3 adds browsing functionality. Part 4 adds a […]

Time to update our speaking & conference calendar. Amazon will be speaking and/or exhibiting at each of the following conferences: March 7th – O’Reilly Etech, San Diego, California March 13-14th – Next Generation Web International Conference, Seoul Korea March 13th-17th – SD Expo, Santa Clara, California March 20-22nd – Microsoft Mix06, Las Vegas, Nevada March […]

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 […]