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, […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]