Amazon offers some pretty cool services: S3, EC2, Alexa Site Thumbnail, and others. A while back I wanted to use AST with Django, so ended up writing the Python bindings to the REST API (they didn’t previously exist. I even wrote up a quick tutorial. Update: Amazon no longer maintains AST. I’ve decided to archive a few of the old sites, so no longer need to take thumbnails. However, a few other thumbnail services seem to have crept up, including SnapCasa", and WebSnapr.

One of the biggest things I regret is not utilizing Xen more. I’ve finally been admitted to Amazon’s EC2 Limited Beta, just two days before I leave, so not enough time to actually do anything fun. However, I think Xen is an ideal infrastructure aid for SMEs in particular. The cost of technology is continuing to decrease, which means bigger servers cost less. This is great for the small/branch office. Let me explain.

Back in the day the barrier to entry for the Internet was quite high. The technology used required a steep learning curve, the equipment extremely expensive, and sometimes even hard to acquire. Fast forward to 2007 and things have certainly changed. If you know any tech people you can likely get free hosting for a small website, and even more demanding websites can be hosted for not much. The cost of dedicated servers has dropped even more. And the final kicker: web services. I’ve started to think of some web services not as a service, but more like outsourcing requirements.

For one of my projects I need to generate thumbnails for a page. And lots and lots and lots of them. Even though I can generate them via a python script and a very light “gtk browser”, I would prefer to mitigate the server load. To do this I’ve decided to tap into the Alexa Thumbnail Service. They allow two methods: REST and SOAP. After several hours of testing things out, I’ve decided to toss in the towel and settle on REST. If you can spot the error with my SOAP setup, I owe you a beer. I’m using the ZSI module for python.

As some of you may know, I have some projects cooked up. I don’t expect to make a million bucks (wish me luck!), but a few extra bills in the pocket wouldn’t hurt. Plus, I’m seriously considering further education, which will set me back a few-thirty grand. That said, one of my projects will rely heavily on Amazon Web Services. Amazon has, for quite some time now, opened up their information via REST and SOAP. I’ve been trying (virtually the entire day) to get SOAP to work, but seem to get snagged on a few issues. Stay tuned.

My buddy Ian mentioned Amazon’s S3 service, and the potential for using it for fun webapps. While utilizing it for webapps will have to wait a few months, I was able to use it as a cheap backup for my home server (pictures, documents, etc,.) – and my server that houses my email and websites. The setup is pretty quick, and most of it can be detailed in this S3 backup walkthrough. The ruby package is available at s3sync.net I’ll toss in my recommendation to use the jets3t Cockpit application for viewing the buckets, especially considering the Firefox extension didn’t work as advertised. My only two comments will be this: