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.

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.