amazon

When my posting frequency drops a bit, the usual reason is that I'm flying here and yon and otherwise occupied with goings-on at some conference, meeting, or client engagement. The situation in January was a bit different. For the first time in a while, I had some decent blocks of uncommitted time. And I put those to use fleshing out and writing some longer research notes that had been sitting on the to-do list for way too long.

Two of these deal with so-called "cloud computing"--the idea that software will increasingly run in the network. These … Read more

Do you buy CDs, LPs, MP3s, iTunes, or 8 track cartridges?

If so, do you buy them from Amazon or other online retailer, brick and mortar chain store, or local "record" shop?

Do you regularly buy used CDs or LPs? And rarely buy new CDs or LPs?

Do you subscribe to a subscription service, if so, which one? Rhapsody, Yahoo, Napster, etc?

If you really like a tune you heard from a subscription service do you buy it? Do you buy individual tracks or complete albums?

Or do you get your tunes from a P2P like Morpheus or … Read more

Amazon.com announced Thursday that it has acquired audiobook company Audible.

The deal comes with a price tag of about $300 million in cash and short-term investments, and it is expected to be completed by the second quarter of this year.

Audible, which was founded in 1997 and operates services in the United States and United Kingdom, as well as operations in Germany and France, sells more than 80,000 audio versions of books, newspapers, and magazines, as well as television and radio content.

"Audible.com offers the best customer experience, the widest content selection, and the broadest device … Read more

Today we talk about Amazon trying to patent custom 404 pages, how weird Digg is now that their algorithm has changed, and books that make you dumb. Also, Jeff gets his hands on Suda 51's latest M-rated Wii game, No More Heroes, and we'll take a stroll down arcade memory lane.

Listen now: Download today's podcast

EnterpriseDB has ported its Oracle-compatible PostgreSQL database to a new platform: Amazon.com's hosted compute cloud.

The company on Tuesday started taking invitations for a beta program for EnterpriseDB Cloud Edition that will launch in March. The final product should be available this summer, according to EnterpriseDB Chief Technology Officer Bob Zurek, who spearheaded the initiative.

Amazon already offers a hosted database, called SimpleDB, but Zurek said that its database is designed for transactions and industrial-strength applications.

The service works with clustering software from Elastra, which means that servers and storage are quickly brought online to meet changes in … Read more

This weekend we moved our Mule Enterprise distribution to Amazon's S3 service and so far it's been pretty fantastic. A couple of simple calls not only allow for a file to have download permissions but also allow for time-bombed URLs if you need them.

Add to that the fact that the bandwidth is blazingly fast (shockingly fast, I dare say) and the move to the S3 cloud is a huge win--and a major market disruptor.

Despite having blogged about Amazon's EC2 and S3 before, I didn't understand the full impact until now. Kudos to Amazon.

I … Read more