Friday, March 17, 2006

Mmmm...Apples

scene: My son is eating an apple at the kitchen table and using both hands like it was a chocolate cake covered in chocolate sauce and sprinkled with M&M's.
me: I'm going upstairs real quick - take little bites - eat slow - don't die.
boy: Ok
<I come back maybe 60 seconds later>
me: Where's the apple?
boy: I ate it.
me: Did you throw any of it away?
boy: No
me: You ate the whole thing?
boy: Yes.  (Kind of like a "Well duh" type of yes)
Mmmm...Apples + core + seeds + stem + the little flowery thing.

Thursday, March 16, 2006

Amazon S3 - An unlimited harddrive

I heard about Amazon launching yet another API and I assumed it was just another way to poke into the inner workings of their product engine. However S3, Simple Storage Service, is an API that allows the developer another place to store data. The cost is 15 cents for each Gb/month of storage and 20 cents for each Gb/month of data transfered. If you have a lot of data this would be a very cost effective way of storing it. Keep in mind though that this is web storage and not web hosting. While you can store the files used on your website you still need to access them via the API.

So, if you're creating the next greatest photo storage website or whatever then you could find a cheap web host and use S3 as a way to store the files. This way you're not paying for unused space or bandwidth as you would if you went with a more expensive web host package that offered greater storage space.