Oct 25 2009

Net Neutrality Supporters

Category: TelecomsTeknovis @ 18:22

I read an article during the week about a letter of support for Net Neutrality from some of the biggest, and most well-known, Internet based companies in the world. The article is Big names support net neutrality, and it lists the following supporters:

The letter, signed by the chief executives of Google, Ebay, Skype, Facebook, Amazon and Sony Electronics among others, says that maintaining data neutrality helps businesses to compete on the basis of content alone.

And…

Other signatories included community websites Digg, Flickr, LinkedIn and Craigslist.

This list of companies does not really surprise me, as they probably have the most to gain from Net Neutrality. Conversely, it is probably the telcos who have the most to loose!

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Aug 05 2009

Amazon Acquisitions and Investments

Category: BusinessTeknovis @ 19:18

A friend told me about this lovely graphic depicting the acquisitions and investments made by Amazon.

Amazon Acquisitions and Investments

Amazon Acquisitions and Investments

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Jul 14 2009

Amazon Second Life Job Fair

Category: BusinessTeknovis @ 13:03

Amazon is starting a virtual recruitment fair right now in Second Life. I have never attended one of these virtual recruitment fairs before, but I image that it is a good compromise between no interaction with potential employees and normal interaction with potential employees at a recruitment fair. For more details about this see Amazon Second Life Job Fair.

I was discussing this event recently with a friend who works for Amazon. Actually, the discussion was more about Rufus and the dog friendly work environment. My friend said that it feels like a zoo walking around the part of the building containing the dogs and their owners!

Cool B)

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Jul 09 2009

Amazon Web Services

Category: Cloud ComputingTeknovis @ 21:07

I spent my afternoon in the clouds… No, not dreaming!

I was doing some reading about cloud computing, and specifically about the Amazon cloud computing offerings. The Amazon Web Services (AWS) appear to be the most popular.

I did this reading because I intended attending a cloud computing webinar this evening. However, the webinar software would not install for me :(

Anyway, my time was not spent in vain, because I learned a lot! For the sake of convenience, I am including the most relevant AWSs here:

Overall, I was very impressed with what I read :o I think that there are some really useful services here. I think that if I was developing a non-mission critical web application then I would certainly look at AWS due to their simplicity, flexibility, and cost effectiveness. The applications described in Gowalla – Location-based iPhone 3G Application (you need to watch the video) are good examples.

However, I do not think that I would feel comfortable placing a mission critical application into a public cloud. I think that private clouds are the best option in this case. (Although I am still not sure if this is significantly different to having a virtualised back-office :o )

The smaller details that caught my attention were:

  • I am very surprised that Amazon charges for the European services in Dollars instead of Euro. Currency fluctuations may negate some of the price stability that AWS offer. I really do not understand why this is necessary given that the costs in these locations are in Euro :|
  • I am very impressed that Amazon is able to measure such minute amounts of resource usage.
  • Consequently, I am impressed that Amazon is able to efficiently process the corresponding micro-charges. Telcos are usually considered the masters of this :o
  • I know that I am not exactly comparing like for like, but a Blacknight VPS product seems to be much better value than a single EC2 small instance.

Finally, I read about a web site recently that featured on a national television program. The web site was hosted with a traditional hosting service provider, and received a relatively small amount of traffic. However, the web site designers decided to move all of the static web site files to S3 in anticipation of the spike caused by the television appearance.

The web site did experience a huge spike in traffic during the television appearance, and it was able to cope with it. So the web site designers were satisfied with their decision to use S3.

The funny thing about this is that in my opinion it was unnecessary to use S3 because it did not provide any benefits! The reason for my opinion is that all of the web site visitors during that peak were from the geographic area where the television program was being broadcast. Therefore, they were all connecting to the S3 data centre through the same IP exchange. This is also the same IP exchange where the hosting service provider peers. Therefore, it is unlikely that the hosting service provider would have been a greater bottleneck than the S3 :o

Indeed, a well resourced hosting service provider that peers in a national IP exchange should outperform both S3 and CloudFront in countries where Amazon does not have a presence when all of the traffic is originating from that country!

Anyway, right now I feel that I would love to have a personal project to develop using AWS :o

(As a result of this post I have decided to create a dedicated category for cloud computing :o )

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Apr 02 2009

April Fools’ Day Humour

Category: HumourTeknovis @ 08:43

There was some good technology related humour yesterday as part of the normal April Fools’ Day celebrations! Here are some of my favourites!

For a more comprehensive overview of the technology related humour see April Fools: YouTube Flails, Amazon Cloud Computing In A Blimp, 3D Chrome Browsing, Google Masters A.I..

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Mar 20 2009

Amazon Web Service Case Studies

Category: InternetTeknovis @ 20:02

A friend recently send me a link to a list of Amazon Web Service Case Studies.

Some of the companies mentioned are familiar to me, but others are new. However, all of the case studies make interesting reading!

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Dec 28 2008

Amazon has Record Christmas Sales

Category: eShoppingTeknovis @ 20:11

I hope that everybody has a good Christmas :)

It certainly seems that Amazon did! It has announced that it had record Christmas sales this year! I am sure that there will be many people who are delighted with this ;)

For more details about this see Amazon.com up 4.9% after best-ever holiday sales.

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Dec 13 2008

Online Christmas Shopping 2008

Category: eShoppingTeknovis @ 18:06

I did all my online Christmas shopping this week. It went very well, and I must admit that I love the comfort of shopping in my own time from my own home. I am the sort of person that researches every purchase online, thinks about it some more, and eventually purchases. Visiting real shops with a list of things to buy is an experience that I try to avoid! Now I hope that all my presents arrive soon!

I bought lots of presents on Expansys, PhotoBox, and Play (which has the bonus of being VAT free). I also bought some presents on Asos, which was my first time to buy clothes online! I really like all of these websites because they price in euro even though they are not based in the eurozone.

It really annoys me when online retailers expect Irish customers to use the UK versions of their websites. Yes – we speak the same language, but we use a different currency! I think it is just pure laziness on their behalf!

Amazon is a perfect example of such an online retailer. It has a French website in euro, a German website in euro, and an English wesite in pounds :(

Amazon Ireland

Amazon Ireland

Indeed, Amazon’s approach to the EU market is very limited.

Nevertheless, I decided to give it a try this year since the pound is so weak compared to the euro. I wanted to buy a small electronics device, and the price was really good. It was only when I went to buy the item that I realised that Amazon do not ship it outside of the UK :( I understand that this might be due to the fact that Amazon does not want to be responsible for collecting old electronic devices as required by the WEEE (Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment) directive. So I abandoned shopping with Amazon :(

There seems to be plenty of other people who are unhappy with Amazon also according to Amazon behaving badly and Amazon UK withdraws John Duignan’s Scientology exposé “The Complex” from sale “for legal reasons”.

Finally, it appears that I am not the only person shopping online this week! According to “Busiest day” for online shopping last Monday was the busiest day in the year for online sales in the UK. The busiest hour was predicted to occur between 13:00 and 14:00 when £28 million worth of goods were to be sold. Some online retailers are predicting that this year will be their busiest year ever as more shoppers buy online. There is also an interesting video showing the inside of Amazon’s distribution centre.

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Nov 07 2008

Amazon Announces Start-Up Challenge Finalists

Category: Cloud Computing,EntrepreneurshipTeknovis @ 19:12

Amazon has announced the seven finalists in the Amazon Web Services Start-Up Challenge. The idea behind this competition is to encourage start-up companies that base their products on Amazon’s cloud computing infrastructure. The seven finalists are:

The main prize for the eventual winner is $50,000 in cash, $50,000 worth of Amazon credits, and a potential investment from Amazon.

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