Cloud Computing. Available at Amazon.com Today

Posted on April 25, 2008 by jjn1

Spencer Reiss has written a fascinating article in Wired about Amazon Web Services.

Jeff Bezos’ store in the sky is hard to beat for books, CDs, and a zillion other products. It’s also great for quick technology fixes. Say you need a fat HP server for hosting the too-moronic-to-fail Facebook app you plan to launch next week. Only $1,300 and change! Hit 1-Click. Select expedited shipping. What’s for lunch?

But there’s a cheaper, faster, better way to satisfy your hardware jones. Tucked over on the left side of the page, the nerd gnomes in Beacon Hill, Seattle, have embedded an option that blows computer shopping into, well, the clouds. Click on “Amazon Web Services.” Key in your Amazon ID and password and behold: a data center’s worth of computing power carved into megabyte-sized chunks and wired straight to your desktop. Clones of that HP tower cost 10 cents per hour — 10 cents! — and they’re set to start spitting out widgets as soon as you upload the code. Virtual quad cores are a princely 80 cents an hour. Need storage? All you can eat for 15 cents per gigabyte per month. And there’s even a tool for monitoring your virtual stack with an iPhone. No precious cash tied up in soon-to-be-obsolete silicon, no 3 am runs to the colo cage. Outsource your infrastructure to Amazon!

On this day…

Posted on April 25, 2008 by jjn1

… in 1945, United States and Soviet forces linked up on the river Elbe a meeting that dramatized the collapse of Nazi Germany.

Shock! Horror! iPod company makes computers too!

Posted on April 25, 2008 by jjn1

From SiliconValley.com

Globally, Apple sold 7.8 million desktop and notebook computers, capturing 3 percent of the market last year, according to research firm IDC. Worldwide, the company experienced a 38 percent growth rate, which was more than double the industry average.

In the United States, Apple sold 4.2 million units, which was 6 percent of the market. That was a 34 percent increase from 2006 and five times the industry average.

“What always gets lost – because everything is focused on iPhones, iPods, iPills, whatever – is Mac sales,” said Scott Rothbort, president of LakeView Asset Management, which is a longtime owner of Apple shares. “Mac sales, Mac sales, Mac sales – that is the story of this company. The Macintosh is capturing more and more market share.”

Mac sales were $3.49 billion, a 54 percent jump from the same period last year. Revenue from the company’s iPod business increased 7.6 percent to $1.81 billion.

“The iPod is not the story,” Munster added. “The portable music player market just isn’t growing a lot.”