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Amazon launches Glacier archiving service, a cheap way to put your files on ice
Amazon's S3 cloud service has proved a popular proposition, with many large web enterprises happily depending on it (most of the time) to serve up its content. Now, the internet retail giant is offering a similar product, aimed squarely at archives, called Glacier. The idea seems pretty simple, starting from a penny, you can store 1GB of data on the firm's servers for one month. You'll only pay for what you store, and there are no upfront costs. Thinking this sounds like a cheap way to host your website? Well, maybe not, as retrieval requests are sent to a queue, and won't be available to download for a few hours. There's no limit on the amount of data you can store though, which is not surprising, but each individual archive does have a 40TB limit -- so those DNA back-ups are off the menu. Retrieval is priced differently, with 5 percent of your storage (pro rata) downloadable for free, but beyond that you'll have to pay. The service is available from today, with storage locations in the US, Europe and Japan. Full details of pricing can be found via the source.
Amazon CloudSearch brings A9 to devs and businesses
Amazon certainly isn't the first to offer hosted search services for third parties, but its model might make it the simplest option. Businesses or devs looking to create custom search indexes need only to upload what they want to make searchable and Amazon takes care of the rest -- including deciding how much hardware to provision based on index size and traffic. Using the company's A9 search engine, CloudSearch can quickly whip up complex query tools, including support for Boolean functions. For more details check out the PR after the break.
Blizzard's maintenance interrupts some website features
The WoW login screen acknowledges that some services may be intermittently unavailable due to "website maintenance and upgrades." As we've reported, Blizzard sites have experienced maintenance periods earlier this week. The current news blurb says that they are working on the web infrastructure to provide "new features" and "increased performance and security." The features impacted are: account creation password recovery paid character transfer adding payment The message says that these services may be unavailable "intermittently." It does not indicate how long the website maintenance will continue, but promises to provide updates. The maintenance is also confirmed on Blizzard's home page.
Blizzard web services down for maintenance
Blizzard's US websites and all related web services are currently down for a scheduled maintenance and should be up at around 5am PDT. This means that all US versions of Blizzard sites such as World of Warcraft, Starcraft 2, and web-accessible services such as account management and the Armory are down. Maybe when they come back up, we'll see some more visible changes to the site such as the aberrant switch to a Wrath of the Lich King theme of the official forums. Or maybe there'll be an abundance of small changes such as the minor tweaks to the Death Knight information page. Then again, it could just be nothing but a regular maintenance. We'll see in a few hours. At least Blizzard was nice enough this time around to actually put up a sign to say they'll be back.
New search reveals new Second Life web-services
Linden Lab have unveiled their new search with the availability of the first 1.18.5 release candidate. The search system doesn't appear to have a form where you can just browse away on the Web without getting into Second Life, so I've made one for you that you can use to check it out if you can't get inworld right now. The new search system exposes a number of web-services where you can examine groups, sims, parcels, textures and more.
TUAW Exclusive: Skitch screenshot gallery
We've been blogging Skitch, a new 'hybrid' photo editing and web services tool from plasq (makers of Comic Life), since Scott first met and fell in love with it at Macworld 07. Using the app through its development, it's clear that Skitch is going to knock people's socks off, with a well-executed blend of desktop editing and integration with web services like Plasq's new MySkitch and Flickr. For example: a major new feature in an upcoming public beta (that's right, I said 'public': join the mailing list for your chance to get a copy) includes iPhoto and Aperture integration: Simply double-click an item from the library panel shown here to begin applying all manners of Skitch editing. Another feature that brings the 'hybrid' element to the table is Skitch's tight integration with web services. Skitch can send pics to FTP, .Mac and even Flickr accounts, but it also integrations with a new MySkitch service that will debut. MySkitch does a lot of interesting things, like giving you embed code for zoomable thumbnails (ideal for the likes of eBay and blogs with thin columns), a direct link for sending in email and even forum-friendly embed code. Skitch doesn't stop there though: you can also remove images from these web services directly from within Skitch, effectively making it a one-stop management shop for your images both local and otherwise.That's enough blabbing about features for now though. The folks at plasq were kind enough to allow us to publish an exclusive Skitch screenshot gallery, and published we have. Check out more screenshots of Skitch's good side, and don't forget to hit up plasq's mailing list for a chance to snag your own copy when they release an upcoming public beta. %Gallery-2528%
