AWS Persistent Storage Now Available

Posted on August 21, 2008
Filed Under General | Leave a Comment

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Just got this email from Amazon.  Yippie.  I hope it works well.

We are pleased to announce the release of a significant new Amazon EC2 feature, Amazon Elastic Block Store (EBS), which provides persistent storage for your Amazon EC2 instances. With Amazon EBS, storage volumes can be programmatically created, attached to Amazon EC2 instances, and if even more durability is desired, can be backed with a snapshot to the Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3).

Prior to Amazon EBS, block storage within an Amazon EC2 instance was tied to the instance itself so that when the instance was terminated, the data within the instance was lost. Now with Amazon EBS, users can chose to allocate storage volumes that persist reliably and independently from Amazon EC2 instances. Amazon EBS volumes can be created in any size between 1 GB and 1 TB, and multiple volumes can be attached to a single instance. Additionally, for even more durable backups and an easy way to create new volumes, Amazon EBS provides the ability to create point-in-time, consistent snapshots of volumes that are then stored to Amazon S3.

Amazon EBS is well suited for databases, as well as many other applications that require running a file system or access to raw block-level storage. As Amazon EC2 instances are started and stopped, the information saved in your database or application is preserved in much the same way it is with traditional physical servers. Amazon EBS can be accessed through the latest Amazon EC2 APIs, and is now available in public beta.

For more information on Amazon EBS and detail on how to start using this feature, please see the resources listed below:

  • Release Notes

    • My Yahoo’s Caste System for Publishers

    Posted on June 7, 2008
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    I have long used My Yahoo as my default home page.  I like the ability to quickly scan the news to see what’s going on.  I also use Google Reader to browse news feeds from lots of blog sites.  I tracked the blogs I read most frequently - TechCrunch, PaidContent and TechDirt - and added them to My Yahoo page.

    That’s when I found out that Yahoo has two classes of publishers.  The options they make available get treated one way, blogs that you add on your own get treated differently.

    Here’s the basic difference - if you use on of the content providers made available by Yahoo, then when you click on the link you go to the publishers site to see the content.  On the other hand, if you click on a link from a blog that you add, then it pops up in a Yahoo reader page and the traffic never makes it to the blogger.

    At first it seemed a bit strange.  Why treat them differently.  The more I thought about it the more I thought that My Yahoo’s treatment of bloggers is unfair.   Publishers should be treated the same way, either link through or use a popup reader for everyone, or at least make it a user option.

    The way My Yahoo does it now seems like they are hijacking the content from the blogs and giving their premium publishers traffic in exchange for using their feeds.

    Excellent Presentation on Web Analytics

    Posted on May 28, 2008
    Filed Under General | 1 Comment

    Dan Olsen gave a great presentation at the Web 2.0 conference. The slides from his presentation are now available at Slideshare. Here’s the goodies:

    SlideShare | View | Upload your own

    Interesting Podcast Feed Statistics

    Posted on May 26, 2008
    Filed Under Podcasting | Leave a Comment

    I analyzed almost 13,000 responsive podcast feeds from Digital Podcast.  I found about 260,000 enclosures or links to podcast shows, for an average of 20 per feed.  The vast majority of the shows are audio shows with mp3 and m4a making up over 88% of the shows.  Video mp4, m4v, and mov formats made up almost 10% of the shows.

    Here’s the file type breakdown:

    Six Gaming Techniques to Make Communities More Engaging

    Posted on May 19, 2008
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    I was answering a question at Linked In about motivating users and thought it would be good to keep my notes here as well.

    1. Points Points are a great motivator for users. You can use them any way you like. At the simplest level, points can be mapped to contributions or user actions and tabulated behind-the-scenes. Points can also be exposed to users, provoking competition to earn the most points. I you want points to be more than status symbols points can be redeemable for whatever you want (access to site features, virtual goods, real goods). This in turn creates a virtual economy for your community which can be very useful if you want to get some behavior to happen quickly like taking survey.
    2. Levels Create levels that recognize historic contributions. Make each level a status symbol for your users.
    3. Leaderboards You can use leaderboards to keep track of and publicize your best and most active community members. You can keep statistics on anything you want people to do: most invitations, most forum posts, most consecutive days logged in, etc.
    4. Collections Allow users to collect things that they can show off. Avatars of other users, sets of virtual goods, etc.
    5. Challenges Challenges give your users something to strive for. And after they’re earned, completed challenges can be displayed in the users virtual trophy case.
    6. Features Create tiered features that granting access to special content or functionality. This can also be a way to make points worth something in your virtual economy.

    If you have other ideas add them as a comment.

    Follow me on Twitter.

    Spending or Revenue - What’s the Problem with California’s Government

    Posted on May 15, 2008
    Filed Under Opinion | Leave a Comment

    I have long wanted to see some benchmarking about state spending and taxes.  Does California spend more or less than other states?  What do we spend our money on and how does it compare to other states?  In business you benchmark, in government you obfuscate.

    The reason I had to look this up was because the LA Times is too busy talking up the idea that California has a revenue problem to actually do any real analysis about what the nature of the problem is.

    Well I found part of the answer tonight.  In 2005, California ranked number 4 in spending per capita when compared to other states.  The top five in order were:

    1. Alaska $15,118 per capita
    2. New York $11,803
    3. Wyoming $11,089 per capita
    4. California $9,501 per capita
    5. Massachusetts $9,117 per capita

    Other big states were much less

    If California spent like Penn. which ranks number 15 compared to other states our state and local spending would be $48 billion lower and we wouldn’t have a budget crises on our hands.

    Now I just have to find something that documents where the money goes and where California spends a disproportionate amount.

    PS.  Share of total government spending from 1970 to 2006 was just about the same for every category except two: health and defense.  Health is up from 8% to 20% and defense is down from27% to 13%.

    Sources:  Tax Foundation State and Local Spend and Tax Foundation Share of total Gov Spending

    What this means

    Posted on April 22, 2008
    Filed Under General | Leave a Comment

    Obama lost to Clinton tonight in PA. The post election discussion by the candidates is most interesting. I got this email (see below) from the Obama campaign tonight with th subject “What this means”.

    This email came from Barack himself, not one of his campaign guys. He positions Clinton with McCain as being the enemy and closes by asking for a small donation. When he asks this of the million plus on his email list, he will likely get a big combined donation and that will be in the press real soon.

    The man is a skilled politician and he is using the social web like no one ever has before. Whether he wins or loses, he has changed the game.

    Votes are still being counted in Pennsylvania, but one thing is already clear.

    In a state where we trailed by more than 25 points just a couple weeks ago, you helped close the gap to a slimmer margin than most thought possible.

    Thanks to your support, with just 9 contests remaining, we’ve won more delegates, more votes, and twice as many contests.

    We hold a commanding position, but there are two crucial contests coming up — voters will head to the polls in North Carolina and Indiana in exactly two weeks. And we’re already building our organization in the other remaining states.

    But it’s clear the attacks are going to continue, and we’re going to continue fighting a two-front battle against John McCain and Hillary Clinton.

    I need your support right now. Please make a donation of $25:

    https://donate.barackobama.com/whatthismeans

    Thank you for all that you’re doing to change our country.

    Barack

    Hanging out waiting for next game

    Posted on April 20, 2008
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    Mobile post sent by alexnesbitt using Utterz.  Replies.  mp3

    Soccer in San Bernardino Game 1

    Posted on April 19, 2008
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    Mobile post sent by alexnesbitt using Utterz.  Replies.  mp3

    Amazon EC2 Persistence On Its Way

    Posted on April 14, 2008
    Filed Under General | 3 Comments

    I just got this in an an email this morning. It’s a welcome development.

    Dear Amazon EC2 Developer,

    Many Amazon EC2 customers have been requesting that we let them know ahead of time about features that are currently under development so that they can better plan for how that functionality might integrate with their applications. To that end, we would like to share some details about a major upcoming feature that many of you have requested - persistent storage for EC2.

    This new feature provides reliable, persistent storage volumes, for use with Amazon EC2 instances. These volumes exist independently from any Amazon EC2 instances, and will behave like raw, unformatted hard drives or block devices, which may then be formatted and configured based on the needs of your application. The volumes will be significantly more durable than the local disks within an Amazon EC2 instance. Additionally, our persistent storage feature will enable you to automatically create snapshots of your volumes and back them up to Amazon S3 for even greater reliability.

    You will be able to create volumes ranging in size from 1 GB to 1 TB, and will be able to attach multiple volumes to a single instance. Volumes are designed for high throughput, low latency access from Amazon EC2, and can be attached to any running EC2 instance where they will show up as a device inside of the instance. This feature will make it even easier to run everything from relational databases to distributed file systems to Hadoop processing clusters using Amazon EC2.

    When persistent storage is launched, Amazon EC2 will be adding several new APIs to support the persistent storage feature. Included will be calls to manage your volume (CreateVolume, DeleteVolume), mount your volume to your instance (AttachVolume, DetachVolume) and save snapshots to Amazon S3 (CreateSnapshot, DeleteSnapshot).

    This new functionality is already being used privately by a handful of EC2 customers, and will be publicly available later this year. We will be expanding the private offering as we get closer to launch. Please sign up if you are interested in participating.

    We hope this information is useful to you as you plan, design and deploy your applications in Amazon EC2.

    Sincerely,
    The Amazon EC2 Team

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