How’s this for a glowing review of Twitter?

Yes, Jeff. We all like Twitter. Thanks for sharing.

Sono stremato, dopo un volo lunghissimo, un paio di ore di sonno, oltre quattro ore e mezzo SEI ore e mezzo di interviews SENZA SOSTA.
Nei primi minuti di questa intervista a Jeff Barr (che, se tutto va bene, sarà il mio boss) potete gustarvi la vista di Seattle dalla sede di Amazon, e magari imparare qualcosa su AWS.

Volete sapere come è andata? Non voglio sbilanciarmi… vi farò sapere quando avrò una conferma definitiva.

Wow, what an awesome event. It was pretty much what I expected it to be, a bunch of people excited about the social media space getting together to talk about social media development.  I was very impressed with both the quality and quantity of those that turned up. Some high caliber people from Bungee Labs, Twelve Horses, Podango, WordPress, the developers of ‘We’re Related!’ facebook app and of course the guest of honor Jeff Barr from Amazon. The amount that I actually learned last night was on the extreme side of things. The information that Jeff provided regarding Amazon’s Web Services was extremely interesting. I can definitely see why so many services use it for their base as Podango does.  The real key that Amazon has hit on has been the ability to scale, without that ability many very worthy ideas have fallen under the cracks of heavy traffic load or cut off from their ISP due to increased bandwidth usage.  With both the elastic computing cloud and the S3 storage solution that Amazon provides both can be avoided.  Of course it doesn’t hurt that it allows smaller developers to get something out there almost instantly without having to contract with a host.

I’ll be honest, I hadn’t thought there was much in the way of social media development going on here in Utah. Or at least I didn’t think that any of those places might be hiring. I met so many people last night that just have a passion for whats going on in the social space right now and they were all pretty awesome! As long as these meet-ups are on a night that I can attend, I’ll be interested in getting there. What went on last night has fired up my passions for social media development again. And that excites me more than ever.

The Amazon startup contest here has a video profile of the seven finalists in their contest which I think was to showcase users of Amazon Web Services (AWS).   I think  Jeff Barr  will have more about this on his blog or on Amazon’s blog.

These look like some really interesting companies.    One is measuring brain networking, another is providing 19 usability testing (this is brilliant for the small website market!)  One is optimizing PPC campaigns (hmmm – but won’t Google analytics do that extremely well?.)

Just got a tweet from Ujj that the Mindtree annual festival is going to be BarCamp style unconference. Coincidentally when Tara ‘MissRogue’ Hunt heartbrokenly lamenting that BarCamp is about LOCAL and GRASSROOT and empowering. Hmmmm!

Yeah, it is inevitable that LOCAL sometimes gets lost in translation as LOLCAT. Let us see how it pans out at Mindtree. I’m more keen to watch how it percolates down the IT also ran ladder.

While that happens in the physical unconferences, the virtual unconference is slowly maturing. Judging by Jeff Barr’s recent SecondLife presentation on Amazon Web Services, the quality of discussion pre-and post event, Virtual Unconference will become mainstream faster.
When Jeff Barr was evangalizing AWS on expected lines with deftness…

there were several ‘Visual’ conversations happening like the Reindeer/Santa Avatar on the front row:

I see that with time lot more features( how about using some Havoc4 Physics for a show and tell?) of Virtual Worlds will be put to use to express and have a conversation making it a richer unconference.

Amen!

PS: Speaking of unconference and Amazon Web Services, do you know that Amazon Web Services, Chennai Meetus is on 13 Dec? If you happen to be there in Chennai be there to hear about AWS from Jinesh Varia and other Startups on how AWS is cool, useful and reduces the entry barrier.

UPDATE: Sid Govindaraj has some interesting observations on MindTree Osmosis Barcamp. Given that this is second (public) unconference they are hosting(KM KAMP-blr was the first), I’m sure balance will prevail. Let us see. Perhaps they can make it easy to ‘See’ by making the BarCamp available also via SecondLife, ustream.tv etc.

Amazon is indeed an extreme retailer, and retailers want their inventories to move. Amazon Web Services is just this concept applied to one of their ‘Inventory’ viz., their Infrastructure! Well, for some, this is bit over the head to appreciate. So I throw in some metaphors at these innocent folks and further complicate it for them. One such metaphor popped up in an Interview with Charu Bahri while she was working on an ITmag article. Surprise Surprise! It got published as box item.

Balaji Sowmyanarayanan, a social entrepreuner in the area of combining handicraft with technology(ICT) for sustainable development, puts forward an interesting analogy – he likens Amazon EC2 to an open restaurant, welcoming you to its kitchen to cook your own meal! He describes what you will find within: “The ‘restaurant’ would provide you a well appointed regular-size ‘kitchen table’, and charge you by the hour – one virtual Linux box at ten cents an hour. Supplies used would be charged by consumption – storage(S3), orchestration(SQS) and bandwidth charges as per usage. You would be free to use one table for an hour to make a few cheese sandwiches. Or you could choose to simultaneously use many tables for many hours, to cook a gourmet spread to feed a sit-down dinner party.

“Why would you opt to visit a restaurant and cook your won meal, if not to avoid tipping or intimidating waitresses! Choosing the right data centre outsourcing contract and negotiating service levels are daunting tasks. They are typically prepaid and expensive. In contrast, EC2 is hardware as a service, based on no minimum, no maximum, post-paid billing.

“However, you need to beware that the small tip you save are not eroded by the charges of hiring expert master chefs.

EC2 is raw, ( and sometimes intimidating) offering. Handling it often needs extra engineering skills that not everyone possesses. A cook-at-our-kitchen restaurant is only an interesting and useful concept for gourmet experimentalists and recipe inventors, who desire to focus on recipe rather than assembling a kitchen. Likewise, EC2 attracts innovators and start-up entrepreneurs who need to focus on their idea instead of worrying about servers or scaling up, or IT managers of one-off short-term scientific or academic projects with heavy computing requirements.

“The fact is that regular hosting strategies are more attractive for regular situations. EC2 is only attractive in special circumstances, where hardware needs to be scaled to cope with spikes in demand.”
Blog http://labsji.wordpress.com

Hat tip to Charu for the edits. Interestingly Indus Khaithan who gave an interesting EC2 talk at BCB4 is featured in the article. I came to know him and point him to Charu coz of his talk. So blogs and unconference talks work!

Speaking of metaphors, Avoodo – Avatar Voodo, a mashup of SecondLife with Amazon Mturk is ready for demo.
Check it out at Treepu SecondLife Sim.

Just like a voodo doll, an Avatar’s activity/interaction in SL can trigger a Mturk HIT, which in-turn can effect activities in the real world. Avodoo can blur the boundary between the virtual SecondLife and the real life. Geography is indeed History once again with Avoodo – Make it Real.

Avoodo is indeed illustrated with Treepu an use case that magically teleports virtual tree saplings from SecondLife to real life. It is a mashup of SecondLife, Amazon Mturk and Project Green Hands.

Hat tip to Jeff Barr seeding the voodo metaphor!

UPDATE: Today’s Amazon Web Services SecondLife Chat, the last 10 min was Avoodo and Treepu demo time! It was awesome!

At the The Business of APIs Conference today, looking forward to a great day of conversation with like-minded people.

Update:
Just met with Oren Michels, Founder of Mashery. Great guy, truly understands the business of web services. I can see Lypp using Mashery's proxy API for reporting, authentication etc. There are some great case studies from Pikeo , Compete and RockYou.

Update:
I have just had a great conversation with Debbie Landa and Shay Nowick of Dealmaker Media. Shay asked a basic question, tell me what you do in one sentence, here it is… 

"Lypp is the EC2 /S3 of VoIP."

Simply put, we are the pay as you go web services provider for VoiP. Partners access our service via the RESTful API. If you want to integrate VoIP into your application, Lypp is a great place to start and complete your journey. The average time is takes for developers to make their first real phone call using the Lypp API is now less than 2 hours, and that's no joke. Get yourself a username and password to access the Lypp API, just email api@lypp.com.

Update:
Just had a great conversation with Jeff Barr, Web Services Evangelist at Amazon. Sounds like some cool stuff is about to hit this eve, keep your ears to the rail.

Just entered the Amazon Web Services Startup Challenge.

(Now, must contact Jeff Barr with questions I hope he won’t find too basic)

NOTE: This transcript has been edited to only include comments from
individuals who consented to the publication of the transcript.

Updated Thursday 14th September with comments from Baba Yamamoto.

1. Poinky Malaprop
   

   [19:00] ok, let’s get started

   [19:00] for those of you just visiting

   [19:00] this is a meeting of the kuurian expedition

   [19:00] if you’re interested in our group, IM me afterwards, and I can explain more

   [19:00] we have weekly meetings

   [19:01] next week we will have Intellagirl Tully talk about her work in SL

   [19:01] the week after that we’re planning an organzational meeting

   [19:01] to set up an alternate meeting time

   [19:01] that works better for european members

   [19:01] this group is mainly for *us* to share our ideas

   [19:02] so if you want to present, let me know and we’ll schedule you

   [19:02] the first 3 volunteer will get a brand new, first edition Toyota Scion!!

2. Rik Riel
   

   [19:02] WOOT!!!!!

3. Mangst Halleck
   

   [19:02] me me!

4. Poinky Malaprop
   

   [19:02] (or you can just IM Cyrys Huffhines and he’ll get you one too

5. Boliver Oddfellow
   

   [19:02] ok I volenteer

6. Cyrus Huffhines
   

   [19:02] np

7. Boliver Oddfellow
   

   [19:02] now what did I volenteer for?

8. Poinky Malaprop
   

   [19:03] tonight, we have Jeff Barr from Amazon.com, talking about web services.

   [19:03] without further ado: take it away jeff!

9. Boliver Oddfellow
   

   [19:03] hey cyrus can I have a car please

10. Baba Yamamoto
    

    [19:03] MIYA HEEEE MIYA HOOOOO MIYA HAWWW MIYA HA HAAAA!

11. Cyrus Huffhines
    

    [19:03] sorry there

12. Baba Yamamoto
    

    [19:04] woops

13. Jeffronius Batra
    

    [19:04] Ok, hello everyone, I am happy to be here.

14. Ann Enigma
    

    [19:04] Hello!

15. Rik Riel
    

    [19:04] Hey!

16. Jesse Malthus
    

    [19:04] hi!

17. Cyrus Huffhines
    

    [19:04] yessir

18. Rez Menoptra
    

    [19:04] Glad you could come and talk

19. Lex Lardner
    

    [19:04] Hey Jeff…

20. Jeffronius Batra
    

    [19:04] The first time I saw an event in Second Life I realized that I could do my job from within, and I was hooked.

21. Irelyn Christensen
    

    [19:04] heya Freedom

22. Jeffronius Batra
    

    [19:04] So, I am Jeff Barr. My title is Web Services Evangelist, and my job is to travel the world to talk to software developers.

23. Baba Yamamoto
    

    [19:05] can I have that job ;0

24. Jeffronius Batra
    

    [19:05] I love to show developers what we are doing with web services at Amazon, and to see what they build with them.

    [19:05] There’s my email on the first slide, or you can IM me in-world.

25. Cyrus Huffhines
    

    [19:05] you get a car, you get a car, you get a car!

26. Jesse Malthus
    

    [19:05] heh

27. Jeffronius Batra
    

    [19:05] A few notes. Feel free to blog, take pictures, and so forth. I’ll be online for as long as possible tonight for further discussion.

    [19:06] And feel free to use our services to build something cool and by all means let me know about it.

    [19:06] Here’s who I am. I’ve been building software for a living since I was a teenager.

    [19:06] Now I am the parent of 3 teenagers, so I am a lot older than that.

    [19:07] Worked at some startups, and worked on Visual Studio at Microsoft.

    [19:07] Just celebrated 4 years at Amazon with the web services team.

28. Poinky Malaprop
    

    [19:07] BTW, we’ll make the transcript of this talk available to the world. so say nice things only..

29. Jeffronius Batra
    

    [19:07] Been coming to SL regularly since the spring. Had tried it last year but didn’t quite "get it."

30. Jesse Malthus
    

    [19:07] be careful of the ToS!

31. Jeffronius Batra
    

    [19:08] Now I get it. In fact when I travel I meet with my wife in-world and we go shopping and dancing.

    [19:08] Lots of fun.

    [19:08] A few brief words about Amazon. We are best known as an online retailer. We have 59 million active customers, people who have bought something from us in the last year.

    [19:08] Web sites in 7 countries.

    [19:09] We are also a huge technology consumer, with all those sites.

    [19:09] A huge data warehouse, 25 terabytes of business data.

    [19:09] And great logistics, being about to ship stuff to you from over 10 million square feet of fulfillment centerspace.

    [19:09] But the most interesting part is that we are a technology provider.

    [19:10] Hundreds of thousands of associates link tousand earn commisisions by selling our products.

    [19:10] 1.08 million sellers list and sell their third-party goods on our site.

    [19:10] And over 180,000 software developers have registered for our web services program.

    [19:11] That’s the number I am measured on, so my job is to get developers to register andto build cool stuff. I will show you some of the cool stuff that’s already happening in SL tonight.

    [19:11] I should give you a brief intro to what web services are all about.

    [19:11] By putting all of these attributes together we create a programmable web site.

    [19:11] We support all of the right industry buzzwords, as you can see.

    [19:12] We put APIs — application programming interfaces — around our technology and give developers remote access to our data and functionality

    [19:12] We decouple data from presentation, handing out raw data to developers to do with as they please.

    [19:13] Doing all this creates a platform that developers look at and think "Hmmmm, I can build something cool and innovative with that!"

    [19:13] We give them the means to be creative, very much the same way that SL does. That’s one thing that really attracts me to SL. Both of the platforms draw the right kinds of people in!

    [19:13] It also gives us a great way to leverage our investment in technology by letting more people use it.

    [19:14] And raw, unadulterated access to data is certainly a fundamental part of the "web 2.0" buzzword that you probably hear 20 times per day

    [19:14] Over 4 years ago, seeing an opportunity, we started to open up our technology platform. We called the product "AWS", or "Amazon Web Services."

    [19:15] As you can see we have 4 different categories of services, E-Commerce, Infrastructure, Web, andWorkforce / Workflow.

    [19:15] Here is our product family. We are rolling out services so quickly that I end up redrawing this slide before each speaking tour.

    [19:16] In the infrastructure side, we have the Simple Storage Service, to let people store gobs of data on our servers.

    [19:16] The Simple Queue Service creates a first-in, first-out data structure for cross-web, cross-application communication.

    [19:17] And our newest infrastructure service, EC2 or the Elastic Compute Cloud, lets developers rent time on our servers to run their own apps.

    [19:17] Make sense so far?

32. Rez Menoptra
    

    [19:17] yes

33. Jesse Malthus
    

    [19:17] yep

34. Mangst Halleck
    

    [19:17] /nods

35. Jeffronius Batra
    

    [19:17] (I usually talk way too fast when I present, and I seem to type the same way

36. 
    

    [19:17] o Money nods

37. Jeffronius Batra
    

    [19:17] Great.

38. Jesse Malthus
    

    [19:18] yey history panel!

39. Jeffronius Batra
    

    [19:18] Ok, on the E-Commerce side, we have ECS, the E-Commerce Service. This is direct access to our product catalog, millions of products, that you can use to build your own specialized store front.

    [19:18] I will show you some examples in a little bit.

40. 
    

    [19:19] lti Gadget v1.48.4 by Timeless Prototype

41. Jeffronius Batra
    

    [19:19] The Historical Pricing Service is for people selling goods in our catalog. It lets them get prices and sales volume (sales rank) from times past, quarter by quarter and product by product.

    [19:20] On the Web side, we have 4 services from our Alexa subsidiary.

    [19:20] AWIS, give you access to 300 Terabytes of web crawl data. You can do searches, explore connectivity, and get traffic and speed rankings.

    [19:20] The Top Sites lets you get popularity data, per country or globally.

    [19:21] The Thumbnail service hands out 3 sizes of site thumbnails.

42. 
    

    [19:21] lti Gadget v1.48.4 by Timeless Prototype

43. Jeffronius Batra
    

    [19:22] And finally,the Web Search Platform lets you build your own apps,then upload them to the Alexa cloud and run them on 1, 10, 100 processors. The apps can pull data from that 300 Terabyte archive that I just mentioned.

    [19:22] Finally, the Mechanical Turk is in a class by itself. It lets programs ask questions of people, on a large-scale basis.

    [19:23] We call it "Artificial Artificial intelligence", or an API to humna processing power!

    [19:23] (I meant human

    [19:24] Here’s a bit more info about the E-Commerce service. It is our most mature service, in its 4th major release, with minor updates regularly.

    [19:24] Millions of products, and a very rich data schema, about 100 data elements for each item in the catalog.

44. Rik Riel
    

    [19:24] !!!

45. Jeffronius Batra
    

    [19:24] You can create a shopping cart "in the background", and make web service calls to put data into the catalog, then pop up the browser only for checkout.

    [19:25] There’s also access to per-user stuff like public wishlists.

46. Lex Lardner
    

    [19:25] to put data into the cart, not the catalog….

47. Jeffronius Batra
    

    [19:25] And entrepreneurs can make money by joining the Amazon Associates program. They get a variablecommission (4 to 8.5%, I believe) on sales.

    [19:26] As Lex said, the cart calls put data into the cart, not into the catalog (Doh!)

48. Lex Lardner
    

    [19:26]

49. Jesse Malthus
    

    [19:26]

50. Jeffronius Batra
    

    [19:27] Amazon S3 is the Simple Storage Service. We wanted to build a service that all developers would find useful, a reliable place to store data.

    [19:27] The Simple part refers to the API and how it is used, inside it is quite complex. You put data into S3 and it is replicated to multiple Amazon data centers around the world. Once you store it, it is there for good.

    [19:27] We also meter and bill for storage usage, through your Amazon account.

    [19:28] You pay 20 cents per Gigabyte to upload or download data, and then 15 cents per Gigabyte/month to store it.

    [19:28] I have almost 3 GB of stuff in my account, and I just got a bill for 69 cents!

51. Jesse Malthus
    

    [19:28] heh

52. Jeffronius Batra
    

    [19:29] Each object can be marked private or public, and each object has a URL.

    [19:29] Very scalable, objects can be 1 byte to 5 GB in size.

    [19:29] We are storing over 600,000,000 objects already!

    [19:30] We have some great users like Smugmug (professional photo sharing), Ookles, Elephantdrive, Jungledisk, and many more cool things under development.

    [19:30] Of course we store our own data in there too. A great example of our taking something that we built inside and opening up to developers. Win-win for us and for them.

    [19:31] EC2 is our newest service, just entered beta testing 2 weeks ago (of course i was on vacation when it happened and ended up blogging about it from the beach in Mexico).

53. Jesse Malthus
    

    [19:31] EC2 is cool beans.

54. Jeffronius Batra
    

    [19:31] Just like S3 makes storage cheap, scalable, and pay-as-you-go, EC2 does the same for computing (as Jesse already knows .

    [19:32] It is a complete virtual computing environment using a technology called Xen.

55. Poinky Malaprop
    

    [19:32] can you run a SL Sim on EC2..?

56. Jesse Malthus
    

    [19:32] hehehe, we wish

57. Jeffronius Batra
    

    [19:32] Developers build "disk images" with all needed software (from the OS on up) and store it in S3.

    [19:32] Poinky, LL could definitely do that if they wanted to.

    [19:33] Each virtual computer has pretty impressive specs, as you can see.

    [19:33] So developers create these images (perhaps an app server, db server, and web server) and then start up as many instances as they need.

    [19:33] As load increases they simply "turn the knob" and spawn more.

    [19:34] When the load goes away turn the knob down.

58. Baba Yamamoto
    

    [19:34] not powerful enough for a sim ;0

59. Jeffronius Batra
    

    [19:34] So instead of planning for and buying enough hardware for maximum anticipated load, you simply build a scalable app and adjust for real conditions.

    [19:35] We then charge based on number of hours of instances used, and then data transfer.

60. Baba Yamamoto
    

    [19:35] perfect for libSL bots though

61. Jesse Malthus
    

    [19:35] question: how are apps EC2-aware? as in once you "turn up the knob" preformance increases? is it load balancing

62. Jeffronius Batra
    

    [19:35] A good example of how this would work would be a phone company that needs to do a big "billing run" once a month for a couple of days.

63. Jesse Malthus
    

    [19:35] ?

64. Jeffronius Batra
    

    [19:35] Jesse, good question. We don’t do any special load balancing yet, but people are building that into images.

    [19:36] There are lots of Linux technologies to do that.

65. Jesse Malthus
    

    [19:36] run a bunch of dedicated mongrel instances and mod_proxy on a capstone

66. Jeffronius Batra
    

    [19:36] Someone could build a monitoring app to watch loads and to then spawn more instances as needed.

    [19:36] Yes, what Jesses mentions would work.

67. 
    

    [19:37] rus Huffhines is offline

68. Jeffronius Batra
    

    [19:37] Any EC2 questions..

69. Poinky Malaprop
    

    [19:37] can you schedule up-times automatically?

70. Baba Yamamoto
    

    [19:37] if I could get a few hundred thousand accounts I could log them all into SL ;0 JOY

71. Jesse Malthus
    

    [19:37] also, how does the "1.7 Ghz Xeon" get gaurenteed?

72. Jeffronius Batra
    

    [19:38] Poinky, there are web services to start and stop instances, so a scheduler app could run from outside.

73. 
    

    [19:38] rus Huffhines is online

74. Jesse Malthus
    

    [19:38] and not "it depends on how that server is loaded today"?

75. Jeffronius Batra
    

    [19:38] Jesse, the Xen technology does that, and we monitor it to make sure that that’s what we deliver.

    [19:38] Baba, good idea!

76. Baba Yamamoto
    

    [19:38] would Amazon be liable for DOS ?

77. Jesse Malthus
    

    [19:39] what would you do with 10k libsl bots?

78. Jeffronius Batra
    

    [19:39] Baba, sinceu we know who’s running the instances, we could easily track it back.

79. Baba Yamamoto
    

    [19:39] grief?

80. Jeffronius Batra
    

    [19:39] We are talking to people who want to use it for load testing.

81. Jesse Malthus
    

    [19:39] heh.

82. Jeffronius Batra
    

    [19:39] Or for exploring the space of config values for, e.g. MySQL.

83. Baba Yamamoto
    

    [19:39] heh

    [19:40] no really this so so fricken cool ;0

84. Jeffronius Batra
    

    [19:40] Great questions, I love the audience interaction at all of my talks.

    [19:40] This is as cool as I thought it would be, by the way.

85. Baba Yamamoto
    

    [19:40] I need to get an account for the libSL team ;0

86. Jesse Malthus
    

    [19:40] You do!

87. Baba Yamamoto
    

    [19:40] we do

88. Jeffronius Batra
    

    [19:40] Panthar, keep your eyes on the AWS blog (http://aws.typepad.com). We have a waiting list and will be opening up more slots based on that.

89. Meta Demain
    

    [19:41] Will your services support audio, could a developer create their own Amazon version of iTunes for music sales?

90. Jesse Malthus
    

    [19:41] jhurliman would <3 you

91. Baba Yamamoto
    

    [19:41] can you … you know ;0 jump us to the top

92. Jeffronius Batra
    

    [19:41] Feel free to send me email with your ideas for how you would use EC2.

    [19:41] Baba….

93. Baba Yamamoto
    

    [19:41] Muahahaha I will

94. Jeffronius Batra
    

    [19:41] Meta, you could definitely stream data, and adjust number of instances based on load.

    [19:42] We are working with some folks that are building an open source clone of Youtube, and they will use EC2 to do encoding.

95. Meta Demain
    

    [19:42] great thanks

96. Jesse Malthus
    

    [19:42] that’s a cool idea!

97. Jeffronius Batra
    

    [19:42] Ok, so what is Amazon doing in Second Life?

98. Baba Yamamoto
    

    [19:42] i am loath to give 30 developers access to mono on our single dedicated webserver ;0

99. Jeffronius Batra
    

    [19:43] As soon as I saw this place I realized that I could do my evangelism in here. My "virtual reality", if you will, is to travel to some city, walk into a room full of chairs, step up to a podium, give a presentation, and answer questions.

    [19:43] Exactly like this!

100. Jesse Malthus
     

     [19:44] hehe!

101. Jeffronius Batra
     

     [19:44] So I built a little "outpost" to learn more about SL, scripting, and so forth. It was (and still is) an unofficial project, but lots of people at Amazon are aware of it. It is gettinga lot of attention.

     [19:44] I will show you some pictures soon.

     [19:44] I have about zero artistic talent, so if I can build something anyone can.

     [19:45] I see a huge future with SL for communicating and educating, and that’s pretty much what I do.

     [19:45] Here’s my humble build, limited by 110 prims on an el cheapo piece of land

     [19:45] Seats, some application screen shots, andsome book covers.

     [19:46] Guess you could say this is our "brick and mortar" presence…

102. Poinky Malaprop
     

     [19:46] privately funded, or does amazon give you a budget?

103. Meta Demain
     

     [19:46] Where is it located in SL?

104. Jeffronius Batra
     

     [19:46] So far I paid for this myself, but since I built everything it was cheap

     [19:46] It is in Athabasca, I can send you a SLURL later.

105. Meta Demain
     

     [19:47] Thanks

106. Poinky Malaprop
     

     [19:47] We may go on a tour after the meeting

107. Jeffronius Batra
     

     [19:47] I love how Amazon cover art looks.Each of these is scripted.

     [19:47] And i have screen shots of apps. People walk by and this catches their eye.

     [19:48] On the roof i did a static display. I plan to experiment with different ways to present data.

     [19:48] Of course, my job is to get other developers to build cool stuff and I am blown away by what I have seen so far.

108. Baba Yamamoto
     

     [19:49] screw shopping ;0 lets get back to computing

109. Jeffronius Batra
     

     [19:49] When I first started telling my co-workers about SL they rolled their eyes and thought I was a bit crazy. But I started to show them screen shots and now they are taking me seriously.

     [19:49] Here are three things that I know about so far.

110. Baba Yamamoto
     

     [19:49] the hud is great ;0

111. moo Money
     

     [19:49] =O

     [19:49] Hal9k!

112. Jeffronius Batra
     

     [19:49] Second411 has a mode that will let it search the Amazon catalog using ECS, very slick.

     [19:50] Yes HUDs are great but no one tells you how to use them.

     [19:50] I think I searched for Seattle in that one.

     [19:50] Life2Life is a dynamic shopping experience.

113. Baba Yamamoto
     

     [19:51] hum it would be nice to get album previews to stream automagicly

114. Jeffronius Batra
     

     [19:51] I’ve had multiple meetings (in SL ) with the developers and I still don’t know their real names!

115. Jesse Malthus
     

     [19:51] heh, yey anonimity

116. Jeffronius Batra
     

     [19:51] This is an installation of their store on Info Island.

117. Baba Yamamoto
     

     [19:51] they’re wanted by the law

118. Jeffronius Batra
     

     [19:52] You initiate a search by speaking on channel 1. Of course here I searched for Snow Crash with "/1 snow crash".

     [19:52] The top search result is shown.

     [19:52] Baba, regarding previews via audio we don’t expose that data yet, but I am begging some people to let it out.

     [19:52] A few people have figured out some unofficial ways to do it.

119. Baba Yamamoto
     

     [19:53] meh

120. Jeffronius Batra
     

     [19:53] Would also be cool to get the "look inside the book" pages.

121. Baba Yamamoto
     

     [19:53] is it mp3 ?

122. Jesse Malthus
     

     [19:53] Icecast and Ices, and 16m2 divisions

123. Baba Yamamoto
     

     [19:53] that was my next thought

124. Jeffronius Batra
     

     [19:53] If you have ideas for stuff you need, let me know later.

     [19:53] Baba, I think so, but not sure.

     [19:53] Ok, and the third example is from Jnana.

125. Baba Yamamoto
     

     [19:53] some stupid sites use real… i hate them

126. Jeffronius Batra
     

     [19:54] The author of this technology is in the audience, by the way.

127. Lex Lardner
     

     [19:54] *smiles*

128. Jesse Malthus
     

     [19:54] Amazon uses real and WM for their previews. it sucks for us linux users.

129. Baba Yamamoto
     

     [19:54] yes

130. Jeffronius Batra
     

     [19:54] So, the background of jnana is that they have a tool to let lawyers build expert systems using a very straightforward GUI.

131. Baba Yamamoto
     

     [19:54] fix it Jeff! we believe in you

132. moo Money
     

     [19:54] lol

133. 
     

     [19:54] gnpostMarv Martin is offline

134. Jeffronius Batra
     

     [19:55] They have extended this to let developers build SL shopping experiences that are very, very different than the usual searching.

135. Jesse Malthus
     

     [19:55] lawyers, and expert, in the same sentence?

136. Jeffronius Batra
     

     [19:55] Instead you go into a store and it interviews you to help you choose the best product for your needs.

     [19:55] Here I am, choosing a Wok!

     [19:55] By sitting in a kitchen.

137. Meta Demain
     

     [19:56] A Sales bot?

138. Jeffronius Batra
     

     [19:56] More like a sales expert.

139. Poinky Malaprop
     

     [19:56] We’re trying to setup a time with Lex to come talk to us about Jnana at a future meeting.. stay tuned.

140. Jeffronius Batra
     

     [19:56] And here is a library that will use the same technology.

141. Meta Demain
     

     [19:56] k

142. Jeffronius Batra
     

     [19:56] Movies…

     [19:56] And cell phones.

143. Baba Yamamoto
     

     [19:56] i want the one Eric Rice has

144. Jeffronius Batra
     

     [19:57] It should be good for those "parametric purchases" where there are lots of variables.

145. Lex Lardner
     

     [19:57] guided shopping in second life, assisted by expert systems….

146. Jeffronius Batra
     

     [19:57] Ok, we will switch to Q*A mode soon.

     [19:57] So here’s what we offer to developers.

147. Jesse Malthus
     

     [19:57] Erk, I have to go. Goodnight everyone

148. Jeffronius Batra
     

     [19:57] Almost all of our services are accessible via both SOAP and REST APIs, two different and competing technologies.

     [19:58] We have lots of docs, and we do a lot to communicate with our developers — newsletter, very active discussion board, blog, and so forth.

149. Baba Yamamoto
     

     [19:58] REST++

150. Jeffronius Batra
     

     [19:59] The EC2 board, just 2 weeks old, already is at about 10,000 page views — that’s a good metric for developer interest.

     [19:59] Getting started is very easy!

     [19:59] But the first URL is the blog, not the signup (oops)!

     [19:59] aws.amazon.com is where you go to sign up.

151. Scratch Helios
     

     [20:00] Do you see Business Process Management, such as BPEL playing a role in complex web services orchestration? Are you experimenting with BPM tools?

152. Jeffronius Batra
     

     [20:00] The blog (another thing that I do) has examples of all kinds of cool apps built with our services, news from the industry, and lots more.

     [20:01] Scratch — I think that BPEL is something that can be used to glue our services together. One of my new team-mates has a lot of BPEL experience so we’ll see what he comes up with regarding code samples and so forth.

     [20:01] Ok, lets start doing even more questions..

     [20:01] Hope I can keep up.

     [20:01] Thanks for coming, Defne

153. Rik Riel
     

     [20:01] what do you see as any limitations to serious e-commerce happening in virtual worlds like SL?

154. Baba Yamamoto
     

     [20:02] what kinds of aplications are NOT allowed to run on EC2?

155. Xantha Oe
     

     [20:02] when will EC2 be out of beta and how many beta users do you have?

156. Jeffronius Batra
     

     [20:02] Rik, I don’t see any huge obstacles, but I think we have to make sure that people see this as serious stuff. My wife and kids thought that I was playing here for quite a while, but with stuff like this they are taking me more seriously.

157. Poinky Malaprop
     

     [20:03] yeah, kids may be an obstacle..

158. Baba Yamamoto
     

     [20:03] don’t let them see your xcite collection

159. Jeffronius Batra
     

     [20:03] Baba, I would have to read the license to see what can’t be run. I am sure that disruptive / DOS stuff isn’t allowed.

160. Baba Yamamoto
     

     [20:03] yea

161. Jeffronius Batra
     

     [20:04] Xanthe, no real schedule that I am aware of to get out of beta. As far as number of users, we haven’t started to talk about that yet. A good proxy for this is to look at the developer board to see how many people are talking.

162. Xantha Oe
     

     [20:04] ty

163. Ann Enigma
     

     [20:04] Do you see any new standardized metaphores emerging for commerce in SL? For instance, the "shopping cart" on the web to represent a user’s items?

164. Jeffronius Batra
     

     [20:05] uh oh I see 5 people typing questions!

165. Scratch Helios
     

     [20:05] For years the mantra has been that you have to bake security in at the beginning, not have it as an add-on. What is baked-in to AWS to help do that

166. Jeffronius Batra
     

     [20:06] Ann, I don’t see a standard yet,and not sure we need one. I think that SL gives creative people a lot of room to experiment with different ways to do things. Like most new technologies, we’ll use it first to redo the old stuff and only after a lot of

167. Baba Yamamoto
     

     [20:06] ….

168. Jeffronius Batra
     

     [20:06] experience will we come up with genuinely new things.

169. Baba Yamamoto
     

     [20:06] what kinds of limits on outside communication? webservers on EC2 ok?

170. Jeffronius Batra
     

     [20:07] Scratch, regarding security, we do a lot of this up front. Developers need to "sign" their requests so that we know who is making the request. We work with our security team and with outsiders on this.

     [20:07] Baba, you can definitely run webservers on EC2. You can also partition the network so that your webserver instances are visible to the outside world but your app and db servers are not.

171. Baba Yamamoto
     

     [20:08] very intersting

     [20:08] I’m pretty much sold ;0

172. Jeffronius Batra
     

     [20:08] But you have full reign (and control via web service calls0 to manage your network.

173. Lex Lardner
     

     [20:08] To give some idea of the upside for SL stores selling Amazon products, can you give some ballpark idea of current sales of Amazon products by Amazon affiliates from their own (non-Amazon) web sites?

174. Jeffronius Batra
     

     [20:09] Lex, I don’t have numbers to give out on sales, I’m the tech guy ECS was our first web service and the results we saw from that certainly led to our decision to expand the team and to offer lots more services.

175. Lex Lardner
     

     [20:09] )

176. Jeffronius Batra
     

     [20:09] Our annual report might have more info, but I don’t pay attention to the financial side at all.

177. Lex Lardner
     

     [20:10] fair enough….

178. Jeffronius Batra
     

     [20:10] Looks like Baba is pretty happy….

179. Poinky Malaprop
     

     [20:10] well, we’re over time

180. Baba Yamamoto
     

     [20:10] ahah

181. Poinky Malaprop
     

     [20:10] let’s give a round of applause to jeff for a very ninteresting talk

182. Lex Lardner
     

     [20:10] *loud clapping*

183. 
     

     [20:10] n Enigma claps

184. Rik Riel
     

     [20:10] WOOT!!!!!

185. Poinky Malaprop
     

     [20:10] or other appropriate emotes

186. Magnus Lineker
     

     [20:10] wooooo hoooooo

     [20:11] thanks, Jeff….Great stuff!

     [20:11] REally interesting and educational!

187. Jeffronius Batra
     

     [20:11] This has been awesome, really enjoyed doing this.

188. Xantha Oe
     

     [20:11] thank you

189. Scratch Helios
     

     [20:11] nicely done!

190. Poinky Malaprop
     

     [20:11] I don’t know if anybody is up for a tour

     [20:11] but if you click on the blue thing on stage

191. Rik Riel
     

     [20:11] where to?

192. Poinky Malaprop
     

     [20:11] you’ll get a hud

     [20:11] wear it

     [20:11] and click on the blue buttons

     [20:11] and you can teleport to the places jeff mentioned

     [20:12] If you;re interested in future K.E. meetings, IM me or another officer for an invite, and you’l get the announcements

     [20:12] see you all next week! and thanks again jeff!

     [20:12] thanks all for coming

193. Rik Riel
     

     [20:12] thanks, jeff!

194. Jeffronius Batra
     

     [20:12] My pleasure, this was incredible.

     [20:12] Please feel free to IM or email me.

     [20:13] If you happen to blog this feel free to send me the URL

195. Meta Demain
     

     [20:13] Thanks Jeff

196. Jeffronius Batra
     

     [20:13] You are welcome, Bino

     [20:13] and MEta

     [20:13] Thanks Panthar