Amazon Web Services Blog

Free XML book (PDF)

Addison-Wesley is offering a free download of the Essential XML Quick Reference. This is a 9MB, 432 page PDF file. Of course, you can also buy the book at Amazon.

The Business Case for XSLT 2.0

Prolific writer Kurt Cagle writes about The Business Case for XSLT 2.0. Kurt has a lot to say, and he says it really well. Some of the new features of XSLT 2.0 include:

• The concept of a sequence of XML elements as a first-class XSLT object
• Better regular expression support
• User Defined XPath functions
• Conditional Expressions
• Date/Time Manipulation
• Complex Grouping
• Multiple Outputs
• Type Awareness

Kurt covers all of these (and more) in his treatise.

Tsunami Disaster Relief

Amazon and the Red Cross have combined forces to make it really easy to make a disaster relief donation to help the victims of the recent tsunami in South Asia.

Visit http://www.amazon.com/paypage/PX3BEL97U9A4I to make a contribution.

You can also use the Amazon Honor System to place an Honor System box on your own pages, for this effort or for others.

Peek Inside an Amazon Distribution Center

The Seattle Times published Pick, pack and ship ... and deliver profit, an inside look at the Amazon Distribution Center in Fernley, Nevada. Spanning 13 football fields, this is our largest building in North America. Read the article to see how we manager to pick, pack, and ship millions of packages and to learn a bit more about how we think (and work) at Amazon.

ECS-Powered Wishlists on Blogs!

Users of Six Apart's TypePad service can now display their Amazon wishlist on their blog, using just three easy steps. We've added some of our favorite products to our team wishlist, and you should be able to see it in the column to the left of the blog.

Important Note: Please don't buy anything for us, we have set this up just to show you how the feature works.

Six Apart has posted full instructions on their blog -- Add Your Amazon Wish Lists to your TypePad Weblog.

MIT Technology Review Covers AWS

The newest issue of the MIT Technology Review is well worth reading!

In an article titled Amazon: Giving Away the Store, they review the history of AWS (as seen from two different vantage points), talk about some interesting sites powered by AWS, and much more. They talked to Amazon insiders and to a number of outside pundits and third-party developers.

Jobs @ Amazon: Web Services Evangelist

The Amazon Web Services Developer Relations Group is looking to hire another Web Services Evangelist. This position in based in Seattle. Here is the official job description:

Web Services Evangelist

Interested in influencing a paradigm shift? Join an energetic, dynamic team responsible for driving the development and adoption of the Amazon Web Services platform. We're looking for an experienced and passionate technical evangelist who will both represent Amazon Web Services and help develop the global strategies to make Amazon Web Services the industry standard for "programmable e-commerce". You will generate grass-roots attention and support for Amazon Web Services among key industry opinion makers, journalists and technologists. The ability to identify, engage and win mindshare among third-party developers in target ISVs, systems integrators and collaborative technology providers is required.

Your responsibilities will include:

• Gaining industry recognition and credibility as a regular attendee, panelist and keynote speaker at technology conferences, trade shows and press events
• Delivering compelling presentations, product demos, sample solutions and discussions to drive adoption of Amazon Web Services platform technology, developer tools and XML standards
• Continuing to identify leads for potential partnerships and clients and assisting with presales support
• collaborating with internal teams to define the product road map, market positioning and developer program initiatives
• Assessing and compiling white papers about emerging technologies and industry developments
• Providing guidance to technical working groups and standards bodies, both internal and external, involved in the design of Web services architecture, utilisation and standards

Your profile:

• 5 to 10 years experience in software development, with special emphasis in distributed application development
• Bachelor's degree in computer science, engineering or a related discipline; Master's level and above is preferred
• Strong knowledge and experience with transactional messaging, Internet protocols and transports (XML, SOAP, XSLT, .Net, Java, Perl, PHP, C/C++, etc.) coupled with prior experience in product definition, bring-to-market strategies and setting an industry standard
• Excellent oral and written communication skills
• Pre-established credibility and recognition in speaking engagements and technology publications is preferred
• Extensive industry contacts in the software development field and the ability to work cooperatively with, and gain the respect of, software developers is a must.
• A willingness to travel and work autonomously

To apply for this position, please click here.

Associate-O-Matic

The Associate-O-Matic tool lets you build a custom Amazon store with 1000's of items in minutes. The product can be downloaded and installed on a local server, or it can be run in a hosted mode under a subscription plan.

The newest version of Associate-O-Matic takes advantage of version 4 of ECS. It features improved performance and stability, enhanced product listings, access to new Amazon categories, a number of new settings and preferences, and an advanced search capability.

A free 30 day trial is available.

New Tutorial: Chained Requests Using XSLT

We have just published a new tutorial document, "Chained Requests Using XSLT." The technique illustrated in this document allows you to execute a sequence of AWS requests under the control of a script written in XSLT.

Excerpt: This tutorial walks through creating a simple two-page web site that uses chained requests in XSLT to display data from multiple web services operations in a single page. We’ll be starting with an ItemSearch operation looking for Amazon Listmania® lists. Using the first list returned, we’ll use a ListLookup operation to get the list of items within the list. Then we’ll use an ItemLookup operation to fill in some additional item property values. 

Amazon Store Manager

Stringer Software Solutions has introduced version two of their Amazon Store Manager product. This freely downloadable product is described as "Still easy to use, but much more powerful. Installs in minutes and lets you run your Amazon sites easily."

There is also a test store.