Tag: amazon

Unlearn, relearn and the AWS Summit

The American futurist Alvin Toffler once said – “The illiterates of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn”. I think it is particularly true to those of us working in the Information Technology industry, as every two three years we need to unlearn some buzzwords, and relearn some buzzwords.

However, Cloud Computing are not buzzwords. Therefore, it is important for us to unlearn the previous know-how and relearn the new new things – the new way to design, implement, test, operate and monitor Cloud based IT systems. And one of the best ways to go thru this unlearn and relearn this cycle is to attend the Amazon’s AWS Summit.

One of the key learnings of in the Summit is you can auto-scale the IT systems. In the past few years, no matter who you talked to – salesperson, developers, architects etc., they would all tell you how great it was that you could easily scale up your Cloud based IT system when the system was under heavy loadings (for example, in peak hours of sales period, or festive seasons). Seems to me all they need is to scale up, all of them are very optimistic about their businesses !!

However, the true beauty of the Cloud system is in fact the ability of scaling down, not up, the Cloud based IT system. In other words, we shall design our system that based on certain business and technical criteria, the system can scale up to cater for the extra loading, and scale down to save cost.

In other words, the Cloud system is no longer a fixed architecture, but it will grow or shrink the computing power in line with the businesses. And it will cost more when the business is good, and less when the business is slow. Finally IT becomes part of the business.

Another key learning is the product life cycle that encourages innovation and idea trial. Unlike previous IT set up, now you can implement a basic computing architecture in the cloud in minutes. And you can close down that same architecture in seconds. That flexibility helps us to test drive any idea with ease, and with low cost barrier.

Amazon proposes a life cycle of :

Idea -> MVP -> Scale -> Profitability

(where MVP stands for Minimum Viable Product)

In other words, start with your brilliant but untested idea, build a MVP with minimal computing architecture. When it is a good idea to pursuit further, scale up quickly. Then reap the profit with as little computing power you need as possible.

So, if you missed the AWS Summit 2013 Singapore, and want to unlearn quicker and relearn more … Don’t miss the next AWS re:Invent 2013.

Singapore

Kindle Price Disparity

We all hate price disparity. No matter it’s a scoop of ice cream, a can of soda or a set of computer, you sure want a good price. So what if you can get a brand new, legitimate Kindle Paperwhite much cheaper than in US ? Yes, not same price as in US, but in fact US$ 65 cheaper.  It’s due to the fact that Japanese Yen dropped (and still dropping) like a stone in the past few months. And of course in Japan, Amazon needs to compete with good Sony Reader and others.

Here is a picture from a Hong Kong online retail store, selling Kindle Paperwhite 3G + Wifi, and Paperwhite Wifi. It’s about US$ 268 and US$ 191 respectively.

Hong Kong

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And here are the same two models from US Amazon store – US$ 179 and US$ 119, note that you need to add another US 20 (i.e. without special sponsors screens) and shipping cost.

USA

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And lastly, here are the same two models in Japan Amazon store. Again you will need to add in the shipping cost, but as of today’s exchange ratio (May 1st), the prices are just US$ 133.5 and US$ 82 (before shipping) !! No Kidding !!

Japan

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So, if you have an Japan Amazon account or friends from Japan, it’s time to buy the beautiful Kindle Paperwhite. It’s simply irresistible.

 

AWS Cloud Security

Going to Vegas for the Amazon Re:Invent event is one of the best ways to learn about Cloud Computing and Cloud security. And the second best of course is to just browsing the slide decks or videos of the event, from your office or home. So here you go, fresh from the Internet, the course 206 of the security track – “Security of the AWS Cloud”.

And don’t forget to follow up with the slide decks of “AWS Cloud Security” and “Security and Compliance”

Log My Life

Back in the early 1980s’ when I was a Fortran programmer, it’s a doctrine to document every programs with very detailed comments. Roll forward 15 years, then when I developed the very first homepage of my own in year 1995, I started to log down the changes of my own website and showed those in the front page, with an aim to inform my site visitors the details of the website changes. And gradually, the “logs” included not only website changes, but also news, jokes, events, photos, videos and opinions.

As you may all know, these change logs (Web Logs) later was named as Blog (coined by Peter Merholz, who jokingly broke the word “weblog” into the phrase “we blog”) in year 1999.

And now I no longer develop programs (except some twists on scripts and PHP programs), but more and more, I am logging my life within the Internet … like a lifelogger but without those geeky devices.

Like it or not, every single day we are logging our lives with dozens of modern day Internet tools and social networks. I did a check lately and found that indeed I am sharing bits and pieces of my life one way or the other, every single day. And treating myself as a use case, here are the tools and services you can use to log your life if you want to, insanely …

  1. Start your usual day with the app Zite (or Flipboard) for iPad and start sharing your selected Internet, eCommerce, Media and Security news to Buffer (Buffer is a service to schedule your social sharings, highly recommended).
  2. For some more important news that shall not be “buffer-ed”, immediately share to social networks like Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin and Google+.
  3. Throughout the day, browse your Facebook wall and Twitter tweets (with TweetDeck) to see what news you can further share to your friends and followers.
  4. For each place you visit in the day, check-in to FourSquare and take a photo with an aim to share it later to social networks, with or without touch-ups by Instagram. If time permits, record this in the beautiful app Path. In case you will forget where you’ve been, say two years later, you can subscribe to Memolane service to remind you.
  5. Whenever you see some good photos (food, pet, fashion, scenery etc. etc.), “pin” it with Pinterest tool. And for good articles and slides, save it to Dropbox for future reference.
  6. What about books ? Read your ebooks with Kindle and whenever you encounter a good line, share it to Facebook and Twitter again. Of course, don’t forget to tell your Linkedin connections what book you’re reading with the Amazon module.
  7. Then for the slides created in public speeches or presentations, share those though Slideshare. In addition, publish your own “social newspaper” thru Glos.si. And if you want your friends to get a printed copy of your sharings in Facebook, publish it through Yearlyleaf.
  8. With all these social interactions, closely monitor your Klout score to see whether your shall share, tweet and “like” even more …
  9. And about your work, document your career history in Linkedin, VisualCV and Vizify.
  10. Last but not least, keep your views and master pieces in your blog like this tiny little one …

So, are you ready to log your life ?

writing

From Kindle 2 to Kindle Touch (Kindle 4)

I seldom upgrade my gears even the gears’ new version / generation are released, instead I always skip one generation between each upgrade. That applies to my M4/3 cameras, iPhone, iPad and of course the Kindle as well. My previous Kindle is a white color Kindle 2, and I skipped the very good Kindle 3 (now the Kindle Keyboard) but waited for the Kindle Touch. So, the day Amazon made the Kindle Touch available to customers outside US like us, I ordered the fourth generation Kindle and the Lighted Leather Cover …

Kindle 2 and Kindle Touch

Without a keyboard like Kindle 2 / 3, the Kindle Touch is very small and lightweight. And with the same reason, you need to touch the screen to turn pages and change any settings … quite frankly touching the screen to action is not as easy as pressing a button in previous Kindle verions. However the E Ink display is still very good for reading.

One thing I note from this latest Kindle is the menu options will change depends on what you’re doing – for example, the menu in the main homepage is different with the one while you’re reading and in the Settings screen. Anyway, first few things you need to do after you receive your Kindle Touch:

  1. From the home screen (the book list screen), press the Menu button in upper right, and turn on the Wi-Fi (“Turn On Wireless” option). If needed, in the same menu, select “Settings” and use the “Wi-Fi Networks” option to connect to the right Wi-Fi Access point.
  2. Then register your Kindle with the “Registration” option in the “Settings” screen.
  3. Set the password of the device, the time and personal information with the “Device Options” in the “Settings” screen.
  4. You can also set the social network through the “Reading Options”
  5. Once connected, and registered, go back to the home screen and you shall be able to download all the books to the new Kindle one by one.

I also tried the Kindle Shop (the shopping cart icon on top) and bought my first ebook for the new Kindle Touch – Likeable Social Media: How to Delight Your Customers, Create an Irresistible Brand, and Be Generally Amazing on Facebook (& Other Social Networks)

Lastly, in case you want to take some screenshots of Kindle like what I did for this blog post, all you need to do is to hold the home button for a while and then tap the screen. The screenshot in GIF format will be stored in the root directory of the Kindle where you can copy to your PC once connected via the USB cable. Hope it helps.

Enjoy !!