Amazon Web Services to provide developers with free credit for storage and computing for Alexa skills

A new program from Amazon might encourage developers to keep building and working on Alexa skills. Amazon Web Services is offering US$100 promotional credit as well as another additional US$100 per month to help pay for extra cloud computing and storage costs third-party developers might incur when their Alexa skills exceed the limits of the existing AWS Free Tier. By taking extra cost out of the way, this benefits Amazon’s own Echo smart speakers that are powered by Alexa, among other Alexa-powered devices. Skills are the system’s version of apps and by having more developers work on those, it gives more options and capabilities to users, which in turn can entice more people to use Amazon Echo products over its competitors.

Source: Geekwire

A typo caused the big Amazon Web Services outage

Mistakes happen to the best of us but it seems just one tiny “human error” has caused embarrassment for Amazon. As you know, the Amazon Web Services went down this week and disrupted many internet services for hours. It seems the error had been a typo. On Tuesday morning, an employee doing routine maintenance mistakenly entered the wrong command while trying to take offline “a small number of servers.” What was typed in took down a “larger set of servers,” including those that support two S3 subsystems. These subsystems have the data storage service used by a number of web-based services.

With these two systems offline, it took with it many services including the ones Amazon uses to update its own status page. And with the system not having been completely restarted “for many years,” it also took “longer than expected” to bring them back up. Amazon acknowledges and apologizes for the mistake and promises it has taken safeguards to make sure this doesn’t happen again.

Source: Mashable

Amazon Appstore for Android now available in about 200 countries

Amazon announced the availability of their Appstore has now reached millions in almost 200 countries. It allows customers to use Android devices, Kindle Fires, Macs, and PCs to buy games and apps directly from the Amazon Appstore.

Using the Amazon Appstore will give you access to features such as “Free App of the Day,” personalized recommendations, customer reviews, and 1-Click payments. Amazon assures that they test the apps and games beforehand to make sure they work properly. And for a limited time, watch for special discounts and promotions on popular games from brands like Ubisoft, Sega, and Rovio, including Angry Birds Space that’s free until June 3. You can start browsing or find out more information here. 

Breaking: Netflix outage affects customers on Christmas Eve

Amazon Web Services, which is the cloud service infrastructure that powers Netflix is has gone down and is affecting certain devices and making it impossible for them to access the popular streaming service in certain areas. Big bummer for families and individuals whose Christmas Eve tradition involves watching some sort of Christmas related movie or show. People can keep posted by following updates on the @NetflixHelps Twitter feed.

Update on Tuesday, December 25, 2012 at 1:08PM by Gadjo Cardenas Sevilla

Netflix has just issued a Tweet stating that services are now back to normal