Nerd Notes: Aviation High School launches with a rocket; Paul Allen’s private island for sale; and more

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Cheezburger has added to its line-up of weird and wacky sites. Introducing “Bronies.” Men and boys who love the animated series “My Little Pony.” Aviation High School – where the next generation of aerospace geeks will be trained –broke ground today on a new $43.5 million campus next to the Museum of Flight. The school, the first of… Read More…

Amazon ‘ElastiCache’ promises to boost web app performance

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Amazon Web Services this morning made a new pitch for running web apps on its cloud computing platform, introducing a feature called ElastiCache that promises to improve the performance of web apps such as social networks, games and media-sharing sites. In basic terms, the system uses server infrastructure more efficiently to help web apps keep key… Read More…

Weekend Humor: Hitler gets the bad news about HP ditching the TouchPad

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I am huge fan of Downfall, a classic war film that depicts Adolf Hitler’s last days in Berlin. But even better than the film are the number of parodies that have arisen around the Oscar-nominated film. And here’s one that you’ve got to see. The fictional Hitler (played by Bruno Ganz in the 2004 German… Read More…

Amazon Web Services suffers another outage: Company says issue now resolved

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Amazon.com’s EC2 service suffered another outage this evening, taking out several high-trafficked Web sites and adding another black eye to the reliability of online services. The outage, which Amazon first reported on its service health dashboard at 7:39 p.m., was resolved as of 8:03 p.m., according to the company. That’s a relatively short outage. But,… Read More…

Social innovators to compete for $150,000 in prize money

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Can you do well, by doing good? An upcoming event — hosted by Social Venture Partners — will highlight entrepreneurial ventures from both the non-profit and for-profit worlds. The goal is to feature products or services that attempt to solve a critical need of society. That can be anything from education to protecting the environment… Read More…

Amazon expands Start-Up Challenge worldwide

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Amazon Web Services today announced that it is expanding its annual Start-Up Challenge competition to include a total of 15 finalists from the regions of the Americas, Asia Pacific, Europe, the Middle East and Africa. “Within the AWS community, we’re seeing hotbeds of innovation emerge throughout the world,” said Adam Selipsky, Vice President, Amazon Web… Read More…

Tech Moves: ISB attracts an all-star fundraiser; Blue Nile taps a Starbucks vet; and more

The ISB's Sissy Walsh Bouchard

We’ve been tracking a number of key departures, appointments and new hires in the Pacific Northwest tech industry in recent days. Here are a few notable tech moves: Sissy Walsh Bouchard, a former fundraiser at the University of Washington, has been named vice president of development at the Institute for Systems Biology. In that role, the graduate… Read More…

Citrix buys Cloud.com, challenges Amazon and Microsoft’s Azure

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Citrix Systems announced today that it is acquiring Cloud.com, raising the competitive bar on other cloud infrastructure services such as those from Amazon Web Services and Microsoft’s Azure. Terms of the deal were not disclosed, but it does signal that the market for cloud computing services is starting to heat up. With its CloudStack product,… Read More…

Amazon eyes new Seattle tower for even more growth

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Amazon.com has been growing like crazy — adding 4,200 people worldwide in the first three months of this year alone. And despite a gigantic new headquarters campus, the Seattle company appears to need even more space to accommodate all that growth. We’re hearing from people in Seattle’s commercial real estate community that Amazon is on… Read More…

Looking to mine data, Amazon backs analytics startup ParAccel

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Amazon.com is investing an undisclosed amount of money into ParAccel, a Campbell, California maker of business analytics software that helps executives and analysts “predict the future.” “From “great leap” conceptual thinkers to “step-by-step” problem solvers, only ParAccel has the performance to both rocket through a chain of incremental questions and answer the intricately-modeled queries imagined… Read More…

Amazon alters prices on Cloud Drive amid digital music war

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It is being billed as a digital music war. Amazon.com today announced adjustments to the pricing plans of its Cloud Drive and Cloud Player services, a move which Peter Kafka at All Things D humorously notes is part of a “cloud war” directed at Apple’s yet-to-be-released online music service. So, what exactly did Amazon announce… Read More…

How Amazon helped groom Zynga for success, and where the alliance heads next

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Without Amazon.com, Zynga might not be where it is today. The social gaming powerhouse, which just last week filed to raise up to $1 billion through an initial public offering, has been able to grow its business at hyperspeed in part due to the flexibility in server capacity provided through Amazon Web Services. Just as… Read More…

Amazon Web Services cuts prices on Data Transfer, CloudFront

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Amazon Web Services suffered a massive outage back in April, one that caused all sorts of havoc developers. So, here’s one way that Amazon is giving back to those who use its platform. The company just announced that it will be lowering the price for its AWS Data Transfer service. Effective July 1, the company… Read More…

Report: Amazon’s upcoming tablet will feature free movie streaming

Amazon's next gadget may feature a color screen and free movie streaming

Amazon.com’s plans for a new color-screen tablet computer has got to be one of the worst kept secrets in the tech industry. And now here’s a little more fuel to toss on the fire. Boston research firm Detwiler Fenton says in a note today that Amazon’s new device is expected to come with a free video streaming service… Read More…

How Amazon’s 99 cent Lady Gaga promotion mirrors Walmart’s age-old strategy

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Amazon.com spent $3.2 million on last week’s Lady Gaga promotion, with Billboard magazine citing industry sources who said that the online retailer sold 440,000 digital copies of the album at the discounted price. Why did the typically cost-conscious company decide to take a bath on the album? Call it the Walmart approach to retailing. Just as… Read More…

Amazon touts 99 cent Lady Gaga album again, and says this time they’re ready

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Amazon.com’s first attempt at selling Lady Gaga’s new album for 99 cents didn’t go so well, with the promotion crashing the company’s servers. But now the Seattle online retailer is ready for a do-over. And this time, Amazon says it’s ready for the throngs of Lady Gaga fans. “Clearly customers are really excited for Lady… Read More…

Amazon sells Lady Gaga’s ‘Born this Way’ for 99 cents

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Lady Gaga released her new album today, and Amazon.com is using the much-anticipated second-full length release from the singer to bolster its own music offerings. Amazon is selling digital downloads of the 14-song album and digital booklet — yes, the entire album — for a mere 99 cents. Peter Kafka at All Things D notes… Read More…

Sony to PlayStation users: We’re back, we’re sorry, now please change your password

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Well, at least they got it back online before E3. After more than three weeks of downtime following an online attack, Sony this afternoon announced that it’s starting to restore its PlayStation Network and Qriocity services. Users logging back in will be prompted to change their passwords, just one of a series of new security… Read More…

Another black eye for Amazon? Hackers may have used AWS in crippling Sony attack

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Amazon Web Services has been taking some PR knocks in recent weeks. First, came the massive outage which sparked anger and frustration among many core customers. Now, word comes that Amazon Web Services was the platform that hackers used to disrupt Sony’s PlayStation Network and Qriocity service late last month. Bloomberg News reports — citing… Read More…

Microsoft apologizes for Online Services glitches, massive email delays

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Microsoft tonight detailed and apologized for a series of glitches that caused a huge email backlog in its cloud-based Microsoft Exchange Online subscription service — in some cases delaying messages for as long as three to nine hours. The company’s Business Productivity Online Services (BPOS) team, which runs the service, also acknowledged a separate problem… Read More…