Amazon Killed the Internet

Tonight, these sites and perhaps hundreds more died. At least temporarily.

Amazon's AWS servers went down effectively disabling Netflix, Tumblr, Instagram, Woot, Pinterest, Skype, Zynga and more

The Internet was ablaze (almost ironically) tonight when a massive storm on the East Coast caused a power outage that affected Amazon’s “Amazon Web Servicescloud server system. AWS is what power so many sites and services these days. It’s their reliability, scalability, cost and speed that have so many startups jumping to their system.

Tonight became Survivor - Startup Edition

Tonight became Survivor – Startup Edition

However, tonight highlights what happens when you rely on a single fail point. What’s the adage? “You’re only as strong as your weakest link.” Well tonight it was a single Amazon server location’s power outage that has many of the most popular sites offline. Amazingly, Twitter is not one of the sites shutdown.

 

Once the power is back on, or once Amazon starts shifting bandwidth and syncing servers, all of these sites will be back up and running. What’s disappointing is that even though Amazon has tons of servers all over the country, it only took one power outage to cripple their system.  Continue reading

Amazon.com Has Quite the Package…

too bad they don’t know how to use it! Heyo!

Amazon.com is known for many things. Great products at the best prices around, cutting-edge eReaders, stellar customer service and as of the last few years, environmentally friendly custom product packaging and shipping practices.

So imagine my surprise when UPS showed up at my house today with a big box from Amazon. A really big box. I thought to myself, what did I order? Four memory cards and a Samson Zoom H1 DAC, in two separate shipments.

Amazon Box Superfluously Overflowing

Too bad they don’t know how to use it!

All of the above products are known for their size. The secure digital card is the smallest professional quality memory card. They are about the size of a quarter. The Samson Zoom H1 is one of the smallest, high-end (yet very affordable) personal digital audio recorders on the market, about the size of a Snickers bar.

So, what did I forget that I had ordered from Amazon.com that needs a 10 x 10 x 21 inch box rated for 65lbs?

Transcend 4 x 8GB SDHD Cards

Four secure digital cards of course! Seriously Amazon.com? I guess this is why they ask for commentary on how they are doing with their efforts for effective, efficient, economical and environmentally friendly shipping practices.

Check out package two, did Amazon.com do a better job?  Continue reading