In Formation

I read a lot. Maybe you do, too. You're certainly reading right now. In this weather I don't really like to be out driving around any more than I must. Combine those two and you might see why I like Amazon - buy books and get them in the mail - and I have to check my mail anyway.

But did you know that Amazon has some really cool features that software people like, beyond books? For a ridiculously small fee you can do things like run virtual machines on their servers, or store files there as well. One thing that they've recently started is what's known as a "content delivery network". Amazon has a lot of servers, all over the world. They can detect which of their server farms can get files to you the fastest (which is usually the one physically closest to you, but doesn't have to be), and then they can send you files from those servers.

Well, it turns out that if you are using Amazon to store files, it's pretty easy to set up to have them deliver files using this network, too. The process should be basically invisible to the consumer, if it's done right.

It can take some of the load off of your servers, and speed up pages for people using your site. It can only do static content - pictures, style sheets, html that doesn't change - but a lot of those are large files that eat up bandwidth.

In fact, we're doing this right now, starting today.