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What feels like half the internet went down for a while today. Dozens of popular websites were or are still unreachable. The culprit was Fastly, a content delivery network many websites rely on to speed up load times, which has since posted an update explaining that it resolved the problem. It appears that the issues were limited to some locations only, as a few services remained reachable for many people or came back online sooner rather than later.
Amazon is throwing some developers a bone with a promotional credit on AWS for Alexa skills to help cover any incurred usage charges. Most of them use the free tier, but some do end up exceeding those limits and incur charges. Any that do can apply for a $100 promotional credit to help cover those costs.
Conference calls and video meetings have almost been synonymous with Skype for the longest time, but Amazon is looking at changing that. Chime, a new Amazon Web Services platform, wants to simplify communications between teams and individuals and cater to their different aspects in one app: video call, voice call, chat, and screen sharing.Chime is now available on Android, iOS, Mac, and Windows. According to Amazon, the service was built from the ground up with mobile in mind, so the apps work well on phones and let users seamlessly transition from and to their desktops. There are a few other advantages to Chime, like the lack of any long pins (meetings ring up like a phone call), quick options to get out of a meeting or let others know you're running late, a view of all participants and their current status, the possibility to mute one specific person's microphone if there's too much ambient noise around them, and the ability for anyone to share their screen without too much hassle.[EMBED_YT]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bj2I1prPVZM[/EMBED_YT]There's also a chatroom component to chime, with attachments to share important documents. Chime is free to try for 30 days, but after that, there are three plans to choose from. Basic Edition gives access to all of these options, minus screen sharing and with a 2 attendee limit, for free. Plus Edition is great for companies who want to manage users, but it costs $2.50/user/month and still keeps the 2 attendee limit. Pro Edition costs $15/user/month, but makes it possible to have meetings with up to 100 users and brings a host of add-ons. You can check the detailed plan structure and differences here.
Verizon's Galaxy S4 Will Be The First Device To Operate On The Carrier's AWS LTE Bands
Verizon managed to gobble up national licenses to a wide swath of the 700MHz Block C spectrum a few years back, and it is this slice of electromagnetism
Verizon managed to gobble up national licenses to a wide swath of the 700MHz Block C spectrum a few years back, and it is this slice of electromagnetism the carrier used to deploy its 4G LTE network. That's not Verizon's only plan of attack, though. It has also been putting together a second spectrum range running on AWS. Well, this space is almost ready, and the Galaxy S4 is going to be the first device to access it.
T-Mobile is the smallest national US carrier, and it was also the last to announce a cogent strategy for the deployment of 4G LTE. Yes, after years of insisting to no end that HSPA+ is 4G, the magenta carrier is rolling out LTE. As part of that move, new phones are going to be needed. The first device designed for T-Mobile's LTE is a revamped version of the popular Samsung Galaxy S III.
Amazon's AWS (Amazon Web Services) is a hugely important web service that is responsible for much of Amazon's functionality, and plenty of content you look at every day (remember that time Reddit, Flipboard, Netflix, and others simultaneously stuttered in part of the US?). Looking to keep AWS account holders connected to their services and abreast of service health while on the go, Amazon released its official AWS Console app to the Play Store today.
Editorial: The $3.6 Billion Spectrum Sale To Verizon That Was Just Approved Is Kind Of Really Shady
The US Department of Justice approved a sale of unused wireless spectrum to Verizon today, marking one of the largest spectrum sales to a single corporate
The US Department of Justice approved a sale of unused wireless spectrum to Verizon today, marking one of the largest spectrum sales to a single corporate entity in history. The unused portion of the AWS spectrum is owned by a number of cable companies (known collectively as "SpectrumCo") that bought it during the FCC AWS auction back in 2008.
All I could think after reading the announcement for Amazon's Kindle Fire tablet this morning was: "this is what we've been waiting for." Because it is. Amazon gets tablets, believe it or not. And despite the flagging success of the Amazon Appstore, the company has done what no other tablet manufacturer has even come remotely close to: matching access to Apple's curated content library (iTunes + App Store) at a price nearly everyone can afford.