PutPlace.com is launching real soon now and of course like everybody else on the planet we rolled our own user account management (UAM) system (you know, registration, login, logout, forgot password, change username etc. etc.). Needless to say we used a Framework (in our case Django) but why do I need to reinvent this wheel?

We get our storage from Amazon (and soon our Grid). Our O/S is a flavour of Linux,  our Database is Postgres, we use surveymonkey for surveys and mailchimp (what is it with the simian metaphor?) for mail campaigns, why can’t I pay somebody on a per user basis to manage my user accounts?

What would this service look like? Well pretty much like a credit card payment interface looks like on the web today but with the following features.

•  a bunch of REST endpoints for all the standard UAM functions
  • Register
  • Login
  • Logout
  • Enable User
  • Disable User
  • Set Session Timeout
  • etc.
• Support for session management
• Standard reporting (who, when, from where, how long)
• Support for OpenID
• Java, Python, Ruby and .NET APIs (Rails and Django integration for extra points)
• Global deployment with appropriate SLAs
• Deployment pages with a proper branding kit so people can get up and running quickly
• Ability to extract all my users in .csv format or via an API

I would pay for this service in chunks of hundreds to 1000s of users with all the usual discounting policy for prepayment or purchasing in bulk and the first 50 users are free.

One more pain point on the road to release removed.

I don’t want a free one with strings attached (e.g. LiveID) and I don’t want some non-profit consortium (e.g. the Liberty Alliance). I want to pay  for it and own my data.

Basically a Web 2.0 oriented OnDemand business.

I see Microsoft has taken the gloves off in the Open Source/Closed Source battle. Surprise, Surprise they found the infringing patents in the three areas where Microsoft makes most of its revenue, operating systems, Office and the Windows user interface.

But he does break down the total number allegedly violated – 235 – into categories. He says that the Linux kernel – the deepest layer of the free operating system, which interacts most directly with the computer hardware – violates 42 Microsoft patents. The Linux graphical user interfaces – essentially, the way design elements like menus and toolbars are set up – run afoul of another 65, he claims. The Open Office suite of programs, which is analogous to Microsoft Office, infringes 45 more. E-mail programs infringe 15, while other assorted FOSS programs allegedly transgress 68.

Watching this from the sidelines is gonna be a hoot.

Addendum: Of course the real reason for this may to head off the new version of the GPL at the pass.

We got crushed, 5 points in total. John Waters, hang your head in shame 🙂

Serbia won.

Microsoft’s partner site crashes IE 7

Originally uploaded by Joe Drumgoole.

I’ve crashed IE 7 three times in a row now. Does anybody know what telephone syntax the Microsoft partner program will accept?

But I just discovered today if you select text on the page before tagging with the new Del.icio.us firefox plugin, it adds the selected text as the note field.

Very Nice.

Review of Loudervoice

Rated as 4/5 on May 03 2007 by Joe Drumgoole

Just registered with http://loudervoice.com. Nice slick simple registration. Automatically recognised my blog and allowed me to enter login details. Minutes later here I am writing a review.

Minor niggle, the rest of world allows spaces as a tag separator. Why be different?

No help or help files required. Well done Conor, I like it!

LouderVoice Review Tags: argolon, copacetic, loudervoice, startups

Rate this review at LouderVoice

Excellent collection of presentations on web scaling via Simon.

Sean suggests that politicians stick there stump speeches and anything else they think is relevant on mysay.com.

I like it!

Did a quick slot this morning with Ben Gavin, the WLR business presenter. I think it airs tonight on WLR (95.1/97.5 FM).

Its actually on tomorrow night  (2-May-2007) at 7.00pm. Doh! 

Got this note from Amazon Today –

This is a note to inform you about some changes we’re making to our pricing, effective June 1, 2007.

With Amazon S3 recently celebrating its one year birthday, we took an in-depth look at how developers were using the service, and explored whether there were opportunities to further lower costs for our customers. The primary area our customers had asked us to investigate was whether we could charge less for bandwidth.

There are two primary costs associated with uploading and downloading files: the cost of the bandwidth itself, and the fixed cost of processing a request. Consistent with our cost-following pricing philosophy, we determined that the best solution for our customers, overall, is to equitably charge for the resources being used – and therefore disaggregate request costs from bandwidth costs.

Making this change will allow us to offer lower bandwidth rates for all of our customers. In addition, we’re implementing volume pricing for bandwidth, so that as our customers’ businesses grow and help us achieve further economies of scale, they benefit by receiving even lower bandwidth rates. Finally, this means that we will be introducing a small request-based charge for each time a request is made to the service. Below are the details of the new pricing plan (also available on the Amazon S3 detail page):

Current bandwidth price (through May 31, 2007)
€0.15 ($0.20) / GB – uploaded
€0.15 ($0.20) / GB – downloaded

New bandwidth price (effective June 1, 2007)
€0.07 ($0.10) per GB – all data uploaded

€0.13 ($0.18) per GB – first 10 TB / month data downloaded
€0.12 ($0.16) per GB – next 40 TB / month data downloaded
€0.10 ($0.13) per GB – data downloaded / month over 50 TB
Data transferred between Amazon S3 and Amazon EC2 will remain free of charge

New request-based price (effective June 1, 2007)
€0.00 ($0.01) per 1,000 PUT or LIST requests
€0.00 ($0.01) per 10,000 GET and all other requests*
* No charge for delete requests

Storage will continue to be charged at €0.11 ($0.15) / GB-month used.

The end result is an overall price reduction for the vast majority of our customers. If this new pricing had been applied to customers’ March 2007 usage, 75% of Amazon S3 customers would have seen their bill decrease, while an additional 11% would have seen an increase of less than 10%. Only 14% of customers would have experienced an increase of greater than 10%.

We don’t anticipate making further structural changes to Amazon S3 pricing in the future, but we will continue to look for ways to drive down costs and pass the savings on to you.

Sincerely,
The Amazon Web Services Team

P.S. Please note that the reduced bandwidth rates shown above will also take effect for Amazon EC2 and Amazon SQS. The bandwidth tier in which you will be charged each month will be calculated based on your use of each of these services separately, and could therefore vary across services.