Link via the CrowdVine blog

This happened about a month ago, but somehow I missed it. Adrian posted some info about his (now dead) Chicago Crime website:

It’s with mixed feelings that I announce the end of one of my projects, chicagocrime.org. This site has been serving Chicago residents since May 2005. I hope you’ll indulge me in a brief retrospective.

The site used EC2 which automatically makes it leet in my eyes. Worth reading.

Adrian Holovaty has a basic Amazon S3 uploader script written in Python. Wow that looks simple.

Recorded at Ignite Seattle 4.

Quoth Jeremy:

In an effort to replace my home backup server with Amazon’s S3, I’ve been collecting a list of Amazon S3 compatible backup tools to look at. Here’s what I’ve discovered, followed by my requirements.

His List of Amazon S3 Backup Tools is a great place to start for those who are new to Amazon S3.

Auren Hoffman discusses James Currier’s idea of the inherent Black Hat Tax built into most web-based businesses.

Interesting concept.

Christian Flickinger talks about setting your Facebook status via the API:

Welll, it appears that one month after Facebook asked me, and others, to remove my little cURL ‘hack’ for updating your Facebook Status, Facebook has finally implemented a users.setStatus() method in their API.

Interesting.

Colin Devroe has an interesting post about how Viddler and Ma.gnolia handle abuse.

Lon sent me a link (via Pownce, natch) to an interview with Leah Culver about The Making of Pownce. She had nothing but good things to say about Django.

So I signed up for Pownce tonight thanks to an invite from Lon. Unlike the early days of Twitter, the site actually works… which may or may not be related to the fact that it is rumored to run on Django.

Update: Lon discusses the fractured world of social networking.

More: Quoth Nate: “A modern web application without a public API is useless.” Although I think they are working on that.