SCO0084 - Amazon S3, Jungle Disk, S3 Browser & xTorrent!

Phew! What a show! This week I've managed to pack in a Web service and three applications together with a summary of Bittorent!

All about online storage this week, as I take a look at the Amazon Simple Storage Service or S3 for short. This is a unique online storage service available to developers and end users alike with some pretty neat unique features. How does no start up costs, no minimum monthly fees and unlimited storage sound? It's a strictly pay as you go service which offers everyone a low cost option of enterprise class storage facilities. As an introduction, I cover signing up for an Amazon Web services account and getting access to an Amazon S3 account. If you want to check out 1Passwd as used in this weeks show, there is a special discount available to ScreenCastsOnline viewers which has just been extended until the end of February 2007. See this link

To use the Amazon S3 service you need some client tools and this weeks show looks at two of the most popular:

Jungle Disk - A free Mac, Windows and Linux client application that allows you to access your Amazon S3 account directly from your desktop. Intended for personal file storage, Jungle Disk allows you to mount your Amazon S3 storage directly into the finder just like iDisk. It also contains a built in backup tool to allow you to backup your important files directly to Amazon S3 either manually or using an automated schedule. This weeks show takes you through installation, configuration, mounting your online storage in the finder, using Jungle Disk to back up your important files and accessing your S3 usage account.

S3 Browser - This free, open source application also allows access to your Amazon S3 account and gives you access level controls to make some or all of your data available on the web directly from Amazon S3. The show covers installation, configuration and uploading and downloading files from your Amazon S3 account.

One of the super cool features of an Amazon S3 account is that it supports Bitorrent. This weeks show explains exactly what Bitorrrent is and describes the benefits of making your files available via Bitorrent technology. If that wasn't enough, I demonstrate just how easy it is to create a "torrent" file from your Amazon S3 hosted files and include a real time demo of Bitorrent in action.

xTorrent -This demo involves using a great new Bitorrent client called xTorrent. Checkout the show to see a Bitorrent transfer in action.

If you'd like to try downloading the demo.mov file mentioned in the show, here's the torrent file - demo.mov.torrent. Just download this to your computer (right or CTRL click on the link and save it to your computer) and open the file with xTorrent or any other Bitorrent client. NB - If you do download this torrent, please keep it seeded for as long as you can! Thanks - Don

The full 33 minute show is only available to ScreenCastsOnline Extra! members and details of how you can become a member and get immediate access to this show in High Definition is available here. For a single low cost membership fee you get access to the next six months worth of weekly shows in HD PLUS access to the last 80 screencasts including the 10 previous Extra only shows.

The free show this week will contain edited highlights of the full show but you'll need to be a Extra! member to get the full show.

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