I find myself using Amazon S3 for storage more and more these days. Â Yes I have a Dropbox account, and a Box account (and probably a Copy account too). Â There are times that I need a little more space then I have available in Dropbox and among other things I have been using Amazon S3 to give my self a little extra space as needed.
What is Amazon S3 you ask this is a quick explanation
Here are some tools I have found useful working with my files in S3
Android: S3Anywhere Free and Pro versions available
Windows: Cloudberry Explorer for Amazon S3Â Â Free and Pro versions available so far I have been using the free one and it is meeting my needs
iOS: AirFile Free and Pro versions available.  This one is interesting as it allows me to move files from S3 to Dropbox or the other way right from my iPad (it supports other Cloud storage services as well)
Are you using Amazon S3? If you have any good tools leave a comment.
Amazon launched their App Store for Android this morning (I hope I don’t get sued for calling it an App Store), curious as ever I decided to take a look. First I searched in the Android Market, but found nothing new from Amazon there, so I went back to Amazon and clicked “Get App†which gave me instructions to install the App Store:
The instructions then go on to provide download and installation instructions for the Amazon AppStore.
So lets examine, first you have find and select the “Unknown Sources†box to allow installation of an app that is not in the Android Market. Of course if you are on AT&T they don’t support this setting, so you are out of luck (I guess it really sucks to be an Angry Birds fan with an ATT Android device).
Once installed, you log in with your Amazon account, which makes purchasing apps easy. The application itself is easy to use, and search, I would say better than the Android Market app which though improved still needs some work.
I just wonder what the long term plan is for the Amazon App Store, I think a lot of people will be turned off with the install process, and I suspect that Google will not allow the app in the Android Market, since an App that downloads other Apps violates the terms of use. Google might want to reconsider, given the recent problems with Apps that contained malware on Android, giving Android owners a trusted source like Amazon to download apps from might actually help grow the platform, not hurt it. In it’s current state though I think many people won’t even install it, and some can’t even if they want to, does not sound like a promising launch to me.
For anyone wondering, no I still have not downloaded Angry Birds, and don’t plan on it, even if Amazon is giving it away today.
