Make it a double shot, extra tall, no foam, room for milk, vanilla- flavored dobre, then add a dollop of hand-picked premium news, entertainment and lifestyle content. Top it off with a sprinkling of local insights and events. You’re beginning to get a taste of the new Starbucks Digital Network, in partnership with the undercaffeinated Yahoo!
Powered by free Wi-Fi and served for for screens both vente’ and small, customers with Wi-Fi enabled laptops, tablets or smartphones can visit the network while in line or while enjoying their favorite beverage in the café.
The first in-store network of its kind, the digital network’s hand-picked premium content spans six channels: News, Entertainment, Wellness, Business & Careers, My Neighborhood and Starbucks. Newly signed content providers include Bookish Reading Club, Foursquare, GOOD, LinkedIn, New Word City and The Weather Channel.
News channel customers have free access to New York Times Reader 2.0, WSJ.com and USA TODAY eEdition providing access to news as it hits around clock. The My Neighborhood channel, brings Foursquare to a line-up that also features DonorsChoose.org, Patch and Zagat. As the most checked in retailer on Foursquare with 2.25 million check-ins, Starbucks brings Foursquare to the digital network and will offer web-based check-ins in every store. You can see each store’s mayor along with other Foursquare users who have recently checked in. [24×7]
Amazon Web Services Offers Free Cloud Access for a Year
Amazon.com just revealed a free usage tier for its Amazon Web Services (AWS). The announcement was just a footnote to its Q3 2010 earnings call, but it has broad implications for Amazon and the future of the Internet.
Starting November 1, new AWS users will be able to take advantage of the following services for a year for free:
- “750 hours of Amazon EC2 Linux Micro Instance usage (613 MB of memory and 32-bit and 64-bit platform support) – enough hours to run continuously each month”
- “750 hours of an Elastic Load Balancer plus 15 GB data processing”
- “10 GB of Amazon Elastic Block Storage, plus 1 million I/Os, 1 GB of snapshot storage, 10,000 snapshot Get Requests and 1,000 snapshot Put Requests”
- “5 GB of Amazon S3 storage, 20,000 Get Requests, and 2,000 Put Requests”
- “30 GB per of internet data transfer (15 GB of data transfer “in” and 15 GB of data transfer “out” across all services except Amazon CloudFront)”
- “25 Amazon SimpleDB Machine Hours and 1 GB of Storage”
- “100,000 Requests of Amazon Simple Queue Service”
- “100,000 Requests, 100,000 HTTP notifications and 1,000 email notifications for Amazon Simple Notification Service”
Microsoft’s Games for Windows to Launch with 100 Games, New MS Bell Square Store Not So Many.
With virtually unlimited shelf space in cyberspace, Microsoft will ready over 100 titles from various game makers for the launch of its Games for Windows Marketplace on November 15. The titles include many of the biggest hits from Microsoft Game Studios, including “Fable: The Lost Chapters,” “Flight Simulator,” “Gears of War,” “Halo” and “Age of Empires Online.” Other big titles in stock include “Grand Theft Auto III,” and “Max Payne” from Rockstar Games.
Anyone with a Windows Live ID, including Windows Live, Xbox Live, Games for Windows — Live or Zune account, can login to the new Games for Windows Marketplace. Microsoft Points can also be used at the store.
Three days later, the ribbon cutting of the company’s brick and mortar store in Bellevue will take place. Just in time for holiday shoppers but with more limited shelf space.
To kick off the opening of the event, Microsoft is planning to donate up to $1,000,000 in grants to Help First Robotics, a group that creates and organizes robotics competitions for K-12 students, and Help Study Zone, a King County Library System program where students can receive tutoring and computer training. [24×7]
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