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in this section we'll be using amazon's simple storage service to demonstrate the rapid scalability
characteristic of the cloud.
amazon's simple storage service, or S3, allows you to upload files to amazons servers and
have them stored for as long or as short of a period as you would like.
for users of this service, there is a seemingly endless supply of storage available to them.
because of this, many web based applications have developed hooks into amazon S3 so that
users can store their files on S3 rather than on a server the particular web application
is running.
in the following video we'll be using a firefox add-on known as S3Fox.
the add-on creates an ftp-like experience for users of S3.
if you're interested in using this particular add-on you'll find links to its firefox add-on
page in the resources section of this article.
the first thing i need to do when using S3 is create a bucket.
a bucket is where all of your individual files will sit.
it will also help amazon create the web address so that you can get to your individual items
over the web.
i'm now going to go into my bucket, select files from my personal computer, and move
them over into my bucket.
you'll see that it only takes a few seconds for the files to upload.
once the files have finished uploading, i'm going to go to each file and change the permissions
on them.
there are a number of ways users can access the files.
you can require users to have a particular access key for the file, or in the case i'm
doing here, i can give everyone read access to the file.
once i've given everybody read access, i'm going to right click on the item and choose
copy url to clipboard.
i'm then going to open up a new tab and past the url into the address bar.
you'll see that i bring up my "using heroku" video that perhaps you've watched earlier
in this article.