This mashable.com post covers a variety of uses and applications for S3. You really can do a lot of different things with it and more applications roll out every day. Utilizing 3rd party file storage helps level performance spikes and potential scaling problems if you happen to have a popular web application.

Here in Santa Barbara, a company named Right Scale is building a dashboard and tools to help manage the variety of Amazon Web Services that exist. This is definitely needed. When we used S3 for the first time the first question that our client asked was “where is the GUI so I can see my files”.

It’s no surprise, then, that as those three aforementioned dinosaurs lumber into obscurity, Google keeps releasing features that are not only cutting-edge, but that are also, first and foremost, easy to use.

Example A: Google Maps just released Street View, a feature that will let you see a street level view of nearly any block in five major cities (San Francisco, Las Vegas, Denver, New York, and Miami). Not only that, you can pan 360 degrees around the street and “walk” down the street by clicking on navigation arrows. The system is Flash-based, and you will need version 9 to use Street View. I’m not sure what kind of practical application this will have (maybe to plan walking trips around cities or to see what’s around your hotel?), but it’s nice to see an application for which underlying technology existed years ago (remember Amazon A9′s visual yellow pages?) finally be put to use in a very cool way.

Example B: This may have come out a while back, but I just downloaded the Google Maps application for Windows Mobile 5.0 onto my T-Mobile MDA (HTC Wizard). For the longest time I’ve been lamenting the fact that it was impossible to use Google Maps on any mobile web browser (ordinarily I use Opera Mobile). The Google Maps application changes all that, allowing for use of Google Maps the same way you might on a regular desktop computer, with map scrolling, business searches, turn-by-turn directions, etc. If those features aren’t enough, you can also pair your mobile device with a bluetooth GPS device for GPS tracking. You basically have all the features of even the most advanced TomTom or Garmin GPS devices with a lifetime of free software updates. Thanks Google!

Collaboration
Companies are finding different ways to sell collaborative tools to niche markets. The emphasis is on tweaking online applications to match the subtle differences in company workflows. For example, Octopz provides online image markup tools for creative shops. ThinkFree is offering a complete online office suite coupled with collaboration features, such as Flickr, del.icio.us, and its own DocExchange community space. A third player in the collaboration race , clearspace offers a suite of features for businesses, ranging from forums and blogs to content syndication, and certainly understands the problems businesses are having with services that provide too much or too little. The word ‘collaboration’ is quickly becoming overplayed, which is why we’ve intentionally niched Intervals to small businesses in need of accountability through time and task tracking.

Frameworks
The most impressive aspect of the framework evolution is that businesses are providing applications that don’t require any knowledge of code. The applications build applications, kind of like robots that self produce. Bungee labs had the most impressive product, and may spawn a new practice of social engineered web services. The openfire platform looks like a great starting point for developing on an open-sourced java framework. The trend is removing barriers to application development, including source code. It’s all about churning out record numbers of applications in record time.

Mashups
The number of web applications and blogs is overwhelming. The mashup companies promise to aggregate all of this content, regardles of its format, into one service. Then that aggregated data is again syndicated into RSS feeds and APIs. A potentially endless cycle of content aggregation and regurgitation. Kapow technologies offers a server solution aimed at businesses. Topix is another impressive mashup focused on aggregating news.

Social Networking
The prize for the coolest and most popular booth goes to Cambrian House, which is fitting for a social networking company. Like the collaborative tools, companies are trying to find niche angles on the social networking front. Wether it’s tracking your stuff or meeting your neighbors, someone is building a social network to accomodate it.

I left the expo feeling better than when i’d arrived. There are a lot of ideas out there. And the ideas that are popular among the web development community are different than those that will succeed in the business world. This is what businesses are grappling with, including Pelago; how do we create a product that will be than just the latest-and-greatest and be useful to small business?

That is not a good thing. We finally decided to take ourselves more seriously and solved the problem by making ourselves a client. We had a rushed timeline and no budget, but we had to get it done. And we did. In a record four weeks.

The driving philosophy behind the new design is that Pelago is a place where lifestyle and hard work are equally important. We live in a city bordered by mountains and ocean but we often forget they are there. We want this new site to convey some of the playfulness that is Pelago.

It was important that our new design not get caught in the crossfire of photoshop filters that have exemplified most of the web 2.0 movement. Gradients, drop shadows, glows, reflections, and their ilk, have their small and overcrowded place. The Pelago site goes beyond the current fads prevalent in web design, because Pelago was churning out good design well before web 2.0 got started, and we’ll still be doing so when the trend dies out.