If you are not yet using Amazon’s latest service, prepare to be enlightened! I learned how to use the S3 Services from a great guide called How To Use Amazon.com To Store Your Multimedia Files. Yes, I know it’s a long title, but an excellent guide! The official description states “Amazon S3 provides a simple web services interface that can be used to store and retrieve any amount of data, at any time, from anywhere on the web. It gives any developer access to the same highly scalable, reliable, fast, inexpensive data storage infrastructure that Amazon uses to run its own global network of web sites. The service aims to maximize benefits of scale and to pass those benefits on to developers.” Why does this matter to you? Their data storage and transfer prices are outrageously cheap! Even if you have a small site, it is well worth offloading some of your media such as pictures, slideshows, and most importantly video to the Amazon S3 servers. Heck, I host some sites on a dedicated server, and even I still use the Amazon S3 services for a lot of media files. Imagine what happens if you run a small site with some videos or big graphics, and suddenly you get to the front page of Digg….will your website handle the traffic? Will you be able to afford the bandwidth charges from your hosting provider (assuming they don’t shut you down first…)? The prices are really amazing, and you can see the pricing structure at the official Amazon S3 Website.