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Amazon.com's cloud-computing arm has added new features to help users monitor cloud resources, adjust capacity, and balance traffic loads.

In an announcement Monday, Amazon Web Services unveiled a public beta of the three new features: the CloudWatch monitoring service, Auto Scaling for on-demand capacity adjustments, and Elastic Load Balancing for redistributing traffic.

The new features are available immediately to users in the U.S., according to a company blog, with availability in Europe set to follow in the next few months.

"You can use these services to make your...applications perform better without sacrificing application control, freedom … Read more

Updated at 12:45 p.m. PDT: adding AMD statement.

The question of whether Intel engages in abusive market behavior has been answered by the European Commission. Or has it?

To recap, the EC said:

"Intel limited consumer choice and stifled innovation by preventing innovative products for which there was a consumer demand from reaching end customers."

And: "Intel gave wholly or partially hidden rebates to computer manufacturers on condition that they bought all, or almost all, their x86 central processing units (CPUs) from Intel. Intel also made direct payments to a major retailer on condition it … Read more

Advanced Micro Devices is flying the European Union flag on its home page. A little gloating going on?

And if the image doesn't convey the message, the caption does: "European Commission finds Intel guilty of breaking antitrust laws, harming consumers."

That's not all. AMD's Break Free page is a treasure trove of information on the EU case and Intel's alleged bad behavior. "Read the European Commission's Press Release Detailing its Ruling Against Intel" and "Read the European Commission's Questions and Answers Detailing its Ruling Against Intel"--are a … Read more

Updated on May 14 at 2:40 p.m. PDT with additional comments from AMD.

The chip choices that Dell has made for its business PC line provide some insight into the challenges facing Advanced Micro Devices in the wake of the European Union ruling Wednesday against Intel.

"At this point in time we have one AMD desktop but no AMD notebooks," Darrel Ward, director of product management for Dell's business client product group, said in a phone interview Wednesday on a topic unrelated to the EU case. "If you talk to us a year from … Read more

In a conference call this morning, Intel CEO Paul Otellini responded aggressively to the allegations attached to the $1.45 billion fine levied by the European Union.

The fine was levied because EU regulators determined that Intel had violated antitrust legislation and engaged in anticompetitive practices to exclude competitors from the market for x86 (Intel-compatible) processors, the Commission said in a statement Wednesday.

Otellini began with an opening statement, citing the Commission's allegations of the chipmaker "granting conditional rebates, where the conditions just weren't just volume-based but allegations about exclusive dealings or in one case exclusivity on retail shelves."

"Intel strongly disagrees with this decision. We do not have those kinds of conditions in our contracts. Our contracts are straightforward. They're consistent worldwide and they're volume-based: the more you buy, the less you pay," he said.

Otellini said Intel will appeal the decision. "We intend to appeal this decision to the (EU) Court of First Instance. We believe a significant amount of evidence was either ignored or disregarded or both by the case team that would refute the allegations," he said, adding: "We intend to abide by whatever was written in the decision as we go through the appeal process."

Responding to a question about the evidence that Intel showed to the EU, Otellini said that OEMs (that is, PC and system suppliers) have stated they were no exclusive deals. "There are a number of documents that refute what was claimed here. In some cases, OEMs made statements that they were not exclusive deals and they were not under conditional terms and those documents were not allowed either into the case file or used properly by the case team in making a determination," he said.

He continued: "The process is originating from a single complainant--AMD. None of the customers complained as part of it or joined the complaint," Otellini said. "I don't see any consumer or competitor harm happening here." … Read more

A number of reports say the European Commission will levy a large fine on Intel this week for violating antitrust rules.

The decision to fine the world's largest chipmaker will be handed down on Wednesday, according to Reuters. This action has been expected.

The Commission, part of the European Union, will also order Intel to change the way it provides rebates to computer makers, according to Reuters. On Friday, Commission officials discussed the Intel fine with "national competition authorities," Reuters said.

Intel's only real competition in the worldwide PC processor market is Advanced Micro Devices, which … Read more

This was originally posted at ZDNet's Between the Lines.

A correction has been made to this story. See details below.

Amazon on Thursday announced a new cloud computing service that uses Hadoop, a free software framework, to crunch tons of data.

The service, called Amazon Elastic MapReduce, is designed for businesses, researchers and analysts trying to conduct data intensive number crunching (statement). Hadoop, which is used by companies like Yahoo, is trying to be pushed into the enterprise data center by start-ups like Cloudera.

Correction, 7:15 a.m. PDT: This story initially miscast Google's connection to Hadoop. … Read more

Note: This story was corrected to fix a typo in the company name after it initially published.

The Liv Inizio, an all-electric sports car with specs similar to the Tesla Roadster, is making its debut at the 2009 New York auto show. This new electric car is made by EV Innovations, formerly called Hybrid Technologies, which showed off the Liv Wise, a Toyota Yaris converted to an electric power train, at last year's New York auto show.

EV Innovations claims a 200-mile range for the Liv Inizio and a 0 to 60 mph acceleration time of 5 seconds. Top … Read more

This was originally published at ZDNet's Between the Lines.

Amazon has tweaked its Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) pricing model to be more enterprise-friendly. The move is significant enough to sway IT executives to adopt more of Amazon's Web Services-especially when they have tight budgets.

Amazon on Thursday announced reserved pricing for its EC2 instances. Simply put, customers can reserve instances for one-year and three-year terms as if they owned the hardware. Enterprises can guarantee they have an EC2 instance for computing power they know they'll use and buy on the spot market to account for spikes at … Read more