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The news today from Amazon Web Services (AWS) which is now importing VMware virtual machines. The news reinforces how the cloud is far less about data centers and public clouds than about one extended network that allows for data to flow without distinction between the two.

According to a post on the AWS blog, VMware images can now be imported into AWS. That means a data center can essentially be imported into AWS.

The cloud is becoming far more than AWS or a data center built on VMware technology. It's now an infrastructure that supports a data fabric more than anything else. That data is like dust, blanketing the entire network, seeping everywhere.

This week, Amazon Web Services (AWS) made it possible for developers to build AWS applications on mobile devices, including the Apple iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch as well as on phones running Google's Android mobile operating system.

With the launch of two new SDKs (software development kits), code running on a mobile device can now make direct calls to Amazon's host of "cloud" services.

Earlier today, we reported the news that Amazon.com has ceased hosting Wikileaks. The site went down for a while, but is back up and hosted in Sweden.

Senator Joe Lieberman pushed for the move and encouraged businesses to boycott Amazon.com for hosting Wikileaks. This may have been what caused Amazon.com to drop the site.

The Netflix's video streaming service has nearly tripled in growth during the past year. To scale the service, Netflix has moved its API and other operations to Amazon Web Services (AWS) over the past several months.

In an interview today on the Cloudscaling blog, Netflix Cloud Architect Adrian Cockcroft discusses why Netflix moved to AWS. He gives advice for those that wish to follow in Netflix's path. In particular, he outlines why a public cloud infrastructure has certain advantages compared to building out a data center.

Cloudscaling CEO Randy Bias conducted the interview. Cloudscaling works with telecommunications companies, service providers, and enterprises to build Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) environments. The interview is part of a series Bias is doing with cloud computing innovators.

Amazon Web Services has released a new service called the The Cluster GPU Instance, a new kind of instance for the processing and rendering of the most complex actions such as those required in financial services and the sciences.

Almost every computer now has a GPU. It provides the capability to offload graphics from the central microprocessor and onto a specialized processor.

As Amazon's Jeff Bar points out points out, "the instruction set and memory architecture of a GPU are designed to handle the types of operations needed to display complex graphics at high speed. The instruction sets typically include instructions for manipulating points in 2D or 3D space and for performing advanced types of calculations."

Yelp has a few nifty features on its network that gives it that special sauce. It's what you see with most world-class social networks where features provide context and allow for discovery. It make it simple to use the service with such features as review highlights, autocomplete, spelling suggestion and top searches.

"People Who Viewed this Also Viewed..." is one of its popular features. It shows you photos by other people who also have similar viewing habits.

Take the King Burrito page on Yelp. It is a favorite Mexican spot in North Portland, Oregon. The food rocks. On Yelp, the sidebar shows what visitors to the King Burrito page are also viewing.

Amazon Web Services is launching a free service that will be available to new customers starting November 1.

The free service will give AWS customers a free Amazon EC2 Micro Instance for one year. It means that developers get a year to use Amazon S3, Amazon Elastic Block Store, Amazon Elastic Load Balancing and AWS data transfer.

AWS maintains that the free service allows new users to run anything they want in the cloud. That means the ability to launch new applications or test existing applications.

Applications are open now for Amazon Web Service's Startup Challenge. This is the fourth year that AWS has run the competition, designed to help recognize startups that are using (or planning to use) any of the paid Amazon Web Services, including Amazon EC2, Amazon S3, or Amazon Mechanical Turk. Prizes include up to $100,000 in cash and credits.

Startups that have yet to generate more than $10 million USD in gross annual revenue or outside funding are eligible to enter. Startups must be located in one of the 22 eligble countries across America, Asia, and Europe. And AWS will recognize 5 regional semi-finalists from each of the 3 regions, 6 finalists, and then select one global grand prize winner.

Google TV is about to launch. It's playing a part in the way people think about how the Internet and traditional media meet to form an entertainment experience that is new but not relegated to a traditional television set or a personal computer.

Right now, television shows or movies can be converted to be seen online but it requires a digital device to view the programming. The television set can support digital media but it often lacks a browser. That's what Google is banking on will make the difference. A browser, search and content that can be seen on a television set as easily as on a digital device.

Eucalyptus Systems, a Santa Barbara based startup, announced today it has closed a $20 million round of funding. Led by new investor New Enterprise Associates (NEA) with participation from current investors Benchmark Capital and BV Capital, this is the second round of funding for the open source private cloud software provider, bringing its total capital raised to date to $25.5 million.