I've been looking for a service just like this. Thanks!

Or just use devise. Backbone will work just fine with it.

Does Devise handle XHR and JSON (requests/responses) out of the box?

Yes.

1.3.1

*sessions/new and registrations/new also respond to xml and json now

how about le rabot? a small town in france

http://www.google.com/search?&hl=en&q=le+rabot+time

just need a way to find out local time, that's all

My first reaction was wtf but after playing with it for a minute I must say it's fun.

HaHaHa. I think this is quite funny: "Kayak across the Pacific Ocean." I wonder if this is humor from google...

it's down right now... i guess they weren't expecting anybody to test it out

It's back up, I kind of the like the UI with more data displayed on the page

oh Jesus, how is this simplified? you just introduced a bunch of new functionality. now instead of downloading attachments you need to browse through modules to find them? what happens if the sender is not a trusted contact? it should be simplified not more complicated (which is not what happens if you add IM to it). if your targeted user thinks that FF is too complicated then good luck finding the IM box in your new simplified browser!

Yes! We have the production server on EC2 and the development one runs on a virtual server from Spry. From our load tests EC2 can handle about 6 times more site usage.

An nou fericit! (Romanian)

Man, good idea... unfortunately I didn't even think about personal use for S3 and I already signed up for an online backup service. I kept thinking that an online backup system would work great with S3 but not for a second I thought of using it for myself :(

There are some tools available for doing backups directly to S3; but they all have limitations because of S3's rather weak API. In addition, the pricing structure of S3 (bandwidth + storage + a significant per-request fee) means that certain workarounds (e.g., adding indirection) end up being absurdly expensive.

S3 can be an excellent backing store for an online backup service, but only if there's some intelligence sitting in between client systems and S3.