Update: Affected websites are slowly coming back online, click here for more details. The popularity of Amazon’s cheap, easily scalable hosting is showing its downside right now, with a number of popular websites and services throwing up errors or being down completely. Foursquare,Quora,Reddit,MobyandHootsuiteare among those affected by technical troubles on Amazon’s servers. The company’sstatus dashboardcurrently shows problems with the company’s Elastic Compute Cloud and Relational Database Service operations, based in North Virginia, with connectivity issues confirmed....

Online retail giant Amazon has become the latest company to move into the daily deals space with the launch ofAmazonLocal, an online marketplace that will allow its customers to buy vouchers or deals that can be redeemed against goods or services from local businesses in a customer’s local area. Currently, the AmazonLocal website appears to be available for Amazon customers residing in Boise, Idaho. The company says this is because of Boise State Unversity’s unique blue football field, which is affectionately referred to as “Smurf Turf”....

With it almost certain that Amazon would have to collect sales taxes from its customers in California or penalise affiliate retailers in the state, the online retailer has cut a deal with legislative leaders to postpone the collection of taxes from California-based customers for one year. The LA Times reportsthat as a result of the deal, Amazon will drop its motion to overturn the state’s new law that requires out-of-state retailers to collect taxes from customers....

Amazon has just announced a new mobile browser calledSilk, a browser “built for the era of cloud computing”. The browser is built into its new tablet, theAmazon Fire. The browser’s USP is that it features split-rendering that does the heavy lifting of rendering in the cloud. According to Amazon’s CEO Jeff Bezos: “Silk, as a “split browser,” will take out a lot of the delays in loading a website” Amazon Silk browser will predict your browsing habits and cache pages in advance....

Amazon is cancelling its Associates Program in California because of a newtax lawthat may be signed by CA Governor Jerry Brown. The law imposes the collection of taxes on sales to consumers in California by online retailers. This would include sales that any Amazon Associate referred to the retailer. Amazon says that it opposes the bill because it is ‘unconstitutional and counterproductive.’ Even though the bill has not yet been passed, Amazon is pulling the program preemptively in California....