This is a little embarrassing to admit, but after codepad and this post, I think I'm developing a man-crush on Steven Hazel.

EC2 definitely proves itself to be the bestest way of doing what this guy is doing. I wish I had something cool to do with EC2, but alas, I only study math as a graduate student. Maybe i'll get some sweet computational stuff I'll need doing, and farm it out to EC2.

This is cool, but how much pays for EC2 and how monitze his site?

Maybe it's just supposed to be (really) cool. Certainly it recommends sah extremely well if he's looking for work or, say, funding.

EC2 is kinda cool, BUT

* No static IPs - wtf? So email meant for my email server might later end up at someone elses machine :/

* No reverse DNS - So my machines look horrible.

Once they fix those 2 things I'd try it again.

EC2 wasn't really designed to be used for public-facing services that require static IP addresses or reverse DNS. Developers are shoehorning public-facing apps on to EC2 instances anyway, and it's great that EC2 provides the flexibility to allow that... but that never was its intended goal.

If you're worried about incoming mail, why not just use a service designed for it, like fastmail.fm?