Amazon Web Services (AWS) is launching Wednesday the Amazon Web Services Start-Up Challenge, a contest in which start-up ventures leveraging Amazon's in-the-cloud services compete based on originality and promise. Contestants also will be evaluated on the degree to which the business leverages pay-as-you-go technology solutions offered by AWS. The contest is for entrepreneurs and software developers, with the wi Amazon Web Services (AWS) is launching Wednesday the Amazon Web Services Start-Up Challenge, a contest in which start-up ventures leveraging Amazon’s in-the-cloud services compete based on originality and promise.Contestants also will be evaluated on the degree to which the business leverages pay-as-you-go technology solutions offered by AWS. The contest is for entrepreneurs and software developers, with the winner to receive $50,000 in cash, $50,000 in AWS credits, mentoring sessions and an investment offer from Amazon.com. Four second-place winners will receive $5,000 in AWS credits.AWS provides businesses access to services based on Amazon technology infrastructure, including Amazon Simple Storage Service and Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud, which enable businesses to scale to the level of major Internet players without having to provide their own infrastructure, AWS said. Web services technology such as SOAP is used. “We provide a suite of infrastructure services like storage in the cloud and compute capacity in the cloud enabling developers and startups to build their businesses without worrying about a lot of the back-end infrastructure,” said Adam Selipsky, vice president of product development and developer relations at AWS. More about the contest can be found on this Web page. Entries are due by October 28, with winners to be announced in December. Amazon also is producing its Startup Project, which is a traveling seminar to bring hundreds of startups and venture capitalists together to hear about what is happening at AWS, Selipsky said. Participants in the Startup Project have included companies such as Blingee, which boosts online presence for MySpace users. Another AWS customer has been SmugMug, a photo-sharing and photo management site. Technology Industry