I've noticed the same thing, but deleteing the chache did seem to work. Sadly, I didn't think to look at the corrupt cache to see what the problem was, if it was just a AWS error, or on the MTAmazon side, or even just a connectivity issue.

I've written a simpler Amazon plugin for WordPress (WP-Amazon) and have been meaning to port it over to MT. It takes a much simpler approach to getting content from Amazon -- without all of the caching and tags to add to your templates. Someday, I'll port it over... or if anyone's got time and interest, go ahead and do it.

I've had similar problems. Deleting the cache works ... but only temporarily. I posted about this on the MT Forums - and they said Amazon had made some changes to the API that was causing problems.

Grrrrr. As a temporary solution - I just removed the MTAmazon tags (because MT hangs on those tags and won't rebuild the rest of the page) - and for images I'm using -

img src="http://images.amazon.com/images/P/[$MTEntryExcerpt$].01._PE30_SCMZZZZZZZ_.jpg" /

for links I'm using -
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/[$MTEntryExcerpt$]/silverberry20/ref=nosim/

I realize this doesn't solve the MTAmazon problem -- but it at least allows me to continue posting with my ASIN numbers, my templates all rebuild, and everything looks ok. This works for me until MTAmazon is fixed -- or Amazon fixes their API to work correctly again.

Another option is to change the Amazon user id, but all that really does is change the names of the cache files. If there was something wrong with the filenames the cache was trying to use, this might fix it.

MTAmazon has never worked for me... people seem to get it "working" but not for very long. Personally I think it's very poorly coded, and the support for it isn't very in-depth. Most plug-ins for Movable Type are pretty supportless.

The post "Wisdom of Crowds" is no longer working. Here were my comments for that post:

This sounds like a revealing read. A step away from the tomes on "independent leadership," leadership by group is the direct democracy that some yearn for. Yet others detest.

I've wondered for some time now on the deterioration of groups. In other words, we know what brings people together...a common goal or interest. There is a shared interest. And in leading a business, there is shared capital, stakes, and so forth.

But what when the group breaks down and ceases to exist? Are there any trends that indicate why things don't continue. On the surface, we could point to the opposite of formation...disagreement. But I haven't found any research that delves into why groups breakdown and cease to operate. U.S. Steel and Standard Oil faced trustbusters in the early 20th century, thus law compelled these companies to cease and desist. The Beatles, however, and an internal squabble followed by tragic death. But is there a common thread here? Is there any commonality in demise?

Perhaps Surowiecki will look at this topic in a future book: not leadership by committee, but, dare I say it, "Death by committee?"

fwiw, mefi had a nice post on the wisdom of crowds awhile back :D

cheers!

What is research, but a blind date with knowledge.

The error I've been getting most often is "503 Service Temporarily Unavail" which seems to suggest that the problem is on Amazon's side. Clearing the cache doesn't help that one.

Normally I don't do tech support by reading people's comments, but I happened to notice this.

Find the lines that say...

return $ctx->error("Error reading XML content: $@.")
if ($@);

And change them to...

return ""
if ($@);

The complete explanation is at http://sourceforge.net/mailarchive/forum.php?thread_id=3463112&forum_id=10675

I'm working on some changes to the plugin that will solve this problem and make it a bit more robust.

Sorry, those lines are in MTAmazon.pm. Forgot to include that...

Matt Kelley said:
MTAmazon has never worked for me... people seem to get it "working" but not for very long. Personally I think it's very poorly coded, and the support for it isn't very in-depth. Most plug-ins for Movable Type are pretty supportless.

I'm sorry you feel that way. You're welcome to ask for your money back for all those plugins.

The problems with MTAmazon are all related to changes made to the way the AWS API works. They changed a significant number of things in the way the back end works.

MTAmazon offers a supoort mailing list for people to use in requesting help. Did you try asking for support on this or any other plugin before charging that it is "supportless"?

Supporting all the plugins and other free tools I've written over the years takes 10-15 hours each week. And oddly enough I have other things to do outside of providing free support for free stuff.

If you think that MTAmazon is poorly coded, then fix it. That's the beauty of open source. You can make any changes you want. I'd disagree that it's poorly coded, but only because there's over a hundred hours of programming time invested in its creation. I'd also imagine that by making this charge, you must be a Perl coder. But looking over your site, I see that's not the case, so your charge is baseless.