http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/03/18/amazon-shutters-unpopular-alexa-site-thumbnail-service/
Sucks. I had literally just built a site that was using the Amazon site thumbnail generator. Techcrunch lists a couple of replacements, but the one that i’ve found that works the best is PageGlimpse.
The other sites don’t offer a way to tell you when the image that’s been queued is actually ready. Alexa always was able to deliver the image right away. However, PageGlimpse sets a 302 temporary redirect for you. This is good in detecting whether or not the image has been generated. You can setup a cron or some other sort of job to update the images in the background when they are generate. When I finish my scripts, i’ll see if my client will allow me to post it up here.
