https://help.ubuntu.com/community/EC2StartersGuide
http://alestic.com/
http://uec-images.ubuntu.com/maverick/current/
sudo apt-get install ec2-api-tools
ec2-describe-regions
cat <<'EOM' >~/.bashrc
######## modifications by Philipp Klaus:
export EC2_URL=http://ec2.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com
export EC2_PRIVATE_KEY=$HOME/.ssh/amazon-x509_pk-ODKN47NWKLVFADJVDU2PJUEIFHLZSGFJ.pem
export EC2_CERT=$HOME/.ssh/amazon-x509_cert-ODKN47NWKLVFADJVDU2PJUEIFHLZSGFJ.pem
export JAVA_HOME=/usr/lib/jvm/java-6-openjdk/
EOM
ec2-authorize default -p 22
ec2-run-instances ami-29b0855d --instance-type t1.micro --region eu-west-1 --key mykey
ec2-add-keypair ec2-keypair > amazon-ec2-keypair.pem
chmod 600 amazon-ec2-keypair.pem
ec2-describe-instances
you may now log in using
ssh -i ./amazon-ec2-keypair.pem ubuntu@ec2-46-1-198.eu-west-1.compute.amazonaws.com