With pure HTML5 app, Amazon deftly sidesteps Apple content and app control for iOS

In jab at iTunes, Amazon releases iOS-optimized MP3 store - CSMonitor.com:

Image: Christian Science Monitor

It's not an Apple app store app, it's an HTML5 optimized web app, anyone on an iOS device can use it whether Apple likes it or not.

More evidence that stateless delivery of applications and content changes the rules--and the business cases--for a lot of companies.

And it reminds me of Princess Leia in the original "Star Wars" to the emperor: "The more you tighten your grip, the more star systems will slip through your fingers!"

I think it's Very Interesting that the last two pieces of important news about digital content (this, and the debut of the Auto-Rip service to make physical CDs purchased now or in the past digitally available) have come from Amazon.com.

Nine Rules for Stifling Innovation - Rosabeth Moss Kanter - Harvard Business Review

Nine Rules for Stifling Innovation - Rosabeth Moss Kanter - Harvard Business Review:

Top-down business culture and innovation don't play well together.  Rule # 1 rings especially true: "if the idea were any good, we at the top would have thought of it already."
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Amazon Auto-Rip, a positive step toward unified online digital rights management

from Mashable
Amazon's AutoRip Gives You Free MP3s for CDs You've Purchased:

My Amazon Cloud Player. There are double arrows beneath
the albums added automatically today by Auto-Rip

I got this news on Mashable today.  Amazon has gone live with a service that closely mirrors the digital ecosystem ideas I recommended a few months ago.  Auto-Rip mines your account for the record of all the physical CDs you've purchased from them since 1998.  It automatically adds digital access for that CD content to your online library via the Amazon Cloud Player. You don't have to manually rip or upload anything yourself,

The breakthrough idea is this: Amazon has decoupled the rights to the content from the delivery mechanism.  They effectively acknowledge that the money I spend for content--the music--means I have rights to it on a CD, online, or as a local download to my personal devices.   This is a cool service, but it's part of a Big Idea, stateless data, applications, and devices.

Take note: especially if Amazon extends this idea to video, books, and applications, they will have changed the game and the business model for content sales.  Why would I buy from anyone else unless they recognize that I'm buying rights to content, not the physical thing that holds it?

The next logical extension will apply to third-party streaming of content I've paid for.  Pandora, for instance, can mine my digital rights and steam me my own content without paying a broadcast license fee to do so: it's microcasting, not broadcasting.

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From the NYT: coming to Disney World, extreme personalization, smartphone integration, and WiFi over a 40-square mile area

At Disney Parks, a Bracelet Meant to Build Loyalty (and Sales) - NYTimes.com:

Integration of technologies to know more is a two-way street, and a reflection of one of the biggest tech trends, the era of you.

Typical of era of you effects: extreme personalization of experiences, ultra-granular collection of data, and the disappearance of technology.  By getting out of the way, tech does more.