Daily links for 03/30/2011

• Amazon on Cloud Player: we don’t need no stinkin’ licenses

  “Amazon launched Cloud Drive and Cloud Player on Tuesday morning, offering US-based Amazon customers 5GB of online storage to use for whatever they please. If they buy an album from Amazon MP3, however, they get 20GB of storage for the year, and all Amazon MP3 purchases are automatically synced to the user’s Cloud Drive without counting against the quota. Users could then use the Cloud Player Android or Web app to stream the music to any compatible device or browser, even if the files themselves had not been synced there. We wondered aloud how Amazon managed to strike such an impressive licensing deal with the record labels, given the fact that Apple seems to still be working out the details for its own digital locker service. It turns out that Amazon hasn’t struck a deal, and seems to be hoping that the record companies will be the ones to blink.”

  tags: amazon cloud music

• Celebrate Document Freedom Day! | opensource.com

  “On this important occasion, let’s all recognize that progress has been made to promote and use open standards and to liberate documents. In January, India’s Department of Information Technology published its draft Interoperability Framework for E-Governance in India (IFEG), which lists ODF on its approved standards for e-governance in India. That same month, the government of the UK published its Procurement Policy Note on the use of Open Standards when specifying ICT requirements, recommending that they “…should whenever possible deploy open standards in their procurement specifications.” Bill McCluggage, the UK’s Deputy CIO, attended the 5th ODF Plugfest , held for the first time in the UK. According to one publication, “his presence there sent a strong message of support to the open standards community across Europe. Open Document Exchange Formats will inevitably be an area for important debate, and one where we can expect to see government determination to lead by example being put to the test.””

  tags: document freedom odf

• Amazon Introduces a Digital Music Locker – NYTimes.com

  “Amazon.com plans to introduce a service that will let people upload their digital music to the Web and access it from browsers on any computer and from Android phones. The service, known as a music locker, was made available to Amazon account holders early Tuesday. Amazon will offer a Web-based hard drive backup service called Cloud Drive, where people can store documents, photos, videos and music.”

  tags: amazon music

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.