Amazon has just released a new free iPad app, called Amazon Windowshop that the company says is a complete “rewrite” of Amazon.com specifically for the iPad. Optimized for touch screen tablets, Amazon Windowshop makes it easy to swipe through the store to browse products on the iPad.

Similar to Amazon’s website, the app features product lists including “Featured”, “Bestsellers”, “Recommendations”, “New Releases”, “Most Wished For”, “Most Gifted”, and “Movers & Shakers”.

Amazon presents products via a grid-like interface, but will include pop-outs of specific products with high-resolution images, user reviews, descriptions and videos related to that product (which includes 30 second samples for the music items).

For Amazon Prime members, the app will indicate which products qualify for Amazon Prime and include Amazon 1-Click checkout. You can also share products from the app via e-mail, Facebook, or Twitter, save an item for later by adding it to your Wish List, and more.

Essentially the app is a suped up version of Amazon.com that is designed specifically for the iPad. It almost feels like a catalog, because of the layout and images. As the holiday season draws near, Amazon is undoubtedly ramping up its online shopping offerings, and capitalizing on the continued growth in the the consumer use of the iPad.

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Today at TechCrunch Disrupt in New York, we had a panel entitled “Does The iPad Change Everything For News, Or Is It Still All About The Web?” The New York Times’ David Carr moderated the panel which included angel investor Ron Conway, Huffington Post CEO Eric Hippeau, and Bloomberg chief content officer Norm Pearlstine. The common theme? The only thing that can stop the iPad is Apple.

While that may sound confusing (since, of course, Apple makes the iPad), everyone seemed to agree that Apple’s restrictions could end up hurting the device in the long run. Apple is in control right now because they’re the first to market with a killer product, but others will emulate them, reasons Pearlstine. He believes a lot of the content on these type of tablets will eventually be web-based rather than app-based (similar to an argument Google co-founder Sergey Brin made last week).

Carr extended on that question, asking if maybe the iPad itself would just be a device where you consume content on the web rather than through apps?Hippeau says that’s up to Apple. Clearly they want to push people towards apps, behind their wall, he believes. The problem with this is that Apple doesn’t give back nearly as much data as having your own website would, Hippeau says. He thinks Apple will have to learn that media organizations live  off of this data. “They’ll have to open it up more,” he says.

Pearlstine agrees, saying that the key for traditional publishers is their lists of subscribers. More importantly, they have their payment information. With iPad apps, Apple has that information, and that will be a problem for a lot of media companies. “There will be other providers that won’t do it the Apple way,” he says. That, again, is implying that while Apple may have jump-started the industry, if they don’t open up a bit more, a competitor will beat them.

Of course, that hasn’t happened with the iPhone yet. But Android is charging fast.

Conway believes that Apple has a good lead for now though thanks to its “fantastic user interface.” He sees publishers flocking to it just like the music business did to the iPod/iTunes combo. “It’s a better model than free,” he says.

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The history of P2P file sharing service Kazaa (which actually started life as “KaZaA”) is known to most of us born in the eighties or before, and consists mainly of copyright related lawsuits and adware-ridden software.

The gist of the story can be found on its Wikipedia profile, but what many seem to forget in present times is that the service is still around, serving users an unlimited amount of (licensed) songs for a $20 monthly subscription fee.

Recently, a Symantec security program apparently identified the Kazaa desktop client as high-risk, flagging the software as adware. This prompted Brilliant Digital Entertainment, the company that operates Kazaa, to issue a special notice / consumer alert to its customers.

And it isn’t pulling any punches.

While boasting about the fact that Kazaa is now a legitimate business offering over one million fully licensed tracks to its customers, Kazaa claims Symantec for the second time in recent weeks incorrectly identified it as being high risk. As a result, the company says, a subset of users were unable to use Kazaa because Symantec’s security software flagged it as adware. Some of its users were apparently “sufficiently spooked by Symantec’s unilateral action” after those warnings that they followed its advice to remove Kazaa.

In an angered statement, the company adds:

Symantec had justified turning off the music for some of Kazaa customers by flagging files in the Kazaa music plug-in application as high risk due to the files being used for serving advertisements. As a result Kazaa customers or subscribers running Norton AV are having these files stripped from the application which prevents them from using the service.

It continues:

Symantec’s error, hot on the heels of a similar mistake against Spotify, highlights the potential for anti-virus companies to do more harm than good in the effort to displace pirate operations from the on-line marketplace.

After the Spotify incident (Symantec classified the music streaming service as a Trojan about a week ago), the security software company apologized on Twitter. It’ll be interesting to see how they handle this notice from Kazaa.

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Chances are you’ve never heard of Netbiscuits – I sure hadn’t. But the company operates one of the world’s largest B2B web software platforms enabling thousands of publishers to create, manage and generate revenue from mobile websites.

Netbiscuits serves the mobile Internet programs for brands like Yahoo, MTV, and eBay, and well known digital agencies such as Razorfish, Isobar, and ad networks like Google-owned AdMob. To give you an idea of its size: globally, Netbiscuits claims to deliver more than 1.5 billion mobile page impressions on a monthly basis.

This morning, the decade-old company announced that it has partnered with Universal Music Group to help the music company expand its line-up of direct-to-consumer mobile content and services, after a successful test run centered around a mobile website for Bon Jovi in November 2009.

The terms of the agreement were not disclosed.

Netbiscuits will essentially be aiding UMG in setting up and operating artist-branded mobile websites, which will give fans the ability to interact with other fans and to make purchases directly from their handsets. Based on the mobile websites, Netbiscuits also enables UMG to set up hybrid apps for several major platforms, including the iPhone, Android, and Windows Mobile devices.

UMG also plans to utilize the text messaging service that comes integrated within the Netbiscuits platform, providing music fans with SMS alerts whenever their favorite artists are in town.

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