xsighted

Technically, you can use meteor with rails https://github.com/tmeasday/ruby-ddp-client, so I don't know if meteor is killing rails anytime soon.

I've found using phones at an arms length has worked reasonably well, but found no elegant solution for laptops

This is basic, but web presence is not a substitute for getting your face out there.

if the files were ever synced to your computer, you might be able to recover them using software that can undelete files. Personally, I'd just use dropbox ... it's dead simple.

i've done all of those, and I can tell you first hand ... learning is best by doing ... it's not comfortable .. but you figure it out .... pass the accounting to an accountant ... or theres tons of 101 courses on youtube ... management itself is learnt by doing ...

Well, the only ones qualified to teach such a course are probably too busy to teach it. Although, no better way to learn than to dive in head first.

It almost looks like you know the answer yourself.

it's interesting ... my instinct is you'll have to spend a whole lot of time educating your users ....

if you are looking for sources of inspiration, check out http://socialengineered.net/. Most discussions are borderline illegal, but it does get your hack juices flowing!

True or not, phones are becoming a medium to bring value to a larger ecosystem. I can see android's value to Google. The only play Amazon might have here is to control media consumption by offering their phones. Somehow it seems unlikely of them to offer phones for free though.