We play a little game of “what happened to the Microsoft employee?” And everybody seems to want to know what Steve Jobs is thinking. Here are the remainders for Friday, May 21.
Where in the world is J Allard? (ZDNet)
Microsoft’s entertainment and devices “Chief Experience Officer” J Allard—he doesn’t need a period after the initial, okay? He is summed up by a letter—has been conspicuously absent of late, perhaps as a result of Microsoft axing its Courier project. As for where in the world he is, word is he’s holed up with Carmen Sandiego as they contemplate a multi-nation crime spree that only you will be able to uncover.
Steve Jobs In the Garden Of Good and Evil (Wall Street Journal)
The Journal’s Eric Felten waxes philosophic on App Store’s “no porn” policy, which counters what he calls “one of the most basic assumptions of modern technology—that the computer business is built on pornography.” Incidentally, from an architectural standpoint, a business built on pornography is roughly as structurally unsound as a city built on rock and roll.
Jobs drops hint on Google open video codec (The Register)
Google announced its new open-source video codec, but not everybody thinks it’s all it’s made out to be. Witness Steve Jobs who, in a new level of terseness, reportedly replied to one e-mail petitioner with just a link to a blog post criticizing the technology in comparison to the Apple-backed H.264 codec. Fortunately, I think we can all agree on one thing here: Adobe, you’re totally hosed.
Digital Divide: Apple solidifies its lead among U.S. music accounts, as mobile merchants fade (Billboard)
iTunes now holds 26.7 percent of the music sales market—second place Wal-mart has dropped to just 12.5 percent. Turns out people don’t prefer buying their music on coasters—whodathunkit?