ForbesOnTech

Carl Icahn Raider of the Lost Ark-- Silicon Valley Takeovers Can Happen

Silicon Valley has always been unique. Entrepreneurs have been free to follow their dreams—as long as they coincided with the same path to liquidity as that of their venture capital backers.

But its gene pool lacks much of the fresh talent from outside northern California that marks other industrial centers. There’s almost nothing in the history of Silicon Valley and its entrepreneurs that makes me believe any company—most of all Yahoo—can survive a proxy fight like the looming battle between Jerry Yang and Carl Icahn.

Yahoo may be the best example in Silicon Valley of how not to grow a company.  In it’s short history, it’s never really been able to create a top notch brand and it’s become a revolving door for talent that’s moves laterally not upward. Yahoo is an artifact from an earlier age; a time when start-ups thought they would become content kings or giant search engine/ information aggregators. Along the way Yahoo lost its focus and it has jumped from haphazardly through a variety of business models, never quite succeeding at anything it tried. Yahoo has become yesterday’s brioche and it really doesn’t appear  there’s much that can save it.

To make my point try this: Every time you hear the name “Yahoo” think “Excite@Home.”  Where is this company today? It’s little more than a footnote and absent a near divine miracle, I think Yahoo is doomed to become a subordinate entry in the same footnote list as Excite@home.

But if nothing else, the unfolding story of Yahoo should increase the pucker factor for entrepreneurs and their investors. Until now the Valley has escaped predatory investors and take-over kings.  But if things are changing Carl Icahn may just be the lead predator in a pack of hungry foxes looking at some of Silicon Valley’s cash plump chickens.  Do I think Donald trump is going to invade the Valley anytime soon?  Hell no. But there are some companies that have enough cash to make them prime targets.

Take a second and imagine Apple if Steve Jobs’ health were to crash.  (Note, I give Jobs and Apple high marks for management of Steve Job’s brief fight with Pancreatic cancer that affected the company’s stock not a whit). If there were a change in Job’s health I believe Apple’s stock price would drop and consumer confidence in the brand would tumble. Add to this Apple’s image as “only one person can manage the beast so we don’t have a strong number two” and you have the picture of a company that could be taken over.

Who would do this? There are two obvious candidates in Silicon Valley—Larry Ellison’s Oracle or Google.

All of this is pure conjecture on my part and I’m not saying it would happen, I’m just noting that takeovers of technology companies are possible and could happen, as, long as the right celestial tumblers line up and the lock that’s heretofore stopped corporate raiders in Silicon Valley pops open.—Jim Forbes 05/17/2008.

The Unintended Dangers of A Redial-- from a Soldier's Cellphone-- In the Midst of a Firefight

Today’s personal technologies like cell phones, portable computers and digital cameras are so commonplace among members of our military that many soldiers forget they are carrying them in the rucksacks or pockets of their utility uniforms.

            Take the case of a young soldier stationed in Afghanistan who tried to call his parents back home in Oregon but no one was home. So, the young Army specialist puts his cell phone back in his pocket and goes off on patrol.

            The patrol is engaged by Afghani evil-doers, the soldier takes up a firing position using a HumVee for cover.  The Problem then is that as the soldier presses up against the vehicle, his phone accidentally redials, connects and he ends up leaving a three-minute voice mail of a hot firefight, which scares the Bejesus out of his parents when they listen to their voice mail when they come home from shopping. The audio in the voice mail lays it all out, soldiers screaming for “more ammo,” orders to engage distant targets, and an urgent request for a replacement barrel from the soldier for his Squad Automatic Weapon (SAW). The voices are urgent and in the background is the constant thud of an automatic 40mm grenade launcher, the longer brrps of the SAW and the high pitched racket of M16’s, all left on an answering machine back home in Oregon.

            The accidental redial ends about three minutes into the call, just after one of the patrol’s other members spots an incoming smoke trail and yells “RPG!” (rocket propelled grenade).

            The upside of all this is that the parents were able to reach the soldier on his cell phone later that day and discovered his was fine, but embarrassed about the commotion of the unintentional redial. It was then that his little brother posted the audio to YouTube. You can listen to it here.

            I guess that in addition to making sure that members of patrols are buttoned up, have clean rifles, chow and water, squad sergeants now have to make sure that soldier’s have their cell phones turned off before they cross the wire.—Jim Forbes 05/06/2008.

Why We Need to Teach young Adults Not to Rely on Internet Job Sites Fo that First Gig

Watching how my two children use the Internet is like reading Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities.

            For my kids, it’s the best of times, the worst of times, but they’re having a dickens of a time in their adult lives.

            My daughter, Amanda, relies on the Internet for a substantial part of her education. Yet, she’s quite adamant that the Internet causes many individuals to isolate rather than mingle with peers.

            My son, Sean, is a teacher and while in college had been led to believe that Internet sites listing teaching jobs here in California would make job searching an easy task.

            The reality was far different than what my son was told. He spent hours looking at and responding to job listings and after one year had not found a gig. As a parent watching the process I became very alarmed.  It didn’t take me too long to figure out that school districts were using the Internet to build large files of resumes.

            My daughter also used the Internet to find jobs.  But she used a much different strategy and as a result, she’s achieved many of her goals. What my daughter did differently was  focus in on a job she wanted, provide the basic requested information  and then show up in person with a copies of the same data and sell herself to get an in-person interview.

            Talking to some soon-to-graduate college students earlier this month, I was dismayed to find out how many s relied on the Internet as their primary source of job leads.  Looking at this group I was struck by my daughter’s belief that the Internet often depersonalizes things that over the years have worked best in one-to-one settings. And as I listened closely to the students I soon realized that they were unable to connect with a potential employer as anything more than a web page. At the close of one class, I asked a group of bout seven students to find out the name of the person who would hire them in an individual organization and then tell me how they planned to get an interview with that person. As I did this I was vividly reminded of how depressed my son had become when he wasn’t able to make contact beyond a web page.

            I am very concerned that the Internet has created an entire generation of young people coming into the workforce that may not understand that hiring decisions are made by people, not web sites. The best way to get the job you want is to by personal contact, not resume mass mailings to so-called job sites. It’s dismaying to me that in this day and age, the idea of one-to-one contact is going the way of the high-buttoned shoe.

           And to bing this full circle, I'm' happy to report that my son is now teaching, after getting an in-person interview with a school district he had originally applied  to on the Internet more than one year ago.

            Why back in the “old days” after graduation, some of us got in our cars anx (in my case) drove 400 miles overnight for that first opportunity to press the flesh and meet a potential employer in person. And guess what? That strategy worked.—Jim Forbes—04/29/2008

FCC Lays Foundation for National Emergency Texting

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- A program to create a nationwide alert system using cell phones and other mobile devices was approved Thursday by the Federal Communications Commission.
An emergency text message would be sent in the event of a widespread disaster, severe weather or child abduction.
The system would send text messages to Americans when an emergency occurs.
The FCC said cell phone companies that voluntarily opt into the system would send text-based alert messages to subscribers in response to three types of events:
A disaster that could jeopardize the health and safety of Americans, such as a terrorist attack; these would trigger a national alert from the president of the United States
Imminent or ongoing threats such as hurricanes, tornadoes or earthquakes
Child abductions or Amber alerts.
T-Mobile, Verizon, Sprint Nextel and AT&T all stated that they would be likely to opt into the alert system if it is passed by the FCC.
"While we obviously need to review the details of the FCC's decision, we look forward to offering mobile emergency alerts to our customers," AT&T said in a written statement.

A national emergency alert system based on mobile phone texting? It’s about time. But it’s only part of a solution. How about cities, counties and states take a big step further and adopt reverse 911 emergency notification systems.
That’s what we have in San Diego County where I live and it was put to work quickly last fall during the 2007 firestorm season. While there were some minor glitches in the notification system (a couple of neighborhoods were told to evacuate earlier than was necessary) the use of Reverse 911 during the 2007 Fire season is a text book example of how useful some technologies can be in disasters.
I was directly effected by the Witch Creek Fire.  We lost several homes on my street when the fire came roaring through the nearby adjoining city of Ramona, CA. Rather than wait for the “official evacuation notification.” I started collecting my gear as soon as I could see flames cresting the hill that separates my place from Ramona.
The “evacuate now” order came late in the afternoon the next day. By phone.
I loaded my two useless cats in their cages, hooked up my dog and installed him on my front passenger seat and drove by my two elderly neighbors to make sure they were packed and ready to go and had transportation.
Adding emergency text message notification to the system  is the next logical step. But before that happens nationwide cell networks are going to need to become a lot smarter. A whole lot smarter.
One of the problems I foresee is with yahoos like me. My cell phone is a 650 area code number, but I live 400 miles south of Silicon Valley in the 760 area code. Now that cell networks support GPS, it doesn’t seem like too much of a technological stretch to assume that me cell network knows I’m in the 760 area code and any emergency information relative to the specific area is something I need to be aware of.
There are some other baby steps that can be taken to cover the ground needed to keep the citizenry informed.  While I personally don’t like the social media messaging application Teitter.  I believe regional emergency Twitter URL’s could be an important information dissemination channel.
Observationally, the one thing local electronic and print media and local government could have done much better here in North San Diego County during the Witch Creek Fire, was provide better communications to local residents including electronic maps of road closures. More than 500,000 people in my county were told to leave their homes in the last Fire storm. Most of us ended up in emergency shelters. And the one thing that was in real short supply was real time information.
National emergency text messaging is a great first step. The next logical move for it is at the regional, county and city-level.--Jim Forbes 04/09/2008

---

Planning your summer road trip? Check out AOL Travel Guides.

Microsoft Expands DreamSpark Academic Evangelism Program--Wouldn't it be Nice if Others Joined In

Microsoft pulled another of its feet onto the academic computing bandwagon with the announcement this week of DreamSpark, a philanthropy program aimed initially at college students but which will eventually include high schoolers as well, according to the online version of PC Magazine.

Microsoft’s Bill Gates announced new details of the program during a speech at Leland Stanford Jr. University on the San Francisco Peninsula earlier this week. DreamSpark has already provided software to about 35 million students worldwide, Gates said, adding that the program will be enhanced to include more college and some high school students in the future.

click here for PC Mag's original story.

Some of the titles that will be given to students free of charge include the 2005 and 2008 editions of Visual Studio, 2005 Developer’s Edition of SQL Server and the Standard Edition of Windows Server, according to PC Mag. Students will also be given access to Microsoft X-box development tools and the company’s game developmenyt community, the magazine says.

While much of Microsoft’s philanthropic efforts have been aimed at individual colleges and universities, the company has a long history of academic evangelism and has been a co-sponsor with hardware maker Hewlett Packard of large academic computing grants in the past.

DreamSpark’s sheer size-- more than 35 million students have benefited from the program-- is astounding.

Academic evangelism isn’t limited to immediate gratification. In decades past, companies such as Hewlitt Packard and Techtronic helped create entire generations of equipment buyers and brand specifiers by exposing young students to professional-level test and measurement systems through academic evangelism programs. In the 1980’s Apple made significant inroads into academic computing through its conspicuous evangelism.

The two companies in today’s market that have active and high profile academic evangelism programs are Hewlett Packard and Microsoft. Both companies have dedicated staff members who run their companies programs in this category.

The pay-off associated with academic evangelism isn’t immediate. Rather it happens years later when former students enter the job market and begin buying IT or engineering test equipment on behalf of their employers.

However, I believe there is at least one category of computer technology that could reap an immediate benefit from academic computing evangelism. That category is pen-based computing. And, looking out over today’s landscape the one company I hope jumps directly or indirectly on this bandwagon is Demo 2008 standout Live Scribe,

here

makers of the Pulse Smart Pen. -- Jim Forbes 02/19/2008

Gates Foundation Commits to Basic Ag Science Funding-- Aim Is Small Farms in Developing Countries

Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation Moves Fund Research in Small Scale Farming

"If we are serious about ending extreme hunger and poverty around the world, we must be serious about transforming agriculture for small farmers, most of whom are women," Gates said.CNN story here

Once again, Bill Gates finds a base level solution providing strong vectors that help solve many key problems. In this case it’s a commitment to work on solving world hunger by improving small farm agrcutural methods in developing countries.

If you want to build, stronger, smarter citizens you must firzt have a basic level of agrculture technology to provide enough sufficient nutritional and caloric intake. Funding specialized research into agricultural technologies and products as well as educational institutions that enable all of this is an important evolutionary step in these overall processes.

In looking around at topics in the coming conference season, I was struck by Gates’ position on funding agriculture in developing countries. How does this compare in  importance to say a discussion of technology opportunities in Sharan Africa, West Africa or the Horn of Africa? Before you have techno0logy centers, you need people who are capable of feeding themselves and producing basic surplusses.

        Without such basic ingredients in developing countries you have conditions leading to wars over agriculturally or water rich territories or famine on a bibical scale.

The importance of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation funding agricultural research for small farms in developing countries?

        Some things are so self evident they need not be argued.

        That’s my screed for the week—Jim Forbes 01/25/2008

(mandatory disclosure. I am a graduate of an agricultural  and technology college as well as the direct descendant of female farmer from Western Colorado. That woman, my maternal grandmother, Ella Sherrod Forbes,  lost her husband to anthrax, then moved her family to California but instilled a love of the land and agriculture that exists in her lineage to this day.jmf)

Americana Singer/Song Writer Passes Away: Good bye John Stewart

California lost one if it’s best balladeers this weekend when folk rock icon John Stewart, 68, passed away here in San Diego.

            Stewart was a prolific songwriter. He may have been best known outside of folk music for two songs, “Daydream Believer” made famous by the Monkees, and “Gold,” which was recorded with Fleetwood Mac members Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham (whose guitar riffs often sound a lot like those of John Stewart).

Stewart’s contributions to folk rock go back to his days with the Kingston Trio and carried through to the mid-Sixties after he left that group and helped his brother Michael Stewart with California band called the We Five, whose one big hit was “You Are On My Mind.” Michael Stewart left the music industry after producing two albums for Billy Joel and later worked for Adobe Systems before he passed away in 2002.

            Recently John Stewart’s music has been classified as “Americana”; a fitting category for a singer songwriter whose music often celebrated, big red horses, race tracks and our collective inner outlaws.

            His seminal album was “California Bloodlines.” Most recently his music framed Route 66, the little towns and people who populate America’s mother road.

            Stewart was the son of a horse trainer. If you listen to his music you'll hear his admiration of good horseflesh and the men who train thoroughbreds.

            Coming up as a reporter in Southern California I interviewed John Stewart on several occasions. His love of and connections to an earlier age often came through in his speech and metaphors.

            If you read my blog you may notice my use of John Stewart song titles in my headlines and posts. His music my favorite road entertainment. On road trips up and down California I  load my load my car’s CD player with John Stewart music and unashamedly sing my way through the California.  His lyrics are  Rand McNally connections to my beloved home state.

            His wife, singer Buffy Ford, and children survive Stewart.  Services are pending. He may be gone but his final chords linger on, a singer songwriter whose musical canvas was all things American and many things Californian.

So Good Bye John Stewart, your music pulled the covers off my love of big thundering horses, the hills of Placerville, rejoicing in my inner outlaw and my unabashed love of Americana music.—Jim Forbes 1/20/2008

Fire blog Part IV--Images, Embers and Thanks

Fire Blog, Part IV

Lasting Embers of the 2007 Witch Creek Fire

The Witch Creek Fire came very close to my retirement home on a little mountaintop on the outskirts of Escondido, and although it's almost fully contained there are a few embers that are still red hot in my memory:

The efforts and attitude of the volunteers at Calvan Christian School, the over flow evacuation center here in town where we were eventually sent. The whole experience of being an evacuee in an urban setting made me thankful for my neighbors and the emergency services employees of the state, of California, the City of Escondido, and the County of San Diego. The volunteers at Calvan were not part of the giant Red Cross efforts here in San Diego. They were "just" faculty, staff and students of Calvan, who stepped up to and met tactically critical challenge. By the time the evacuation order came in via the reverse 911 notification system, there was no room at the primary evacuation center serving my area--Escondido High School.

    So the crowd of several thousand residents were directed north three blocks to Calvan where the volunteers welcomed everyone with cold bottled water, snacks, cots, chairs, tables, a selection of board games, television sets tuned to local news channels and a bulletin board displaying what little new information was available. As importantly to an old news guy, like me, Calvan's computer room was open and its WiFi network was up and running.   I really appreciated that my evacuation center was well run, clean and as safe for young kids-- who were gallivanting out in a fenced PE field-- as it was for senior citizens with special health needs. I also thought it was nice that all common domestic pets were well taken care down to a well ventilated room for birds (which are very susceptible to respiratory conditions common to areas hit by wild fires.)  For a while, north San Diego County became a veritable ark-- horse flesh peacefully grazed quietly in unused football practice fields along side goats and the occasional north American cameloid (llamas). The only thing missing from the scene were tame big cats from the animal park in Ramona and pairs of high circling buzzards, riding afternoon thermals.

    "Thermals" is much to gentle a word to describe Santa Ana winds. Dry dusty Santa Anas can set your hair on end. Particularly when its a contributing force to a roaring wild fire that's coming at freight train speeds towards your neighborhood or town. Local newscasters reported peak wind velocities of  105 mph, which freaked out a lot of green thumbers (a term used in my family to describe newcomers and real estate developers).

    In reality the winds were no where near that strong, since peak velocities are measured in geological gaps at the peaks of mountains and in the passes that guard the entrances to the several valleys that make up what is known as "southern California."  For a couple of hours the winds on my mountaintop clocked just under 40 mph, which causes me to really think about the 70-plus foot palm tree in front of my house, which is no about 9 degrees off plumb and creaking loudly with every new gust of wind.

    Back to being a latter day Joad. i was incredibly impressed by the overwhelming generosity display by other evacuees. If you ran out of dog food, the person in the parking stall next to you gave freely and volunteered to watch your dog or useless cats while you went up to a briefing in Calvan's gymnasium. Cell phone battery "dead" but need to call your family up in LA?, "Aqui (Here), senora, use mine, and I'll be happy to keep an eye on  "su ninos" while you talk to mamacita."

     It's been years since I've seen a visible reminder of the southern California of my youth, but for one warm unforgettable night in late October of 2007 that tranquil scene reappeared, framed by fiery light from the hills that frame Escondido.

     By late Monday I had become worried about whether the fire would reach my little mountaintop. I knew that five houses had been lost not far mine and I knew that if any of the five palm trees that skylight my hill looking back towards southeast Escondido went up, my house would probably suffer fire or serious smoke damage. The palms still stand and everything is fine at my house and I realize now that I really don't have much in the way of possessions that can't be replaced.

     My personal bottom line is this: when it's time to go, you better CSMO, "collect shit and Move Out."

Furthermore those faded pictures of great grandfather Sven and his rascal brother "Lars" isn't worth my life.Besides I think the mental pictures I have of Sven the Norse sea captain, howling back at the wind from a clipper's quarterdeck and his brother, Lars, losing a glass eye to a china man in a poker game is much clearer and more realistic than my faded photos.

The Joad Clan circa 2007

     With 250,000 people housed in or near evacuation centers throughout San Diego County, it's hard for me not to recall images penned by John Steinbeck in Grapes of Wrath ( a book I got with mother's milk as a child).  In 2007 we have many Joad clan members. At the top end are those with 45-foot land yachts, anchored in parking lots of upscale shopping centers, pop-outs fully extended, interior lights on till late at night, as family, old and new friends sit in front 9of wide screen televisions shaded by wind screens watching World Series baseball, sipping glasses of two-buck Chuck red wine or chardonnay as a tritip roasts on the BBQ over in the corner.

     Then we have the Joads at the shelters, listening to baseball on their car radios after having thankfully partaken of a bountiful spaghetti feed prepared by volunteers at the volunteer.

    And now we come to the car camping Joads, shielded from the winds by tarps held in place by bungee cords connected to parking lot shade trees, the car's bumpers and enjoying a full blown Canned Dinty Moore Beef Stew meal followed by some milk and cookies from th Von's market across the parking lot.

    And finally we have the livestock belonging  to the upscale Joad cousins.  It's grazing in the balmy breeze at Shelter Island in Mission bay next to its goat stable mate. Or, it's stretching its forelocks in a quick run across a high school's fenced baseball field, as sundry dogs being walked by their owners look on and wonder" Why is Bucephalus running like that when he should be napping."  And the cats, curled up on th rear decks of cars, yawn, close their eyes and snuggle a little tighter as they drift into another five-hour nap.

Friday Morning and Evening Images

I woke Friday morning to a chorus of noises; the bass notes of Caterpillar D5's and much larger D6's clanking onto their low-boy trailers and then the hum of diesel 18 wheelers taking the cats and crews to an assembly area down the road at San Pasqual High School, not far from where the fire burned a huge swath through upscale homes on the edges of Lake Hodges. The high notes to the symphony were off key chainsaws used by homeowners to buck and section blown down citrus, avocados and pines uprooted by the Santa Anas and firer storm winds.

     On a run to a local large store that serves every possibly need of local homeowners i was struck by the fact that the store had completely sold out of chainsaws, sharpening kits, and new chains. Novice chainsaw users are sometimes quite funny. Two neighbors complained that their new replacement chains, "just aren't cutting."

     "Well D'oh," I laughed, "you put the chain on backwards and your bar is at the wrong angle."

      the vacant looks I get from a new chain saw owner when I asked them for their "scrench" always makes me smile.  ""A scrench is the odd too with a screwdriver running through a spark plug socket. It came with your saw."

    "Is that what the thing is?"

    "'Yup. And a scrench is just about all you need to keep your chain alive and running until you take it into the shop to get it serviced."  So I spent about one hour showing my neighbors how to put a new chain on their saw, keep its bar properly oiled and how to let a saw do the work."

         "Oh and never ever cut anything you think may have a nail in it, unless you want to end up with a new nickname like, 'Bloody Stump Lefty'."

My last two images come from Friday night. Kit Carson Park is daylight bright from portable lights all over Ruthe fire camp.  A huge herd of about 75 shiny red California Division of Forestry crew trucks glisten at the edge of the lights next to duller green USDA Forest Service Hot Shot crew trucks as steam rises from shower trucks and smoke pours off the BBQ's prior to traditional end of fire meals.

     Seated inside the Macaroni Grill, we stopped to tell a long table of city fire fighters from Long Beach, Ventura and Fresno "Thanks guys, you're real champs and heroes." Towards the end of my meal the restaurant erupted in spontaneous applause and hoots as the fire fighters quietly walked out to their rigs.

     On the way home I  slowed down at San Pasqual High School and laughed at a pair of bewildered operators scratching their heads with a "Where the hell is my dozer?" look. The parking lot was completely filled with parked cats on low boy trailers.

     Well, with any luck, that's my last post for the year as a "fire blogger."

     Thanks to all the fire fighters, volunteers and emergency workers who pulled us out of another fire season here on the wild side of metropolitan Escondido and the Cleveland National Forest. I came out of this fire season with enough blown ash to help next year's gardens develop great root structures, new friends at the base of my little mountain top, and the happy feeling that most of the wild things that live here survived and returned. And special thank to my former coworkers at IDG who linked to my site, to Ree at www.thepioneerwoman.com, and Dave Winer at www.Scripting.com, both of whom drove a lot of traffic my way too. We need more fruitcakes in this world, and at times I qualify. And in moments of crisis we fruitcakes stay calm and try hard not to run around like crazies.  A gritty and smokey Jim Forbes from Escondido, CA, on 10/27/2007.

Good Reporting Skills Still Pay Off-- the Hunt for Fake Steve Jobs Part Deux

It’s been more than 20 years since I’ve seen trade journalism writers, PR people and rumor mongers embarrass themselves as badly as they have in the quest to unmask the identity of the anonymous blogger penning the wildly popular Secret Diary of Steve Jobs on blogspot.com.

This weekend the New York Times successfully penetrated the veil of secrecy surrounding the author of the blog, which gets hundreds of thousands of hits a month. The blog’s author isn’t (as was thought), a super plugged in Silicon Valley insider, but rather a Sr. Editor at Forbes.com named Dan Lyons who works from his small office in a Boston suburb. To the surprise of Valley insiders who had spent months trying to ferret out the blog’s author, Dan Lyons has never covered Apple and told the NY Times that he got much of his material from blogs and news stories.

As a casual observer with an insider’s view on the hunt that led to the unmasking of Mr. Lyons, I watched in drop-jawed amazement as Lyon’s Publisher at Forbes, Rich Karlgaard, cavalierly overlooked the idea that the author might be a member of his own organization.

Karlgaard, and Forbes’ editorial managers learned that one of their own was the author of the FSJ blog approximately two months ago when Mr. Lyons revealed the fact at the media company’s New York offices.

But even more embarrassing, since they swung and missed so many times in the game to find out the name of the author, were the top two editors at Gawker Media’s ValleyWag rumor site. Like most of the amateurs involved in the hunt for FSJ, Valleywag assumed that the blog’s author was a major league Silicon Valley player or an editor at publications such as Wired. Furthermore, they appeared to be unable to recognize that some of the sources in their hunt were yanking their chains. Specifically at least one magazine publisher who knew of Mr. Lyons’ role in the blog urged Valleywag to continue its hunt. They continued but never got it right, even when west coast edit staffers of Forbes let it be known that they knew who the author was but apparently kept the name to themselves.  To rumorists: Next time be prepared to work leads that yield stories, don’t just expect to have the full story handed to you by wretched supplicants at industry parties on plates with free snacks and booze. Sing Loi, ValleyWag, back to the minors guys. (oh, the phrase “Sing Loi” means sorry about that in AnnaandtheKingamese)

At least one very large public relations agency in the Pacific Northwest was also reportedly fixated on finding out who was writing the FSJ blog. Particularly after he began referring to Mr. Gates as the “Beastmaster” and Steve Balmer as “Uncle Fester.” But like other entities they appear to never have come close.

In the end, The mystery was solved by two reporters at the New York Times, Brad Stone and John Markoff, who after receiving a copy of Fake Steve’s forthcoming book, Options, tallied the hints and began correlating the words of Dan Lyon’s regular blog with the language used in the FSJ blog. Start to finish, Mr. Markoff and Mr. Stone took only about four days to uncover Mr. Lyon’s identity.

In retrospect the hunt for Fake Steve Jobs reminds me of a very dark period in computer journalism, about 20 years ago, various industry magazines started printing unsourced stories about IBM’s forthcoming release of the PC2 (which never happened) and Microsft’s release of DOS 4.0, which according to the same magazine was to have been multi tasking, their “sources” said. And as someone who was chasing the same stories,(but who declined to write and file anything while I worked at InfoWorld) I discovered that the sources for those stories were doing little more than confirming and passing on tidbits they had received from other sources.

I’m sorry for regular readers of the FSJ blog readers that the author’s identity has been revealed. It was more fun when no one knew who it was.

But the one thing the FSJ blog proves is that there is a pent-up market for great satire. I can’t think of anyone better suited to providing that than Dan Lyons (one of the funniest people to ever light up and send up a newsroom). By and large Silicon Valley, and its legion of fawning writers has taken itself too seriously for too long. The FSJ blog sets a very high standard for satire that I hope will lead to more humor and less “golly gee, aren’t they brilliant puff.”—Jim Forbes 08/06/2007/

(Oh, Dan Lyons is quite capable of laughing at himself. Check out Sunday’s last post at http://fakesteve.blogspot.com/2007/08/damn-i-am-so-busted-yo.html. Dan is incredibly funny)

Laughing About the Unmasking of Fake Steve Jobs--way to go Danny

Damn you Fake Steve!

   After reading an online piece in the New York Times on Sunday that unmasked the heretofore anonymous writer responsible for Fake Steve Jobs blog, I started smiling.

The problem with that is that I was supposed to mow my huge front lawn. As I fired up Bambi Deere and started cutting, I began laughing. And soon I was laughing so hard I ran over my $9.00 plastic whirligig sprinkler shredding it all to hell all over my lawn.

   Damn you Fake Steve, you made me destroy my favorite WalMart lawn sprinkler.

   And then I began thinking about the actual unmasking of Fake Steve while he was on vacation in Maine with his twins and wife, I started laughing again.

   I can just imagine it now:

    The cell phone rings, fake Steve turns to his wife, asks her to get it.

    "Da" she says.

     She hears "this is so and so  from the New York Times and is Dan Lyons, or Fake Steve Jobs there?"

    She hands the phone to her helpmate who puts it to his ear and says "hello" and in response hears "this is the New York Times and were calling to confirm that you, Dan Lyons, are the blogger known as Fake Steve Jobs."

    I can just imagine the big gulp being taken by the vacationing author.  I pictured the conversation mowing up hill and started laughing very hard again. And then my tractor stalled, so I mashed down on the brakes, discovered they were wet and not grabbing as I started rolling down the long slope. Being a quick thinker and a college educated tractor operator (no kidding) I recovered by doing a gradual U turn on my lawn until the inertia from going up hill again brought me to a full stop.

    I was and am still laughing.

    Fake Steve Jobs has made me laugh for as long as I've read the blog.  And after reading two posts, I recognized the meter and wording as being that of a former co-worker whose skill and gift of spontaneous humor is unparalleled. I called the former co-worker, Dan Lyons, now a senior editor at Forbes, asked him about the blog. He got concerned I had figured it out.

   Within Silicon Valley, the hunt to unmask the author of the Fake Steve jobs Blog took on mythic proportions. Most of the editors trying to sleurth out the author made huge fatal jumps in logic. Everyone assumed that the author was a plugged-in editor. He wasn't. he lives on the east coast in a bucolic suburb and has never ever covered Apple. That's what makes the Fake Steve Jobs blog such great satire. Oh, a tip of the hat to Dan Lyons, one of the most thorough and fastest working reporters I've ever known.He's also outrageously funny.--Jim Forbes on 08/06/20-07