Earlier this summer a blog appeared at Blogger.com entitled 'The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs 51 1/2'. It spread like wildfire, at first in Silicon Valley but then well beyond, even attracting the attention of Forbes and Newsweek. Because of the humor and the closeness of the portrayal to what some people apparently perceive to be the "real Steve Jobs" it became a runaway success. Readers were said to be "rolling in the aisles and peeing themselves" because they found it so funny.

Despite all of this publicity the authorship of the blog is unknown. A fringe minority believe it to be Steve Jobs himself and that no-one else could mimick him as well as is done in the blog. Certainly there is widespread agreement that the style of the writing is such that it has to be someone REALLY good, probably someone already in the public eye as a writer or journalist. There has also been speculation that the writer may be outside the country, perhaps in the UK, due to the early morning timings of some of the posts. 

It is possible that this remarkable opus may have been and gone without the identiry of the writer being revealed. At time of writing the original blog has been dismantled with only an RIP notice remaining. However, earlier today I glimpsed a link saying "I'm baaaack" and so it might not be forever lost. Such is life that we must wait for the story to unfold or not,as the case may be .

If the blog does reappear it is my intention to add an RSS feed, perhaps several, to gather postings and comments. However, in the meantime I will attempt to market a line of t-shirts.

 Coming up with a viable idea was tricky. As he is not a politician and has rights to privacy anything with Steve Jobs' name on is a no-no as is anything with Apple or any of its brands. What I thought I would try was a line which would enable the wearers to claim authorship of the blog and add to the speculation about who really did write it. These appear in 2 versions - one which just has the first 3 lines about the purported author of the blog and another which lists several of the June and July blog posts which will be immediately recognisable to fans of the blog.

The proof of the pudding will be in the eating and the test will be whether the idea and the t-shirts have captured enough of the essence of the blog and overall theme to motivate people to buy them. We shall see...

UPDATE as at August 10th

A 'fake Steve Jobs' has emerged and there are 3 new posts at a different blog location. There are also some back-and-forth bantering posts in the comments following the RIP post at the closure of the original blog. I have read them and, although I lay no claim to being an expert, my sense is that this is a new fake Steve and not the old fake Steve. Notwithstanding my suspicions I will post an RSS feed below and let readers judge for themselves. I will also dig around and try to find as many as possible of the original posts for those who want to re-read them as well as to help anyone making comparisons.

If there really is a second fake Steve then perhaps it will make my t-shirts more relevant and meaningful, especially if speculation continues regarding who the writers are.

FURTHER UPDATE August 13th

I have posted below the first few entries from the original Secret Diary Blog. From the information at the source from which I obtained them they date from June 28th to June 30th. I also have posts from July and August, some or all of which I may add later though many are already posted in the new Fake Steve blog at Blogger.com

This whole thing is fascinating and I would love to know what has gone on behind the scenes. For me the unanswered questions include who was the writer of the original Secret Diary of Steve Jobs 51 1/2? Why did he (or she!) close it down on or around August 7th? Was it the same person who relaunched it at a different url on or around August 8th? Assuming that it was not the same person (which I personally believe) then are the two fake Steves in any way connected? Assuming that the new Fake Steve is a different person then who is he or she?

Another question - has there been a leak? One has to believe that it would not be difficult for someone from Google to track down the identity of one or both of these people. Blogger.com is a Google property and with the amount of data that Google has at its disposal about people's identity and travels online one has to believe that maintaining anonymity has to be virtually impossible. As the 'Google Guys' were the butt of a couple of posts perhaps there was a threatened "outing"? It may be significant that the original blog was actually dismantled and posts deleted rather than just having been allowed to die with no new entries.

To quote the original Fake Steve Jobs this whole thing is  "unfrigginbelievable"