A guide to the names on 'Fake Steve' By The Associated Press

A guide to the names on 'Fake Steve' By The Associated Press
Mon Aug 6, 4:51 PM ET



The "Fake Steve" blog won many fans in the technology world, serving up hilarious daily satire of what purported to be a "secret diary" of Steve Jobs, the CEO of Apple Inc.

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Trying to figure out the blogger's true identity became a favorite guessing game of the technorati, but that ended Monday when The New York Times outed Dan Lyons, an editor at Forbes magazines, as the wit behind Fake Steve.

The blog takes potshots at many major figures in the technology world, and sometimes invented nicknames for them. A guide to who's who on the Fake Steve blog:

Beastmaster: Microsoft Corp. Chairman Bill Gates

Uncle Fester: Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer. Lyons says Ballmer looks like he was "separated at birth" from the character on the 1970s-era TV show "The Addams Family."

Squirrel Boy: Google Inc. CEO Eric Schmidt. Lyons figures Schmidt doesn't mind. "I'm sure he's laughing all the way to the bank."

My Little Pony: Jonathan Schwartz, CEO of Sun Microsystems Inc. A dig at Schwartz' pony tail, and apparently a name that insiders at Sun call him behind his back.

Bike Helmet Girl: Lyons spotted a picture online of a woman doing funky dance moves at a party while wearing a bike helmet, then posted a photo on the blog and invented a story line about Jobs having a crush on her.

Dr. Evil and Mr. Bigglesworth: Nick Denton and Owen Thomas, the owner and managing editor, respectively, of Valleywag, a Silicon Valley gossip blog that made many fruitless attempts to uncover Lyons' identity. After Thomas got hired there, someone sent Lyons a picture from an "Austin Powers" movie and suggested a resemblance with the movie's goofball villain and the white cat he holds in his lap. In a posting on Sunday, Fake Steve wrote of his outing: "My only regret is that we didn't get a chance to see Bigglesworth take a few more swings and misses."