Like a digital Lazarus, Fake Steve has returned

For several years, technology writer Dan Lyons (Forbes, Newsweek) wrote a screamingly-funny blog, "The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs," at fakesteve.blogspot.com.

The author of the blog was listed as "Fake Steve Jobs"; The blog was written in first person, using the persona of Apple founder Steve Jobs, but it was clearly presented as satire, much like someone on "Saturday Night Live" doing an impression of a well-known entertainer or politician. "Fake Steve" parodied Jobs' supposed ego and his megalomania, but it also poked at specific other journalists by having "Fake Steve" refer to them as if they were his lap dogs.

At first, the real author's identity was a mystery, especially since he seemed to know all sort of inside details about the workings of Apple and about Jobs' relationships with various other technology executives and journalists.

Eventually, Lyons was unmasked as the blog's creator. He published a book, also called "The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs," under the "Fake Steve Jobs" byline. He also continued work on the blog, sometimes blogging as other well-known technology entrepreneurs and executives. Then, about a year ago he stopped work on Fake Steve and began a different blog under his real name (realdanlyons.com/blog). It was good, but it somehow wasn't the same as Fake Steve, and lately even Real Dan's posts have been fewer.

Last week, without fanfare, "Fake Steve Jobs" started posting again, at the old address. The posts have to do with Jobs' alleged recent liver transplant (still not confirmed by the company), implying for comedy purposes that New York Times technology blogger David Pogue had given Jobs part of his own liver. I've found no indication whether this is a permanent return or just a little blast from the past.

Flip Video

Flip Video Ultra HD

For the past year, I've been using my personal Flip Video Ultra to shoot very rudimentary video for the T-G web site and for personal stuff, including my mission trip to Costa Rica last year. This year, I'm going back to Kenya, which I think will lend itself to much more in the way of video, and I was worried about having only one hour of capacity on my camera for raw video.

My finished video of the trip will be much shorter, but it's a cardinal rule of video editing that you want to have a lot of raw footage from which to choose.

Last year, in Costa Rica, I took along my laptop and could easily transfer video from the camera to the laptop in order to free up space. But power, space and security issues made that less attractive for the Kenya trip.

Some mission trip friends of mine who live in Florida, Dave and Carolyn Schussler, came to the rescue. Carolyn recently produced a terrific eight-minute introductory video about LEAMIS, the organization with which we've taken our foreign trips, and so she was more than sympathetic to my interest in getting some good footage from the Kenya trip. Carolyn, I think, is frustrated that things didn't work out for her to take a LEAMIS trip this year, and so she and Dave decided to support my trip with a gift of the newest model of Flip Ultra HD, which can hold two hours worth of high-def footage. So now, the pressure is on -- I have to use this new camera to produce a really, really good video of the Kenya trip.

That led to another problem. The version of Windows Movie Maker on my Windows XP machine can't use the particular format that the Flip Ultra HD produces. I have a freeware program which will convert the video into other formats, but depending on how much video I get that could be time-consuming, and I'm also worried about losing image quality in the conversion.

My brother in North Carolina, a web page designer by trade, is looking to see if he can find me some video editing software that will work with the new camera and my old computer.

I'm a big booster of the Flip. It does not have all the capabilities of a nice, high-end video camera, but it's so small and portable that you can wear it in a pouch on your hip (or carry it in a bag or purse) and have it constantly available. And even the two-hour, high-def version costs less than $200. That changes the whole dynamic of video. I realize that many still cameras and cell phones also take video, and that can have the same sort of effect.

I'm not going to use the new Flip HD for much between now and the trip, but I did use it for the Tennessee Press Association awards last week, and I was quite pleased with the image quality.

-- John I. Carney is city editor of the Times-Gazette and covers county government. He is also the author of the self-published novel "Soapstone." His personal web site is lakeneuron.com.