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I wrote a blog a while back that every major company should have a "Mis-Chief Officer" whose job was to poke fun at the top dog without getting his head handed back to him. Well, Fake Steve was the court jester, AKA Mis-Chief Officer, for Steve Jobs and I must admit I thoroughly enjoyed reading his ramblings about what the real Steve Jobs probably did think and say -- in private of course.

Well, Fake Steve's identity was finally uncovered by the New York Times after a lengthy investigation. He is Daniel Lyons, a senior editor at Forbes magazine. God love ya, Mr. Lyons!

Lyons said he invented Fake Steve after several CEOs turned into bloggers themselves but rarely spoke candidly and wrote incredible pablum. Says Lyons, "I thought, wouldn't it be funny if a CEO kept a blog that really told you what he thought?" And so his fake blog was born -- and yes, it was very, very funny!

Over the year, Lyons admitted that he became hooked on Fake Steve, developing his own lexicon and catalogue of insults for his fake character. Bill Gates became the Beastmaster, Eric Schmidt (Google's CEO) became Squirrel Boy, and so on. He saved his best jabs for Larry Ellison though. It was good stuff.

What is the future of Fake Steve? Well, Forbes says they plan to move the Secret Diary of Steve Jobs to Forbes.com in September. Hmm, now that is a formal part of the Forbes empire, I fear its unfiltered nature may go the way of the dinosaur.

Oh well, it was fun while it lasted.

Yours in BI success,

Fake Claudia

Technorati Tags: Fake Steve, Steve Jobs, Apple CEO, Secret Diary of Steve Jobs

On October 1, 2006, the Chicago Tribune ran an article about a study of the viruses that live on in hotel rooms LOOOOOOONNNGGG after the germ-bearing guest has departed. And the locations of these bugs were not where you would think they'd be... like the sink or toilet...

The tests were run BEFORE housekeeping had cleaned the rooms so it is likely that the findings overstate the situation somewhat. However, given that most hotel room cleaning consists of changing the sheets and towels and wiping out the bath tub, you can bet these findings are not far off.

Researchers had 15 people with "lab-confirmed" rhinovirus (the virus responsible for the common cold and I really don't want to know how they did that) spend a night in a hotel. After they checked out, the researchers tested 10 common items in the room. Here's what the research turned up as contaminated with the nasty little buggers:

1. Seven of 14 door handles
2. six out of 14 pens
3. Six out of 15 light switches, TV Remotes, and bathroom faucets
4. Five out of 15 phones
5. A number of coffee makers and alarm clocks
6. AND only ONE out of 10 toilets....

Now here is the really gross part (my eyes... my eyes...)

Several months later, the researchers asked the 15 participants to return to the hotels and visit rooms where certain items had been deliberately contaminated with their own snot -- frozen to preserve its potency, shall we say. (I want the job of smearing snot on stuff.) Surprisingly, only 5 agreed to do this -- I can't imagine why...

Each volunteer (they had to be either married to the researcher, paid a lot of money, or a real glutton for punishment...) visited two rooms and then had their hands tested for the presence of the virus. Sixty percent were contaminated by mucus that had dried on stuff for 30 minutes and 33% were contaminated by snot that had been left to dry overnight. Who thinks of these things?

The real question is, of course, what hotels agreed to this study? None were mentioned in the study...

So there you have a real horror story. Makes you want to go out and buy gallon jugs of disinfectant to take with you, doesn't it? Spray down the hotel room the minute you walk into it? But then the airlines probably won't let you take it on board...

Lesson learned? Next time you check into a hotel room, DON'T TOUCH ANYTHING... well, except maybe the toilet.

Yours in BI and traveling success!

Claudia

OK -- a number of people asked me who the artist is. He is a British guy whose sidewalk art appears throughout Great Britain and Europe. Click here to find out more about him.