Lewis D’vorkin is a former Time Warner Inc. (NYSE:TWX) executive.  D’vorkin informed paidContent that he has raised funding for a new venture called Public Post Inc.  The early stage funding was provided by Forbes Media and Velocity Interactive Group.  Public Post Inc. has not launched a public site yet, but the idea for Public Post is to have a news network that revolves around authors, journalists, bloggers, and filmmakers.

Content appearing on Public Post will be provided by “knowledgeable experts” rather than citizen journalists.  This is very similar to the idea behind Google Knol.  D’vorkin stated that the startup won’t be linked to any other news media companies even though Forbes invested in them.

D’vorkin also hired Andrea Spiegel, another former VP at AOL.  Spiegel will be acting as Public Post’s chief product officer.  Public Post is D’vorkin’s second startup.  D’vorkin’s first startup was created in 1995 and was called Virtual City.  Virtual City was funded by Newsweek.

D’vorkin’s role at AOL was pivotal in the development of TMZ.com and AOL Fanhouse.  Velocity Interactive Group is led by former AOL CEO, Jonathan Miller.

Related Links:
1. paidContent
Picture Credit:
2. Flickr: andyplesser 

He’s busted.  The blogger that is known as the “Fake Steve Jobs” has been fooling people for 14 months.  This blogger acted and referred himself as the real Steve Jobs, CEO and co-founder of Apple Inc.  However, a writer at The New York Times discovered the actual identity of the Fake Steve Jobs.

“The mysterious writer has used his blog, the Secret Diary of Steve Jobs, to lampoon Mr. Jobs and his reputation as a difficult and egotistical leader, as well as to skewer other high-tech companies, tech journalists, venture capitalists, open-source software fanatics and Silicon Valley’s overall aura of excess,” wrote Brad Stone in The New York Times^[1].

Interestingly, this blog has gained quite a bit of traction and readers including Bill Gates and the real Steve Jobs.  The Fake Steve Jobs is Daniel Lyons, a senior editor of Forbes Magazine that lives near Boston, MA.

“I thought, wouldn’t it be funny if a C.E.O. kept a blog that really told you what he thought? That was the gist of it,” stated Lyons in response to his opinion of chief executives turned bloggers rarely write honestly.  And the readers loved it.  The Fake Steve Jobs would point fun at the open source community, Eric Schmidt, and Bill Gates.  And when Fake Steve was asked about Apple’s future succession by a reader, Fake Steve replied, “My plan at this time is to live forever and to remain in charge here, though perhaps with fewer restrictions on my power. The truth is, I am not human — I am a man-god, son of Zeus, born to mortal woman but fathered by the ruler of the gods, lord of thunder.”

Forbes is planning on moving the Fake Steve Jobs Diary to Forbes.com in September (or possibly earlier).  But it is highly unlikely that the real Steve will continue to read the blog of himself being parodied.  Take a joke, Steve.  After all, the Mac guy is cool in the “I’m a Mac and I’m a PC” commercials.

[1] New York Times: A Mystery Solved: ‘Fake Steve’ Blogger Comes Clean

Dollar Amount Involved: $9 Million
From the land that brought you Boeing,
Microsoft and Starbuck’s comes good news for Seattle-based custom imagery website, OnRequest Images. 

The funding came from Menlo Ventures and previous investors, Frazier Technology Ventures and Maveron LLC.  The amount of third round funding is $9 million. 

“Menlo Ventures is proud to lead this round of funding for OnRequest Images”, mentioned Menlo Ventures founder and Managing Dir., H. DuBost Montgomery. ”Having spent 30 years working with companies in the technology and communications industries, I understand the tremendous workflow and productivity improvements OnRequest Images is delivering to corporations. Leveraging its proprietary OnProâ„¢ production technology, which streamlines the complex process of creating, sharing, and managing custom imagery, brand marketers can now have custom brand-aligned image libraries to complete their brand marketing strategies.”

OnRequest Images serves high-end clients in the Fortune 100 and employs 1,600 photographers.  On the OnRequest website, there is a case study of the brand imagery created for T-Mobile.

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Dollar Amount Involved: Undisclosed
Forbes Media, a publication company that is known for publishing lists of the world’s richest powerful men and women, has acquired a Canadian company that owns finance resource website, Investopedia.com.  Investopedia gets over 1.5 million visits and has over 15 million page impressions per month.Investopedia is a guide for Stock Quotes and financial exam certifications such as Series 6, Series 7, Series 63, etc.  Investopedia also has a financial dictionary commonly used by finance professionals.The amount paid for this company was not disclosed.  Investopedia was started in June 1999 by Cory Janssen and Cory Wagner.  There are over 5000 dictionary entries, 1500 financial articles, and 750 tutorials.  Investopedia Inc. is based in Edmonton, Alberta.

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Dollar Amount Involved: Undisclosed
Yesterday Dave Sifry, founder of Technorati blogged that the company has made their first major acquisition yesterday.  The company that was acquired is Berkeley, Calif. based company, Personal Bee. Personal Bee allows users to create personalized homepages similar to services provided by NewsVine.

Personal Bee previously raised $500K from Mohr, Davidow Ventures (MDV).  Sam Jadallah provided this funding for Personal Bee and believes that the company has found a great partner.  Sam said “Normally we don’t expect such quick exits for our investments, but the fit for Personal Bee and Technorati made enough sense that we agreed.”

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Dollar Amount Involved: Upcoming Acquisition Rumored at $100 Mill+
Rivals.com is powered by 300 writers and reporters and has more than 85 employees in Tennessee.  Rivals.com has been around since 2001.  Rivals.com had 3.5 billion page views in 2006 and has 2.5 million readers.  Rivals.com is a leading website for basketball and football coverage.The company has raised $75 mill in previous funding.  Jim Heckman was a previous manager at Rivals.com, but then later founded Scout Media.  Scout Media is now owned by Fox Interactive Media.

Rivals.com syndicates content from Yahoo!, AOL, Sports Illustrate.com, MSNBC, USA Today and Sirius.

Yahoo! is rumored to be eyeing the company and quite possibly may wrap up the deal soon.

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