By JULIAN GUTHRIE, San Francisco Chronicle

Toward the end of writer Jack Kerouac's life, the so-called King of the Beats was having trouble paying his mortgage. Upon his death in 1969, his estate was valued at $91 -- compared with around $20 million today.

The film "Adam" is a departure for British actor Hugh Dancy, best known for playing Prince Charmont in "Ella Enchanted," the handsome love interest in "Confessions of a Shopaholic" and the handsome love interest and nerd in "The Jane Austen Book Club."

In some ways, Rich Lewetzow is a typical high-school senior: He gets into spats with his mom, waits until the last minute to do his homework and stays out too late with friends on weekends.
But in other ways, Lewetzow is unique: He spends more time on Zillow than Facebook, is too busy for a girlfriend and frequents open houses on Sundays.

Dan Frakes' 3-year-old daughter likes to play in the sand, finger paint and sing along to "The Wheels on the Bus."
The preschooler can do these things the good old-fashioned way. She can also do them in a decidedly new way: by using Dad's iPhone.

A terrible accident led Mike McArdle to launch a new business, one that has seen revenues double and yielded unimagined perks -- including a role for himself and his art in a major new feature film.

Tens of millions of documents that have been tucked away in libraries and archives, visible in faded print, dusty albums or on microfilm, are in the process of being transcribed by a global community of dedicated genealogists and hobbyists and placed online for the first time.

When Cato the German shepherd arrived at the rehabilitation and boarding center in January 2008, he had ruptured two disks, undergone spinal surgery and was unable to walk.

A 36-year-old serial entrepreneur in Palo Alto who grew up poor but was taught to give back wants to make the world a better place -- one purchase at a time.
Pankaj Shah, who made his money in wireless broadband and made his name in recent years crusading against junk mail, has started a Web site to promote goodness through the stories it tells and the merchandise it sells.

The negative online review came in a week after Doug Washington opened his third restaurant, Anchor & Hope in San Francisco. He felt it was malicious and made no sense. So he decided to track down the reviewer at his office nearby and confronted him.