Jason Unger

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I used to never be able to do these, but I learned on the back of a box of Golden Grahams.

Did you get the message?

All it costs is your humility.

Why are all the most ridiculous viral videos from foreign TV shows? Hollywood, take note.

PS - sorry for the shorter posts. These tradeshows take up a lot of my day, and when I do have time to relax, the last thing I want to do is sit in front of the computer.

"24" will be getting a two-hour movie that prequels Season 7 this fall, the Hollywood Reporter is reporting.

The movie, designed to bridge the two-year gap between Seasons 6 and 7, is targeted to air in the fall, leading to the January return of the real-time drama. On Wednesday, "24" producers began securing the show's core cast members for the film.

I guess Fox didn't listen to my idea for National 24 day, but this is pretty big news.

So, now that there is SOME news, let the speculation begin…

- Will it be a two-hour "real-time" affair? Or will it stray from 24's standard time model?
- Is this the 24 movie that was supposed to come out? Or is that still happening?
- What will the prequel bring that we don't already know about Season 7? Most of the times, the prequels on the DVDs don't do much at all for the season.

Don't get me wrong, I'm absolutely looking forward to it. But is this just a way to "apologize" to fans for the lack of Jack Bauer in 2008? Or will it actually mean something to the show?

Canseco: 'Hey Guys, Who Wants To Come To My Big Steroid Party This Weekend?'

MIAMI—Former MLB star and admitted steroid user Jose Canseco extended an informal invitation Monday to over 500 current and former professional baseball players, requesting their presence at his house this coming weekend for his annual steroid party.

"Hey guys, big steroid bash at my place," Canseco said while handing out flyers at a Toronto Blue Jays spring training intrasquad game. "Nothing too fancy, just a bunch of guys, hanging out, taking steroids. Tell your friends."

The party is historically an extravagant affair, usually featuring women in bikinis carrying silver trays of various types of anabolic steroids, four VIP suites upstairs where guests can sample steroids from Canseco's personal collection, a giant 40-foot-tall ice syringe filled with Dianabol, oil paintings of steroids on the walls, a keg of steroids, a disco ball, and a punch bowl spiked with steroids.

From the Australian Broadcasting
Corporation's "Media Watch" (original here)

The leading plagiarist in technology media, SmartHouse's David Richards, has been exposed on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation's "Media Watch" program for the fraud he is.

In a story broadcast Monday, Richards' plagiarism of numerous technology stories (including my own) was highlighted as a "Phantom of the Internet."

What? No forthright accusation of plagiarism?

Richards, of course, claims he didn't do it. Instead, "hackers" got into his site, he says.

An investigation by 4Squatre Media has revealed that over a period of more than 24 months the content engine used to supply stories to web sites such as SmartHouse, SmartHouse News, ChannelNews and Smart Office has been illegally accessed and in several cases content changed. Code has also been hacked.

Please note that Richards DID mis-spell the name of his own company "4Squatre Media" — really professional, right? (And I've got the PDF saved for when he changes it and claims I lied.)

Beyond the absurdity of his excuse, here's why there's no chance it is true.

Richards claims he was "alerted" to the "hacker's posts" (my quotes, not his) in early February. That's impossible.

I have an email from Richards dated 12/19/2007, when he claims to have removed a story he stole from CE Pro written by Lee Distad.

Richards, not surprisingly, had not removed the article when he said he did. It took another email to him and his staff to get it down.

So, if you're the publisher of a Web site, wouldn't you be curious if a story showed up online that you hadn't published? I know I would be.

Richards is a hack job. His excuse is pathetic, and his arrogance is even worse.

It Gets Weirder: Did He Submit the Story to Digg?

A commenter on my original story pointed me to the YouTube video below, which was uploaded by … "DavidRichardsAU."

His profile says he's 47 years old and located in Australia.

What? How bizarre is that?

The story is also on Digg, where it was submitted by "davidrichards," "A 52 year-old male from Sydney, Australia (AU) who joined Digg on March 3rd, 2008."

I don't know if this is him or not, but the image on his profile looks a LOT like the one I could find online.

Would he seriously try and promote his own plagiarism? (It totally could be him, especially considering the spelling of "plagiarizm.")

That's just weird.

The Media Watch Video

Check out the Media Watch video here.