Jason Unger

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Tuesdays are newsletter days for CE Pro, and I was inserting the ads for today's issue I noticed a pleasant surprise:

I've been kidding with Jenni, who manages ads for us, about getting a banner for jasonunger.com in an open newsletter spot for a while — and it finally happened!

Seen at EHX Spring — full coverage here

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.

Time. It's the one thing everyone wans more of, but rarely ever gets.

Author Tim Ferriss has made himself known for his 4-Hour Work Week, where he preaches outsourcing all of the mundane tasks that overtake our lives and focusing instead on the important things.

I'm sitting here today pumping out Web content. It's one of those things that comes in waves for me — some days it just flows, and others it's just a massive creativity block.

I haven't outsourced anything recently — I saw a news story about women outsourcing their pregnancies to India — but I'm getting things done.

It takes time to get things done, but the more you get done, the more time you have for the important things in life.

Try and get a couple of things done off your to-do list today. You'll find that the time is well worth it.

I got back from CES yesterday, taking the red-eye into Dulles and spending most of the morning asleep in bed.

Overall, the show was okay. Like every year, it's busy, but due to the amount of "news" that comes out, I spent most of my time in the press room, writing up stories and turning around slideshows.

From when I arrived on Saturday night until Wednesday evening, I literally spent most of my hours working. Yeah, I slept some, but from the West Coast timezone (gotta get stories live for East Coast ASAP) and the events at night, CES makes for some long days.

The work obviously pays off, as CE Pro had a number of good traffic days.

Besides the reporting, it was nice to meet a few people in the industry. I had a nice chat with Patrick Norton of Tekzilla, caught up with Dave Zatz and met Ben Drawbaugh of EngadgetHD (and team).

Outside of the industry, I got my picture taken with Big Papi David Ortiz and saw Brian Williams do the nightly news.

Thankfully, there aren't any tradeshows coming up for me … at least not until EHX Spring, March 11-15 in Orlando.