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Secrets of Magic Forum: Are you looking for a magic site with a solid community? At SOMF, we have everything, we do everything, we talk about everything. The rules are simple, help each other!

If you are stuck on a certain effect, can't get a presentation right, or just need to ask a question, then sign up now!
We have forum sections on everything ranging from Presentation and Reviews, to Coin Effects and DIY Magic. You are entitled to full free speech on SOMF, in-fact, it is encouraged! We take a different view of magic online at SOMF, if you are interested in magic, or are learning magic, or even a professional, you should be able to ask for help and advice from other magicians, without fear of being told “You can't ask that hear!”.

We are full of magicians ranging from Hobbyists to Professionals. We do get people coming in to just learn David Blaine or Criss Angel's newest effect, but these people are usually to lazy to sign up in the first place, let alone read through the forum.

It is encouraged to try and help as many people as you can, and in return you will get help yourself. Need some opinions on your newest trick? Don't have a solid presentation? Looking for that one effect to add to your repertoire? If you want to learn magic then this is the place. Please try and help other members as much as you can, and you in turn will receive help when needed!

Magic Video Blog: The Magic Video Blog was started in 2008 by a select group of magicians who love vintage magic videos. Their intention is to provide an amazing magic clip - every 24 hours. The more they can expose you to great magic, the chances of helping you improve your own magic will increase. In turn, the art of magic advances. And ultimately, that’s what we all really want!

Dynamo makes YOUR card disappear. More at Nokia Connectors

John G Magic Blogspot: One of my favourite magicians John Guastaferro has just opened a magic blog, if you haven't seen his products go to his product page do yourself a favour and order everything he has, then thank me later! You can see some clips on his Youtube Channel. John has some seriously good material that is both strong in construction as it is charming in presentation, and his DVDs are among the handful I can watch the performances from, again and again. I'm excited that John is making his way to the Session in January, as I look forward to seeing him lecture.

Melbourne magicians Kamal Bhushan and Dean Atkinson continue to delight audiences in their weekly Magic Mornings video podcast.
The show fuses informative magic reviews, clips, comedic personality and hilarious repartee.

You can watch at http://www.magicmornings.com.au/

The show also has its own online magic forum at:

http://www.magicmornings.com.au/forum

Time to be Awesome is a new internet TV show from David Corsaro the latest episode is an interview with award winning magician Marc DeSouza and a discussion about magic competitions and what it takes to succeed. Marc was also gracious enough to show them around his collection of magic posters and perform an effect. Upcoming shows include a behind-the-scenes of “Monday Night Magic”, an
interview with NY Coin Magic Seminar producers Michael Rubinstein and David Roth and a discussion with Francis Menotti about theater in magic.

Just an early heads up, I will be attending the above convention, and will be live-blogging the events I attend for Magic Convention Guide I will still post short posts here (probably just the first parts of each post) with links across to each post at MCG, so you will be able to find the reports over there. Thanks to Andrew Webb for letting me do this, it looks like a great week and an excellent and packed programme I just hope I can keep up! Remember watch here or better yet over at Magic Convention Guide starting Wednesday.

Howcast offer how-to videos and guides, as part of their site they have produced a play-list of magic how-to guides. Dave Horowitz from Howcast says “We created some cool how to magic videos that I wanted to share with you. Much like a good act, they both entertain and are accessible on top of being informative. Please check out the full playlist.”

Here is an example guide for a simple coin vanish:

Recently launched Talentainer.com allows entertainers to post videos of their latest and greatest acts in hopes of landing new gigs. Since the site debuted, it has attracted award-winning comedians, magicians and other “event enhancers”.

Talentainer.com is a new video-centric website offering live entertainers an opportunity to showcase a bit of their magic, placing it before legions of event planners who are searching for world-class entertainers to populate corporate events and gatherings, to entertain stadiums filled with fans during half-time shows, to fill cruise ships with masterful entertainment, and to fulfill other venues.

Talentainer.com allows entertainers to post videos of their latest and greatest acts in hopes of landing new gigs. Since its debut on July 2008, the site has attracted award-winning comedians, mimes, circus entertainers, disc jockeys, masters of ceremonies and other “event enhancers” interested in giving the world a sneak peak at their performances, rates and geographic parameters. In fact, within weeks of the launch, a number of famous acts have signed on who have appeared before the Queen of England at Buckingham Palace and on “America's Got Talent” and “Late Show with David Letterman.”

Overall, the entertainers posting profiles and videos on Talentainer.com are hoping to increase bookings and bring a smile to the world. Landing gigs has never been easier. What's all the buzz about? Visit www.talentainer.com and find out!

Paul Daniels performs a nifty magic trick.

Some people are born with magic in their fingertips. The rest of us have to download it...

Check out the full length film on the Nokia Connectors site, where you can also uncover the secrets behind the magic, download free tricks for your phone, and win a Nokia 6220. Amazing!

Another story from BoingBoing about a paper just published in Nature Neuroscience about the way that magic tricks illuminate the inner workings of human perception — the paper is co-authored by five magicians, including Teller of Penn and Teller. You can read more in an article from The Boston Globe and the actual article can be found here.

From boingboing gadgets professional psychic Uri Geller and his company Explorologist Ltd., filed a DCMA takedown notice against the creators of a 13 minute YouTube video debunking Geller's supernatural powers... a video which happened to contain a ten second copyrighted clip of one of his performances. Fair use, in other words.

The EFF representing Brian Sapient made Geller withdraw, and settled their legal battle and also they made him license the clip in question as non-commercial Creative Commons so as to freely aid the efforts of other skeptics.

More details on the EFF site.

Tomorrow marks a year ago on the 30th June 2007 that Jack Parker passed away. To celebrate his magic Andi Gladwin is running a week long Jack Parker Video Marathon. Every day he will share a video of Jack's magic including videos of tricks that Jack only shared with two or three magicians.

Andi's blog post tells you more and the video's can be found here, with a great one to start the series:

Jack Parker Video Marathon.

I've seen some of these when Jack initially posted them to TSD but am still really looking forward to re-watching them, I remember at The Session Andi played a couple that I hadn't seen in a while, and all over again I got that feeling of being totally fried and fooled with Jack's magic, you too can have that feeling of being a layman again, by heading over to the Jack Parker Video Marathon for the next week!

Straight from Dirk Losander himself:

I Need Your Help. Our little baby “Ione” was born 6 days ago. Today we found out she needs a heart operation and our insurance is not going to pay for it. I am not writing you this to beg for money but if you need to buy something from my website now would be the time to help us out. Every Dollar counts and we really need all the support we can find right now! So if you feel like supporting this cause, go to my website and find your self some great magic and make this operation happen for us. www.losander.com

Even if you are a non magician, we just came out with a new dvd “Las Vegas Greatest Magicians” teaches you easy to learn magic. You can find it right here
or if you just want to donate some money for us please send it via pay pal to losander@mac.com or just keep us in your prayers. Thank you so much for your support.

Dirk Losander
9850 S. Maryland Pkwy Suite A5#190
Las Vegas NV 89123
702 501-9973

Foreign BBC correspondent and magician Geoff Harrison has launched what is claimed to be the world's first magic channel, tvmagicians.com.

The site, part of Global Digital Broadcast's IPTV network Play TV UK, will feature magicians' showreels, effects demonstrations, industry secrets and related material.

The site will host sub channels on jazz, independent films, nightclubs and other entertainment. Content will come from Harrison's company TV World Productions and magic specialists Party PR, Club Chiva and Penguin Magic.

Anyone else here on Friendfeed?

In case you don't know, Friendfeed is a new social site made by ex-google employees, you can see an introduction and explanation on Wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friendfeed

Recently they have implemented a Rooms function:

http://blog.friendfeed.com/2008/05/get-room.html

I have setup a magicians room here:

http://friendfeed.com/rooms/magicians

If you are into any of the Web2.0 sites like Twitter, Tumblr, Youtube, Google Reader, del.icio.us or any of the other 30+ sites that Friendfeed picks up, sign up for a Friendfeed account, add those services and then you can re-share that information or post it directly using the friendfeed bookmark into the magicians room, and share the magic based content you come across on a daily basis with all the other participants who can then comment and discuss the content in the room, I think its almost like having a huge collaborative blog that anyone with a friendfeed account can post too, pulling in content from these services or starting there own discussions, so you get the best of Youtube (you can watch the clips directly on the site), the best blog posts via google reader or tumblr or del.icio.us or people's twitter comments or Flickr photos or Yahoo Upcoming events etc.

If anyone wants to add me on Friendfeed I am here:

http://friendfeed.com/rmorrell

And any questions on how this might work let me know.

Three sets of photos from the recent FFFF convention held April 23-26 2008:

• Paul Gordon from his lecture and performance


• Robin Dawes Flickr Set


• Antony Gerard's comprehensive day-by-day account

Christiaan Lopez-Miro has a new gallery of photos on his site called Smoke and Mirrors, click on the Images link and then Smoke and Mirrors. In his words: These photographs are suppose to be about the moments between the performance. The moments when the magician is simply alone contemplating his/her own craft. They are meant to be very intimate photographs that confront the viewer.

Another Youtube index has recently emerged at MagicTricks.tv. It is owned and run in direct conjunction with the Magic Tricks Store, www.magictricks.co.uk

It is aimed at anyone with an interest in magic and has been designed to put many magic videos in one place. They have designed the site so the videos are listed in specific categories, to help you find the video you are after even quicker! The majority of videos on MagicTricks.tv are hosted by YouTube.com

MagicTricks.tv also has a community facility, where individuals can sign up to be members of the site and this allows you to upload your favourite magic videos to display to the rest of the magic community. The videos available on this site are able to be linked to other social networks such as Facebook and MySpace.

One of the top advantages of using www.MagicTricks.tv is that the search facility has been specifically designed so it only finds magic related videos, instead of the YouTube search facility which displays all videos with relevance to the key words. Example of this would be, a MagicTricks.tv member types in De Kolta Chair - MagicTricks.tv only brings up videos where a person vanishes from the chair where as YouTube.com can bring up anything to do with chairs.

If you have a favourite magic related video, join the site and upload it today, they will be rewarding members for uploading their videos and number of views per month. Keep watching for more details on these special rewards.