Hey Jeff,

I was chatting with my friend David Starr the other day and your name came up. He told me that you had started an online Lecture Network. Just wanted to wish you well with it. I'm sure members here on the Café would benefit from this; any more information you could provide to those that might be interested?

Hope all is well! Glad to see you on here:0)

take care,
Matt

TALK ABOUT AN EXCITING PROJECT!. . . .can you tell I'm glad you asked me about this? Geez. . where do I begin? I think I'll have to take this one in stages. Howabout "how did this project start?'. WOW. . I'm glad you asked!

Loren Christopher Michaels - one of the best minds in magic and theater - was chatting with me one day last year and said, "Wouldn't it be great to be able to have live, magic lectures over the internet?". I agreed. Technology has caught up with the dream and today we have The Lecture Network. We're going "LIVE" on June 3d. . . . I won't go into the details here as you can just go to the pre-launch site: http://www.TheLectureNetwork.com

I guess this is a shameless plug but this is really going to rock the magic world. I'll be hosting the best magic lectures LIVE and then the videos get archived so members can view them over and over. The membership cost is very reasonable since it comes to just a few dollars per lecture AND they're all interactive. Members will be able to use a chat window to ask questions. . LIVE! Cool, huh?

We're accepting advanced subscriptions now to avoid the rush and to give customers free gifts for early-bird memberships. We also have some "sneak peeks" on the Vintage Magic clip section. Soon, members will be able to vote for the winning blooper video.

And speaking of. . . we have a Magic Blooper Contest going on currently. If you have a funny magic blooper you can submit to us. . . you could win a free subscription to The Lecture Network and a trip to Las Vegas! Go to the web site for more details

CAN I SAY MORE> > > > geez. . . . . if you belong to the I.B.M. or the F.C.M., and you purchase a MAIN FLOOR or FRONT ROW subscription, 10% of the membership cost will be sent to the magician's support fund to each organization respectively to assist magician's in financial crisis.

I'm sure there's more to tell. . .but I'll let you ask the questions. . .

So what else is new?

Thank you Perky Pete!

I believe that was a joke. . . .at least I think that was!

New?. . . . . just working my tail off on getting The Lecture Network set for the free-access, June 3rd, Grand Opening. Also doing my one-nighters. . . . just finished one last night at the Wynn Hotel and another one in the Midwest next week. I also have a few other irons in the fire as far as long-term show contracts. . . but I'm in no rush for those right now. I planning on the new Egg Bag release soon. . . . and also have decided to produce a documentary on my experience in having my own, one-man show in Las Vegas when I had "Money and Madness". I'll go through getting the gig, working with the venue staff, the meetings, events in chronological order, writing the show, performing it for 5 month and then, the eventual demise. It will be titled, "The Life and Death of a Las Vegas show". That one, however, will take a while. Planning on a DVD release late 2007/early 2008.

The site appears to be down this afternoon. I tries to register last night and got a SQL error message.

I tried to register today and got the same SQL error messages. Advertisements seem intriging and interesting.

SKip

Jeff, the site is down or experiencing difficluties.

Rodney

Please keep trying. . . we're constantly doing updates to the site which will put it "down" for a short time. . . . I just now tried and everything seems to be up and working. . . . . 10:37 PST Saturday.

Hello Jeff,

Could you give as a scoop here as to who the first lecturers (besides McKing and Lance Burton) will be?

Thanks in advance,

BM

Yes. . . . we already have Kevin James, Norm Nielsen and Dirk Losander. . .all in June. . . . already for July we have Cyril, Tony Clark and Ali Bongo. More to come.

Thanks Jeff! The line-up looks really promising!

I would expect tons of people logging in to see Cyril. Make sure you have the right bandwidth for it

BM

Will do!!!!

Jeff have you taken into consideration the podcast hitting the p2p sites as soon as they are posted on your site? I hate to see people get ripped off that way.

Everything downloadable can potentially be distributed as a torrent, so I don't think there is much to do besides either stream stuff only or rely on people's integrity not to download or share it (I could be wrong). I would hope though that if people are paying so much money for the privilege of being a part of this community they would not devalue it in that way. I also think that there comes a point where we have to rely on the integrity of the magic community to keep the p2p sharers/downloaders in the minority.

This is the way we figure it at The Lecture Network. People who are going to rip off. . . are going to rip off. . .no matter what blocks technology can put on a file. For instance, our viewing window is a good size but no so big so, if one were to try and "capture" it, they really couldn't do much with it. Certainly not put it on a DVD to view. Same with podcasts. . . . trying to make it high-res after copying it just won't happen. If people want to go to great lengths to rip it off. . . they will. However, we will make it not worth the effort.

You are right. There comes a time when you must trust people who are paying a premium that they keep their investment intact.

Very true statements. I do see a ton of pirated junk out there though. Most of them are riddled with viruses because of it. For example, I have one in my shop that I ran a virus scan on today and it had over 48,000 viruses in one scanner. That is not including spy-ware either. I have look at the torrent sites to see what is out there and there are tons of magic stuff out there that if someone were to download it all they would have a lifetime of material to learn. Jeff has the right idea by making the resolution small enough that it makes it almost useless to put on a DVD. It does all come down to trust. Most of the ones that I see are from kids downloading music or people getting adult material. Like I said, I just hate to see people getting riped off. I was wondering what they had done to limit the risks. Jeff, good luck on the site. It looks great and I look forward to seeing what you are going to offer. I do not get to conventions much and this is a great resource for us to have.

My guess is that these people that are so infatuated with getting magic tricks for free and stealing from the creators spend huge amounts of time downloading, and searching, and stealing and very little time actually practicing any of these things that they steal. I would bet that most of the material stolen is probably never even looked at. They steal in bunches and don't realize that nobody has the time to NEED all this materal. It just sits there.

They quickly scan some of the material. They learn the methods. And they apply nothing. All their time is spent stealing and browsing for more. They don't improve, they forget most of what they downloaded and it serves them right.

Yes. . . well said!