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I’ve just installed a new Wordpress plugin that allows users to rate the posts, displays the total number of votes and the average rating for each one.

WP-PostRatings will hopefuly help me to select the topics or videos you like more and will be a great tool for upcoming competitions and contests.

Now it’s time to dive in the archives and start rating the good old posts, i will blog the top rated ones every once in a while so now it’s your chance to exhume the best videos, articles and interviews.

Do you want to be featured again in the front page? Tell your friends to rate your videos.

What do you think about this? Leave a comment and click any number of stars.

-Alejandro

1st Place

Variety by Hyo

2nd Place

NaffStyle by Brendan Conner

3rd Place

Volatile by Damien Lee

Here are the prizes again:

Winner:

* 12 of David Blaine’s Split Spades ‘Lions‘ of your colour choice (Or mixed)
* 1 DVD Copy of ‘Control‘ by Wayne Houchin
* 6 Brown Wynn Decks
* 1 Wayne Houchin & Daniel Garcia Ultragaff Deck

2nd Prize:

* CoinTwo by Homer Liwag (DVD)

3rd Prize:

* Believe by Joel Paschall (DVD)

Congratulations to all participants from Matt, Tom and Alejandro.

Cardshark88, YouTube’s #1 “card guru” with over 4200 subscribers and founder of The3c has put up a video in which he reveals his identity and the keys to his unnatural “success”.

A funny and long video that you might be interested in watching if you want to know more about what’s going on in the parallel cardistry scene.

No cards involved at all in this video but you will get some answers. If you have any questions leave them in the comments section and he’ll come here to discuss them with us.

“Today we’re rolling out a big new feature: Vimeo Groups.

So, what’s a group? It’s a way for mini-communities to share videos within Vimeo. Groups makes it easy to get a bunch of contributors together and upload directly into a group, then have conversations entirely contained within that group. You can add forums, share calendars, photos, and even music with members of the group. And, most importantly, we’ve added six really killer themes so you can take customization to a whole new level.

Some of you might have noticed Groups shares a lot of functionality with Channels. The best way to differentiate the two is that Groups is for lots of people to collaborate and contribute and Channels is for individuals to showcase a bunch of videos the way they want. If you think your Channel is better suited as a Group you can convert it to a Group by going to your Channels settings page, but be warned, there is no going back! In the coming months we’ll be building Channels 2.0, which is going to remove some features better suited for Groups (like forums and calendar) and add some Channels-only features, like tools to change the order and display style of videos.”

by Andrew Pile June 17th, 2008

The Cardistry Group

I have created the official CARDISTRY GROUP at Vimeo and i want you guys in. As you have seen, videos at Vimeo look much better in the blog since they are big and “HD ready”. Come join us and share your good quality videos in the group.

-Alejandro Portela

The deadline has come and all the videos are already submitted. Now it’s time for us to judge them and find the winners.

I’ll be posting some of the videos here in the blog but if you want to watch them go to the new media section at themagicreview.

Here is one i’ve been looking up to ever since i knew he was entering the competition:

Brendan Conner - Naffstyle

If you want to know more about the competition rules and the prizes go to www.twozwozer.blogspot.com

Youtube has just released a new feature that could change the way we make tutorials. Here is the info:

Video Annotations are a new way for you to add interactive commentary to your videos! Use them to:

• Add background information about the video.
• Create stories with multiple possibilities (viewers click to choose the next scene)
• Link to related YouTube videos, channels, or search results from within a video
• All of the above!

You control what the annotations say, where they appear on the video, and when they appear and disappear.

How do I get started?

Please visit our Help Center for more information on Video Annotations.

Are there examples?

The Worlds Best Card Magic Teleport Trick by TheCuso with explanation!

What else should I know?

Annotations, once published, are shown by default. You can turn them off while watching a video through the player menu—just click the button on the bottom right of the video player.

Video annotations are available now as a “beta” feature. We’re working hard to get this out of beta and, once we do, annotations will support more languages (not just English) and appear on videos embedded in other websites.

I met up with this guy last weekend and we had a nice little jam in a classy café here in Vigo.
He is now a good friend of mine and he also has a blog so let me introduce him to you…
From Guimarães, Portugal…

Marinho, aka V4Viktory.

Gotta love those Split Spades Lions…

Hey guys it’s being a very busy week for me so that’s why you won’t see many updates, probably until weekend. I won’t even be around msn or mebeam so if you want to reach me please send me an email to thecuso@gmail.com.

All of you have seen the numerous spam comments that the blog has been receiving but don’t worry, i think i have found a way to fix the problem, or at least cut them down a bit.

Once again, sorry for the lack of updates and i would really appreciate if you could send me the lastest news to my email so that i could post them under your name, whether they are videos, articles or whatever you think would fit in the blog.

My french friend Mattgic might be posting some news every now and then as well as John Aragi (Aceking) but i would really want you to help us don’t let the blog die.

Thanks for your understanding and support in advance.

 Yours,

Alejandro Portela, aka TheCuso

Time for a contest.

Here’s the deal. What Matt (Blink) and Tom (Twozwozer) would like you all to do is to make a video. Not just any video, a video showing us your style.

Your style of Magic Or Flourishing.

Here are the rules:

• The video theme must be about “Your Style”
• The video must be no longer than 3 minutes long.
• The video title must be just one word describing “Your Style”
• The video can include both Magic and Flourishing
• The video must be family friendly.

And now, the prize for the winner:

• 12 of David Blaine’s new ‘Lions’ of your colour choice (Or mixed)
• 1 DVD Copy of ‘Control’ by Wayne Houchin
• 6 Brown Wynn Decks
• 1 WH & DG Ultragaff Deck

All of the above is up for grabs, and dependant on the amount of entries, 2nd and 3rd Prizes will also be given.

ENTRY DATE CLOSES MAY 31st 11.59pm EST
Check out www.themagicreview.com & www.twozwozer.blogspot.comfor more information
So get out there and start filming!

Thanks,
Matty

—-

Whenever you have your video leave the link to it in the comments please.

Those of you that have been following the discussions in the comments section of my previous post know that I received two emails from Superhandz (De’vo) in which he asked me to remove the content concerning these files because what’s in them is protected with copyright of his company.

I’ve been told not to publish these two emails (and I won’t) but I’ll sum them up for you to understand my position:

• He said that I commited ILLEGAL acts against himself and his company and told me to delete them or I would be in BIG trouble.

• He told me that he retirieved my personal information and my website server’s and he would take actions against me if I didn’t do what he said.

• He’s been kind enough to let me rectify with time because he said he would normally have had my site shut down first and go after me in court.

• As for now i have removed the link to the podcast’s episode 2 because there where some screens of the saved forum pages which he claimed to have the copyright to.

After some days of deliberation and talking to many people directly involved in this issue as well as others who have been ruling blogs and websites for years and have had enough experience with laws, copyright, privacy and security over the internet, I’ve finally come up with a decision.

As a blogger, I’m not going to host or promote these files in any way and won’t even say if they are, in fact, real or fake. I’ll keep this information for myself and my private conversations with other people in a different place than a forum, because I’ve learned with this that the internet is not a place to keep your privacy intact.

However, for those of you that might think I’m backing out, I want to let you know that my job in this field has been succesfuly completed.

Since the beginning, my main motivation was to share with my readers, both new and old, that there are some Handlordz saved webpages and files regarding the behaviour of the, as they like to call him, XCM Leader De’vo vom Schattenreich, that have been leaked and are in the hands of many people now.

I, as a blogger, never shared in public if I support what is in them or if they have been edited or left intact. I don’t have the files in other place than in my head for what I’ve read in them, somewhere, somehow. And, as I said, they won’t be posted in this blog to respect the laws.

However, as I also said, my job is complete up to this point because the information about the existence of these files has been made public and now NO ONE can stop them from being spread all over the internet.

I’m sure you won’t see any link to them in the blogs or forums, but there will always be illegal or alternative ways of sharing them like p2p networks, public file hostings like rapidshare, megaupload, zshare, yousendit… public chatrooms, private msn conversations, emails, PM’s at places like myspace and facebook and so on.

I don’t need to suggest, nor will I, for people to start sending these files around because I know this will be automatically done.

So, as a human being and card flourisher, I’ve learned a lot through this experience and now I know who to trust and who to give my money to in the future.

There will be no more posts about Superhandz / Handlordz unless I’m told to publish them by the staff and I won’t make any reviews or free advertising of their products or events as I’ve been doing for other companies.

If they want to stay apart and don’t want to see us all united, that’s fine with me – it’s their loss.

I want to give big thanks once again to all of you that participated, HLers or not, for sharing your opinions and being so kind and respectful. You have my regards, and I’ll keep praying for a united world for our beloved Art.

I’ll leave the comments open here and I hope you guys understand my position.

-Alejandro Portela,
also known as TheCuso.