dgmagic - UK magic blog by magician Dan Gifford

The UK Entertainer Directory is a new site I have set up (with some technical help!) for entertainers and performers to advertise their services. There is a big demand for entertainment at weddings, parties and corporate events, and these days many people go direct to the performer via a website rather than through agents.

Being a magician, I use sites like this to advertise myself but I often find they are complicated, won’t let you link to your website or are too expensive and require subscriptions. Other, more general web directories often don’t have relevant categories or they also list low quality sites that you don’t want to be associated with.

So I thought I’d create my own web directory which only has categories relevant to entertainment, is simple to use and cheap. Best of all, I have control over the sites that are admitted, so I can make sure they are good quality sites.

Entertainers and performers provide a link to their site, a short description of the entertainment service they offer and optional contact information. They can choose to place their listing in a variety of categories, including one for magicians (with sub categories for close-up, cabaret and stage magicians, and illusionists), a massive one for musicians (big because of the number of different styles of music and bands), and ones for more unusual entertainers like drag acts, after dinner speakers and living statues.

From the point of view of people looking to book an entertainer, the site is pretty easy to use. All the categories are listed on the front page, so users can click on them to browse whatever type of performer they are after. There is also a search function for finding specific listings and an option to find entertainers in a particular region.

The site is gradually filling up with listings and gradually getting more and more visitors. I’m hoping it will prove to be a useful resource for entertainers and bookers alike.

Magicforge have finally published their updated magic blog tracker

This is a great idea as it shows you which magic blogs are up to date at the moment. It isn’t a completely exhaustive list of magic blogs but there are about 40 on there at the moment.

Worth checking out.

While wandering around the Internet (as you do) I found [cardsorcerer.com->http://www.cardsorcerer.com], an interesting site about marked cards.

Most of my knowledge of card marking techniques came from books such as ‘Scarne on Poker’ and (more…)

Ive started posting some [photo's on Flickr->http://www.flickr.com/photos/ukmagician] - me performing magic and some promotional pictures. Flickr is a really good site which allows you to upload, organise and share photo’s. You can also add a profile about yourself, here’s [mine->http://www.flickr.com/people/43637115@N00/].

I’ve started another blog on blogger.com called [Magic Sites Galore->http://magicsitesgalore.blogspot.com/]. It’s for highlighting magic related websites that I come across in my travels. Originally I was going to post one everyday, but I soon realised that was far too ambitious!

I also wanted to try blogger.com out and see how easy it is to use and (more…)