I sound like a broken record, repeating myself... I have a serious case of a deja vu.
In case you haven't noticed and you are not a member of the green monster. Everyone got an email by Mr. Brooks:
As most of you know, I consider the Magic Café a work in progress. Always adding some new things while often removing some of the old.
Working with my buddy Acar Altinsel and the gang over at Penguin Magic (who are now official supporters of the Café ), during the next twelve months we will be engaging in a little experiment of sorts.
Penguin Magic will now be assisting Café members in helping them to better understand many of the new offerings which become available to the magic community on almost a daily basis.
Let me explain.
Begining today, any Café member who browses thru the topics of following forums: Latest & Greatest, Tricks & Effects, Books, Pamphlets & Lecture Notes, Dvd, Video tape, Audio tape & Compact discs, Ebooks, PDF's or Downloads, Stage Illusions or Magical Accessories will now notice a little message in the lower right-hand corner of their screen.
The message says; "LIVE PRODUCT HELP: 8-4PM M-F"
Basically, anytime during normal business hours (Monday thru Friday) you need only CLICK the little box and you will be chatting LIVE with a spokesperson from Penguin Magic!
So, say you are reading a discussion on the latest card trick but have a few questions in the back of your mind which have yet to be answered on the Café - give that box a CLICK and chances are you'll quickly have answers to those questions by a very knowledgeable Penguin Magic associate.
How cool is that?
Well hold-on to your seats folks because we have plenty more new features coming to the Café over the next few months and I want to thank all of you for your continued support of my little website which has helped to make features like this one possible.
Summarized: The Cafe is working with Penguin!
Frank Starsini posted a comment quite fitting and I'm gonna post it here as there is no way to know how long this thread will be up.
So now that Penguin will be "assisting magicians" Live does this mean when someone wants to know a GREAT spongeball routine...
Is penguin actually going to help or are they going to promote something horrible like Jay Nozbleda's spongeball DVD (produced by penguin) ??
Who are these helpers? Daryl? John Carney? Penn and Teller? Or some Kewl teenagers that like triks and will work for free dvds???
If someone wants the a great shell game DVD... Is penguin going to promote Bob Kohler's fantastic offering or the SFS DVDs or are they going to promote Jay Noblzlelda's awful awful Shell Game DVD (again, produced by penguin).
It's unfortunate that Jay was the magician in both of these that I find so low quality. I don't mean to be hammering on him personally.
But those 2 DVDs (there must be others) are truly awful compared to the best media on the market. Yet jay/penguin had the effrontery to call the spongeball DVD "The Last Word on Spongeballs". Seriously???!!! Hardly a responsible DVD title for something so ... bad.
I'm hoping this doesn't turn this website from "magicians helping magicians" to "penguin helping themselves at the expense of newbie magicians".
I'm concerned for the newer magicians.
But this doesn't worry me. What I think is weird is that The Magic Café does that but can't get their search function fixed. Seriously... their priorities are fucked up. Well Mr. Brooks promised more features coming up in the next months. Maybe fixing the bugs will be a feature.
11 comments:
Its the same old story with the Cafe, they like to pretend that they are running the site for altruistic motives and that we shouldn't complain because we are their guests.
What we really are,as somebody pointed out on that thread, is a commodity to be patronised, ignored wherever any element of service improvement is requested, and only to be communicated to when they are trying to sell us their "friends" latest wares.
What a joke
I like penguin, a lot, but this is a serious wtf? moment. Clearly this is a commercial move between the two as a small operation with low margins isn't just going to eat the cost of it's operators dealing with magic cafe queries all day.
He may as well have just announced a merger between The Magic Cafe and Penguin.
Buy from Denny. Penguin is for posers. Well...ya know what I mean.
Damn right Mr Darkstar. Penguin won't be carrying my hot new product, that's for sure.
It's called the C.U.N.T.O.M.A.T.I.C.
Buy it NOW!!
BS
When a commercial firm offer some advice for free, we all know that is 'soft selling.'
After all there is no free lunch in this world. I know there are so many problems in the green monster. However, it remains the magic on-line forums I will check out regularly.
I don't think we should consider forum from the Big E or T11 will help us, right?
For me it's a matter of pride in buying brick and mortar. I always liked to think this pride is somewhat shared. Penguin is like the KMart of magic.
It's good here in London. International Magic, Davenports... But if you live in the middle of nowhere? I'd probably shop for the best deal.
Why bother fixing the search engine when you can get such unbiased help from the Cold Bird?
This idea has one simple and basic flaw. If people start using that feature, discussion will die out. People will get their answer quick and in private, which means there will no longer be an opportunity to discuss the merit of several different routines with the same premise.
It's a little box in the corner. Don't click it. Problem solved.
Just use ad block. It'll get rid of it forever.
Post a Comment