2009 March |

Why Is Voices.com Not Marketing their Marketing Ebooks?

Morning All, (I’m writing this up morning cairo time… which is probably when you guys are about to go to sleep) anyway hopefully when you guys log on to voiceover-casting.com you stop by my blog and check out what Taji is up to.

As you might have noticed I am a bit of a trouble maker… not so much that I break things or commit crimes… but rather I ask embaressing questions to people in our industry. Sometimes they ignore me… and sometimes I bug them enough to answer. But for now let me tell you the backstory of today’s post:

A while back I was browsing the voiceover-casting.com site and came across a member’s comment that peaked my interest. more »

Shameless plug of the Day

Nomad-One Independent Design & Web Consultancy

Hey folks… its me again and I’m here to give you my first shameless plug of the day… maybe later on I’ll be famous and people will pay money for me to try their products out… Lux! are you listening!

Anyway… If you guys had read my previous posts about marketing yourself through your website.. you would have realized that I was actually doing just that. And recently I registered the domain mahmoudtaji.com and started the process of figuring out how to design and implement my new website.

One person who provided endless advice and was and still is one of the most amazing designers I know is Mr. Nur Furlong owner of .. Nomad -One

Nur is based in South Africa and is one of the few people I can call a close friend. He is both dedicated… creative… courageous and painfully sweet (seriously I feel evil next to him). He was the one who helped me decide on a design for my site and has been there for me throughout the seemingly endless mess ups and disasters that I was able to inflict on my website (I was determined to be the administrator of the site).

If you are smarter than me (and you probably are) then I suggest you give Mr. Furlong the creative and technical reigns and hire him to setup your website for you.

Also if you aren’t happy with your existing website and you think that you need a site redesign… he’s your guy! Also the guy is a Wordpress virtuoso

Go to http://www.nomad-one.com for a quotation on how much it would cost to setup your new website or redesign your old site send him an email today!

End of shameless plug… We now resume with our usual programing

Winter New

Copyright Digitalblasphemy

As you guys know I like to shake things up every once in a while… So as a change from my usual cutting edge investigative journalism (believe it or not I do have a degree in journalism that I don’t use!) I have decided to showcase a poem I wrote (and voiced) last August I wrote this … and eventually voiced it (low quality on a computer mic without a pop filter… so I added a flange effect to cover the audio ouches) as an audition for a job.. it required the voicing of bits of literature etc… anyway I wont explain what I meant by it because it could mean something completely different to you… which gives it the chance of being personal to you. more »

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Ladies and Gentlemen Hold On To Your Seats, We’ll Be Experiencing Some Turbulence

Ladies and Gentlemen … this is your co-passenger Taji speaking. Please bare with us as the site is going through upgrades and you WILL be experiencing some turbulence. Last night for a few hours we had a “User Has Exceeded his Bandwidth Quota” sign on the front page and the hosting company didnt seem to be very happy with us… but ultimatly that’s good news from Fernando / Brian and the rest of the Voiceover-casting team cause that means their feldgling site (which I originally found out about through a Spam mail Brian was sending…. you didn’t think I’d let you off the hook for that didja B?) is getting hits and becoming more and more popular with the VO Community. more »

To USB Or Not To USB… is there a question? Microphone reviews

First off… my apologies for the post title…. I just couldn’t be bothered with a more creative one.

As a voice over artist I’ve been behind the mic since 1996… before that I was a singer in a rock band (yes… its true since ‘92) and about 95% of the time someone else was behind the mixing board recording (this is pre digital pre minidisc era so it was all on those big ass reels) when i left the band I went solo and when I went solo I discovered an application called Cool Edit Pro which gave you multi-track capabilities. Now you can imagine that I had the time of my life… writing and mixing my own songs… It was a learning curve… understanding sound dynamics and what the techies used to add to my voice to give it this or to my guitars to give it that.

Anyway times have changed and Cool Edit Pro was bought out by Adobe Systems of photoshop fame. And now technology and global online trends (namely podcasting) has helped provide the regular joe shmoe with the ability to produce a high quaity digital recording from the confines of his garage / room / home. more »

Taji Needs A Favor! From Residents of Brooklyn / Manhattan

Hello Folks, Its me again… Its the weekend here in Cairo and I am in the process of building (oh so slowly) my new website and I need a favor from any of the Good Members in Voiceover-casting.com who reside in the New York area.

If you reside in the New York districts of Brooklyn or Manhattan then you could seriously do me a big solid. I have a friend who is visiting New York in May and I was hoping he could pick me up a new Audio Technica AT2020 USB microphone. I hear they’re good and I want to diversify my sound a little.

Problem is that my friend works in a None Governmental Organization and when he offered to get me the microphone from NY he was under the impression that they wouldnt object to his using their office address to send my microphone to them through amazon (Amazon has it listen for a great price!)….. Well they said NO!

He’s not happy and I am not either… I need a kind soul to lend me their address so I can send my AT2020 to their home for my friend to pick it up when he travels to NY.

I know this is a big favor from someone you don’t know but I don’t have any connections in NY. My friend Waleed will be working in Brooklyn and residing in Manhattan during his stay there. I can supply you with all his details … and you get to meet a great guy who’s organization is helping change the world (I think.. I’m kind of sketchy on what they do) I think he works for Soliya.net

Aaaanyway… thats it for now… Hey if you want something from Egypt maybe I can send it to you with him!

Also if you can help you can send me a private msg on the site I dont want your details displayed for the world to see… in fact i’ll turn off comments for this points.

Many thanks and thanks for Visiting the Emporium

The Site Upgrade…Is It Good Or Is it Evil?

If you read my blog post yesterday about Voiceover-casting.com’s upcoming web upgrades you’d know that this coming sunday 29th of March Brian, Fernando and the guys who own Voiceover-casting.com are going to shut the website down for for a few hours to make upgrades. At the time the thing that stood out the most from Brian’s email / msg to me was the new chatting feature (which they have already implemented as of this morning)… Although I probably wont get a chance to speak to many of you (because of the time difference … I live in Cairo, Egypt) I was excited at the prospect. But then Fernando sent me a message that … more than anything made me less comfortable with the upgrades … and more apprehensive about what is to come. more »

What is this?… Why is this!

I just remembered that I saw this through a facebook posting that Stephenie made.. didnt get it in my email though…

Oops … there it is… I just got it on my gmail… wonder why it was posted on facebook a day or so earlier?

Now there has been something that’s been bothering me recently about the VO industry… Y’all are cheap! you dont spend any money on creative work. more »

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VoiceOver-Casting Going Offline Sunday For Overhaul

In case you missed the announcement VoiceOver-Casting.com will be down for maintenance And as the picture above suggests the website is apparently run by a jumbo jet engine… very high tech stuff!!!

Here’s Brian’s note on it:

” Website will be down, March 29 2009

This Sunday March 29, our Voiceover-casting.com website is getting a complete overhaul (upgrade). It will take nearly 6 hours maybe longer. we are adding a ton of new features. Bear with us, I give you my word we will be working as fast as our fingers can type. This will have all the bells and whistles you’ve all been looking for. Feel free to contact me if there are any questions. Thank you all for helping grow our community. Voiceover-casting.com – Admin, Brian Hudson Commercial@Produlz.com. ” more »

And Now For Something Completely Different

Hey there,

After yesterday’s tumultuous post I wanted to share with you some insight from one of my favorite VO artists… Mr. Peter Drew… This article is on his site among many many other articles that have been invaluable to me as a VO artist.

Stop the Stumbles – A Quick Tip for Voice Over Talents more »

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” Website will be down, March 29 2009