Mammoth Blog

An affiliate program refers to the modern, web based equivalent of an old concept. In the past businesses have paid other groups or businesses 'finder's fees' for recommending their service. Web based affiliates work on this principle.

Company A will ask that company B has an advertisement for their website (site A) included on their website, site B. So when people viewing site B see the advertisement for site A and go on it, company B earns money from company A as reward for providing them with customers. http://www.bestinsurancelover.com

With online business this payment is commonly done based on the amount of times that an advertisement is clicked on by customers. When the user clicks an advertisement banner and is redirected to the advertised site, it is recorded and an agreed amount of money is given to the site hosting the advert, per click. Many sites are very open about this and will state that the following advertisements are affiliates and that to show support for their site, please click the advertisement at least once, providing them with the funds to continue running the site. The great benefit of this method is that the advertiser only pays for each actual customer referred to them, minimizing money spent on ineffective advertising.

Clicking is not the only method used. Sometimes payment is by referral, the customer being more formally referred to the affiliate company by a method such as placing a box on a form suggesting that the user accepts mail from the affiliate. Also, it is common for the advertiser to pay their affiliates per sale, giving them a percentage of the sales made from the customers that they refer.

Some companies provide the affiliate connections between businesses as their sole trade. They will seek out companies that can benefit from advertising with each other and for a tariff, provide the connection. http://www.moneyachiever.com

Affiliate groups have come under fire from internet users for using 'spam'. This is blanketing the web user with advertisements, through email, pop up windows etc, to get them to click the advertisements. However this is not practiced by the majority of affiliate programs, who are content to simply provide a modest banner linking to the site that is paying for the advertisement, often quite helpful to customers. source>>>

I was intrigued (though not surprised) by the range of responses to the NSO/Twitter issue (including this blog post that comes down strongly, and humorously, on the anti-Twitter side; and a comment from Emil de Cou, the conductor responsible for the Tweets and the performance).

I'd like to clarify that in my original article my point was not at all that technology is good and technophobes are bad. Indeed, what I meant to say is that both sides risk sounding kind of dopey until they actually understand what "technology" involves, and that too often neither side quite grasps it. I'm all for anything (and I mean anything) that brings classical music across in an intelligent way, and I'm against anything that makes it dumb (and God knows a lot of so-called technological innovations are used in the service of dumbing down, so I can understand people's reservations). But it's foolish to assume that Twitter is necessarily going to be dumb until one understands what the experiment actually entails.

I'm also bothered by adherence to a hard-line view: the idea that Twitter is inherently bad because nobody's attention ought to be distracted from the music even for a moment. For one thing, this view assumes that there are two alternatives: listening to the music in rapt concentration or being distracted by glowing screens. (Never mind the evidence from those music-lovers I mentioned who found that the Concert Companion made them concentrate more and not less.)
(read more after the jump)

But in any case, I don't think that the Tweets are meant for those who listen with total concentration; they're meant for people who aren't concentrating and would like some help getting in to the music. Like the commenter (scroll down) who said, "Had I access to text-based, real-time descriptions of what's going on in the music, I might have spent much more time at classical concerts." Or the woman who sat in front of me at a performance of the Beethoven violin concerto a couple of years ago and squirmed in evident, agonizing boredom through the whole thing. I was tempted to grab her and say, LISTEN, this passage right here is some of the most gorgeous music ever written -- which is, of course, just the kind of didactic approach that I dislike on principle, and that seldom works. In any case, a couple of peeks at a Twitter screen would have been a lot less distracting to me than her boredom was.

I also have a big problem with the tacit assumption that there's a right way and a wrong way to listen to classical music, the "right way" being to receive it in reverential silence, undistracted for even a minute. I don't know many people who actually listen to classical music with that kind of focus. It certainly isn't the way it was received when it was written: in the late 18th century, the "right" way to listen to music was to sit with a friend, grasp each other's hands at high points in the music, and exchange meaningful looks. (I take this description from a letter of J. F. Reichardt, one of the more stuffed-shirt highbrows of his day.) Some people listen with their eyes closed, others follow a score (is that inherently less distracting than reading a Twitter screen? I sometimes feel I miss things about the performance when I focus on reading along in the printed music), others focus on the conductor. Some let their minds wander; some actually like to free up their mind by finding other occupations for their hands or thoughts.

This is all pretty obvious. I'm restating it only because I feel that to start making dictates about the nature of listening (thou shalt not be distracted for even one second from the music) is to step away from the creative freedom inherent in active listening: the freedom to approach the music any way we like, and make it our own - which is what keeps it alive. Should that "freedom" include the right to send text messages during the performance? Maybe not. But it shouldn't mean straitjacketing the audience, either. source>>>

Recently, my wife took our young sons to one of my concerts, a programme of Stravinsky and Gershwin. Hoping to keep our nine-year-old engaged, she whispered occasional observations in his ear - a theme here, an instrument there, things that he could listen out for. At the concert's end, two members of the almost entirely silver-haired audience, bristling with rage, accused them of having "ruined" their concert experience. My wife was mortified, and it will be hard to persuade her to take the boys to a concert again.

I'd like to explode a few myths about what we call classical music. It's not high art for the titillation of a chosen few. What composers express, and what I (and most other musicians) tune in to, is the raw material of life as captured in a score: the passion, the grief, the highs, the sheer brain food. These are the things that make me and so many others engage with music; this is what makes listening and playing so deeply satisfying. It's also why I'm determined to bust classical music out of the ivory tower and into spaces where anyone and everyone can go.

Time Out's classical music editor, Jonathan Lennie, recently caused a small storm when he complained about "overenthusiastic clapping" at concerts, sometimes between movements. He was invited on to Radio 4's Today programme to talk about it, where he sounded a somewhat more conciliatory note: he didn't want to issue diktats on appropriate behaviour, "but [to] start a debate about when an audience should clap". Oh, please.

In Somerset, where I live, clapping prefects are woefully underemployed, there being no concert halls to speak of. Later this month, I'm launching Play the Field, a new breed of orchestral festival there, conducting two high-octane nights of Holst and Haydn, with some of the very best orchestral players around. Not in a cathedral or any august temple of the arts, but in a field on the Somerset Levels.

There have, of course, been orchestral concerts performed in the open air before. But those I have seen have tended to be indifferent performances by under-rehearsed orchestras and third-rate conductors, playing bleeding chunks of sugary music. Has anyone heard the Amsterdam Concertgebouw orchestra perform in a field? Or Simon Rattle conduct under the stars? I thought not - but why should the very best orchestral music be served only at the Barbicans or the Carnegie Halls of this world?

I want people to hear really exciting music played by the best, but in a context where they can clap when they want to, chase their toddlers, drink beer, take photos, get lost in the music and generally be themselves. And because a field has no rules, it's the perfect place to create unlikely combinations of musical genres. Musical "fusion" projects have earned themselves a bad name, but that's mainly because they often involve pop artists conscripting orchestras to play unimaginative backdrops to their acts. What's really exciting is when you spark off a dialogue between very different musical forces.

For this year's festival, I have invited six contemporary musicians to respond to Holst's Planets. In between performances of the orchestral sections, my band, the All Stars (which includes Goldfrapp's Will Gregory and Portishead's Adrian Utley), will play spontaneous electronic responses to Holst's music from across the parkland, incorporating material sampled from the orchestra's performance. The effect should be that of Holst's score set in a kind of ambient relief.

It still amazes me how many musicians aren't really interested in engaging with their audience at all. Alfred Brendel, a pianist for whom I have the greatest respect, has described performance as a sacred communion between the artist and the composer. But what about the audience? Music is communication, a two-way street. If I'm conducting several nights of an opera, the pace, colour and mood of each show will be directly affected by each evening's audience. At every live event, there is a tangible relationship between the spectators and the artists, and so there should be.

Concerts used to be much more of a free-for-all, with the world and his wife (and children) enjoying the music in joyful disarray, at some remove from today's formality. Somewhere along the line, we have forgotten that great music can be rude and visceral; we have put conductors on pedestals, and turned our audiences into passive subjects. I'd like to get back to something more - well, fun. The symphony orchestra has its place in the great concert halls, but it also needs an outing from time to time - an opportunity to be amplified to the hilt and to blaze across the countryside.
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Two weeks a month boxing fans have to withstand a barrage of attacks from fans and representatives of the UFC. The week before a UFC PPV and the week after, we'll hear: "Boxing is dead...Boxing is dying...Boxing is losing its ground to MMA...MMA is the combat sport of the future...etc, etc..."

Most of the so-called legit media take the story and run with it, not really knowing or caring whether the story is true or not. It just makes for a good headlines and it justifies their own ignorance when it comes to the sport of boxing..

Also, helping spread boxing's obituary is the ever-accessible, ever-outspoken Dana White, head honcho of the UFC and de facto voice of MMA. White is a soundbite machine and he spends a good portion of each interview ripping apart all things boxing while declaring MMA, and the UFC specifically, as the antidote to all that's ailing combat sports.

White will talk about the lack of star power in boxing, the corruption and the general degradation of interest in the sport. He'll talk until his segment is up and then post it all over the internet for even more to hear.

He'll never mention the fact that his company probably only has one or two fighters, to be generous, remotely recognizable to the average person on the street. One wonders who would draw more attention on a busy street corner in downtown Chicago, the threesome of Floyd Mayweather, Manny Pacquiao and Bernard Hopkins or the MMA trio of Georges St.Pierre, BJ Penn and Lyoto Machida...The answer to that is obvious.

White's claims of corruption in boxing are, unfortunately, not too far off. But what he fails to mention is that, while his own iron fisted control over his company prevents a lot of controversy in areas of scoring, it opens up just as many questions when it comes to proper fighter rankings and issues regarding fair wages and benefits.

The biggest fallacy in the "Boxing's Dead/MMA Rules" line of thought has to do with the very essence of the way both sports do business. And it's in this discrepancy that we truly discover that boxing is not dying at all and that MMA is not really ruling.

First, it should be made clear that MMA, as a sport, is most definitely not taking over the world. As a matter of fact, the UFC is the only Mixed Martial Arts company that is able to make a real profit and the attempts to branch off into Europe and Latin America have yielded mixed results, at best.

Boxing, on the other hand, has enjoyed great expansion in the international market.

Recently, over 60,000 fans packed into a soccer stadium to see Wladimir Klitschko defend against Ruslan Chagaev and a packed arena in the United Kingdom saw Amir Khan win his first world title. All across Europe and Asia stadiums and arenas are being packed for boxing shows; TV ratings are also through the roof. Even previously dead markets like Russia, Turkey and China have hosted boxing events with great success and are exploring future boxing-related events.

In the United States, boxing is not as prominent as it once was and stars do seem like they're harder to come by, but this is only because the rest of the world is catching up to the talent and skill level of US fighters. Now, it's just as likely to see a meaningful title defense in Europe as it is in Las Vegas.

However, it should be pointed out that attendance has generally been good at boxing events in the US. For instance, a weak card in Newark, New Jersey with the questionable Tomasz Adamek-Bobby Gunn main event, drew over 8,000 fans and the Vic Darchinyan-Joseph Agbeko card in Florida drew over 9,000 while, on the same night, the mega-promoted UFC 100 drew over 10,000 in Las Vegas.

A dominant UFC should've crushed two marginal boxing cards in secondary markets, but it didn't, at least not at the live gate.

But let's get back on track and look at the way the UFC does business compared to the way boxing does business. The myth of UFC dominance gets blown to pieces when we focus on just how small the UFC actually is in terms of ability and/or desire to create new, fresh programming.

The UFC has very little live action on TV. Most of their exposure is through their reality show or through various highlight and countdown shows. It's easy to give the impression of a high quality product when only highlight packages of the best fights are aired.

When you look at it, the entire TV presence of the UFC is aimed at promoting their upcoming PPV. Essentially, most UFC programming is along the lines of an infomercial, whipping their fans into a frenzy for the next show.

Now, as a way of comparison, let's take boxing and fit it into the UFC model.

Before doing enything else. we'd have to eliminate most of the live boxing programs from HBO, Showtime, ESPN, Versus and the Latino stations. Substitute the live shows with Boxing's Greatest Hits and endless Countdown shows.

Now, take all that live action that would've been on cable TV and put it on one mega PPV per month, making it so that if you want to see live boxing, you have to order the show.

Take the month of August as an example. The boxing PPV for August (We could call it Boxing #1: Heat Stroke, or something equally catchy) would feature the following televised bouts:

Roy Jones vs. Jeff Lacy
Timothy Bradley vs, Nate Campbell
Juan Diaz vs. Paulie Malignaggi
Nonito Donaire vs. Rafael Concepcion
Juan Urango vs. Randall Bailey
Robert Guerrero vs. Malcolm Klassen

How many PPVs would that card sell if there were almost literally no way to see boxing aside from ordering the event? Would a card like this sell more than the average UFC PPV of 450-600,000? The answer would be a resounding "yes" and August is not even a particularly strong month this year in terms of competition.

The UFC churns out more PPV shows and they are very good at marketing their shows to the max, but only a media manipulator like Dana White could turn less product and a smaller demographic base into signs of the UFC's domination.

As the next UFC PPV approaches we will be forced to hear more cries of "Boxing is dead" and we will for sure see and hear Dana White on ESPN and on various sports talk shows across the nation. White will blather on about how boxing is dying and the UFC is taking over and the misinformed host will go along with the attack, not knowing enough about boxing to offer any sort of intelligent rebuttal.

But, just one time, it would be refreshing to see a host fire back at White and touch on the points that this article has touched upon. It's time boxing started standing up for itself because a lie told often enough, one day, may become reality.

Boxing is not dying and the UFC is not killing it. source>>>

Fedor Emelianenko has signed a promotional contract with Strikeforce, delivering one of the top pound-for-pound fighters to a company that is quickly raising its profile in the mixed martial arts industry.

The Russian heavyweight became a free agent when the Affliction promotion collapsed following the failed drug test of Josh Barnett, who was supposed to face Emelianenko in the main event of a card last Saturday at the Honda Center in Anaheim, Calif.

Emelianenko had been courted by the UFC, but decided to join Strikeforce because it was willing to co-promote with M-1 Global, which is part-owned by Emelianenko.

UFC president Dana White has long had a policy of refusing to work with other promotions. source>>>

Could the University of Texas regular-season men's basketball game against reigning NCAA champ North Carolina on Dec. 19 at Cowboys Stadium in Arlington draw 75,000 fans?

No one is making predictions yet, but the agreement for the game gives the Longhorns a $75,000 bonus if they reach that milestone.

Tickets are priced at $30, $50, $75, $200, $250 and $500, a Texas basketball spokesman announced Monday. They go on sale to the general public beginning Saturday through Ticketmaster (www.ticketmaster.com).

The largest crowd ever to see a Longhorns' basketball game was 54,432 in the 2003 NCAA semifinals against Syracuse at the Superdome in New Orleans, according to the team's online media guide.

The largest crowd ever for a college basketball game was 78,129 in 2003 for a regular season game between Kentucky and Michigan State at Ford Field in Detroit.

"I don't know what to expect," said Nick Voinis, the Senior Associate Athletics Director for Communications at UT, when asked about possible attendance.

Sports promoter Barry Mendelson, who helped arrange the game, said he expects a "good crowd" because of Texas' fan base in the Dallas-Fort Worth area and the caliber of the opponent.

UT and North Carolina are guaranteed $200,000 apiece for the game, according to a copy of the contract obtained by The Dallas Morning News through an open records request.

In addition, a side letter between Cowboys Stadium and UT promises a $25,000 bonus if more than 35,000 tickets are sold; another $25,000 if more than 50,000 tickets are sold; and another $25,000 if more than 75,000 tickets are sold.

Both teams receive 200 free tickets directly behind their benches, the contract states. And Texas gets up to 40 free hotel rooms for up to two nights, according to the side letter.

Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban has said he thinks the 2010 NBA All-Star Game at Cowboys Stadium -- with tickets priced from $25 to $500 -- can draw 100,000 or more. The NCAA Final Four comes to the stadium in 2014 source>>>

Americans are experiencing the worst unemployment rates in decades, and even marquee professional athletes are finding it hard to obtain a job.
Michael Vick, who was set free two weeks ago after serving nearly two years for bankrolling a dogfighting ring, still can't find a spot on a NFL roster, and more than a dozen teams have said they're not interested in the former elite quarterback for the Atlanta Falcons.
The job market is even tough on former University of Miami tailback and Peyton Manning's old teammate Edgerrin James, who just months ago led the Arizona Cardinals in rushing at Super Bowl XLIII in Tampa.
With 12,121 yards in 10 seasons, Edge is 123 yards shy of cracking the NFL's Top 10 all-time list of rushers to likely make the Pro Football Hall of Fame, and he said there's "not 32 backs out there better than me" in reference to the 32 NFL teams.
Edgerrin James and child
But he's not worried about joining a team. The time off has allowed him to mourn the death of his longtime girlfriend, who died of leukemia in April, and he spent time last week working with 400 kids at his football camp in his hometown of Immokalee, Fla. Washington Redskins tailback Clinton Portis assisted his former college teammate.
James, who turned 31 on Saturday, is on the tail end of his career, but he still has enough juice to contribute to a team. The 6-foot-2, 219-pound back would be a good fit in New Orleans or Jacksonville, which feature smallish tailbacks Reggie Bush and Maurice Jones Drew.
If he doesn't find employment before the NFL season, Edge can always sell the white Lamborghini he purchased during Super Bowl week. source>>>

The Basketball Hall of Fame has opened up a Michael Jordan exhibit.

Jordan will be enshrined into the Hall of Fame, which is located in Springfield, Mass., next month.

The display features items from Jordan's time at North Carolina, his NBA career with the Bulls and Wizards and his run with the 1992 Olympic Dream Team.

Jordan will enter the Hall of Fame on Sept. 11 with former NBA stars David Robinson and John Stockton and coaches Jerry Sloan and C. Vivian Stringer. source>>>

2009 college football betting is just about underway with Week 1 games being played on Thursday, September 3. The most exciting Thursday game in sports odds will probably be Oregon at Boise State on ESPN at 10:15pm EST.

Friday college football betting odds will feature only one game on the schedule between Tulsa and Tulane at 8:00pm EST.

Then on Saturday Sept. 5th; get ready for tailgaters, beer bongs and pure college football betting excitement with Navy at Ohio State on ESPN at 12:00pm EST, Georgia at Oklahoma State on ABC at 3:30pm EST and Alabama at Virginia Tech on ABC at 8:00pm EST.

This brings us to the Vegas Sports Odds top college football betting sportsbook picks for 2009 and the Florida Gators are early favorites to win in BCS odds once again.

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Tim Tebow will not have Percy Harvin this season and will have to look more towards tight end Aaron Hernandez but the Gators should have enough fire power on offense and a dominating defense that returns them back to the championship.

Early BCS odds had Tim Tebow and the Florida Gators a 2-1 favorite but early college football betting has dropped the line slightly at some sportsbooks. Total regular season wins for the Gators has been set at 11 UNDER -135 with the best 2010 BCS odds on the Florida Gators are currently at Sportsbook.com and SBG Global with +200 odds.

The Oklahoma Sooners are the second pick in college football odds to win the national championship and like the Gators they also have a Heisman Trophy winner Sam Bradford. The Sooners seem to have an easy 2009 college football schedule with only the Texas Longhorns standing in their way.

2009 regular season total wins for the Sooners has been set at 10 UNDER -165. The best BCS odds for the Oklahoma Sooners are currently at Sportsbook.com with +600 odds.

The USC Trojans are next on our list of top college football betting picks in BCS odds and once again they will compete for the title in 2010. The problem for the Trojans is that they will have a new starting quarterback in either Aaron Corp or true freshman Matt Barkley.

2009 regular season total wins for the Trojans has been set at 10.5 UNDER -160. The best online sportsbook BCS odds to win the national championship are currently at Sportsbook.com with the USC Trojans at +700.

The Texas Longhorns are returning 14 starters this year and follow the Trojans in our top college football betting picks. Colt McCoy leads the experienced back field of Vondrell McGee, Cody Johnson and Foswhitt Whittaker into the 2009 season but the defense will be without the talent of Brin Orakpo and Roy Miller.

2009 regular season total wins for the Longhorns has been set at 10 OVER -160. The best BCS odds to win the national championship are currently at BetUS sportsbook with the Texas Longhorns at +725.

The Ohio State Buckeyes round out our top 5 college football betting picks in 2010 BCS odds. The Buckeyes return with Terrelle Pryor, Dan Herron and Brandon Saine. Ohio State lost Beanie Wells on offense and James Laurinaitis and Marcus Freeman on defense but are still a favorite to win in college football betting odds.

2009 regular season total wins for the Buckeyes has been set at 10 OVER -160. The best online sportsbook BCS odds to win the national championship are currently at Sportsbook.com with the Ohio State Buckeyes at +1200. source>>>

Florida football coach Urban Meyer, the former University of Utah coach, has signed a six-year contract that will amount to a $750,000 annual raise, the Associated Press reported Monday.

The new deal will pay Meyer, who has led Florida to two national championships in the past three years, $4 million annually.

Meyer also becomes co-chairman of a university scholarship program.

Florida president Bernie Machen, the former Utah president, created the Florida Opportunity Scholars Program to provide financial assistance to first-generation, financially disadvantaged students.

The coach has pledged a total of $1 million to the scholarship fund during the length of his contract. source>>>

Tiger Woods would be having a tremendous year if he weren't, well, Tiger Woods.

But because he is, because he has established such an enormously high standard and measures himself mostly by victories on golf's grandest stages, it has not been a tremendous year. Not yet, at least.

His victory in Sunday's Buick Open, while impressive after rebounding from an embarrassing opening-round 71 on Warwick Hills, one of the PGA Tour's most vulnerable tracks, does nothing to alter that perception. All that can salvage Woods' season is a triumph in two weeks in the PGA Championship at Hazeltine.

He'll surely be the favorite - he has been the favorite at every major he's participated in for more than a decade - yet, based on his inability to come through at Augusta National, Bethpage Black and Turnberry in 2009, the aura of invincibility is not there as it was in the past.

It would not be a shock to see him go majorless for the first time since 2004. It might not even be a shock if he failed to finish in the top 10.

Something has gone wrong in each major. Not terribly wrong, just wrong enough.

- In the Masters, the problem was his swing. The four-time champ failed to break 70 until Sunday. He rallied to within a few strokes but faltered down the stretch as did playing partner Phil Mickelson. He told the press that he almost won the tournament with "a Band-Aid swing."

- In the U.S. Open, the problem was his putting. Woods made another late run, but it was too little and too late. He left a lot of putts short, and when he tried for a little more pace, he hit it well past the hole.

- In the British Open, the problem was - you name it. After a disastrous stretch in Friday's second round, he missed the cut by a stroke.

Each failure - and, yes, that is how we must refer to it when Woods, the premier player of his generation, is unable to win a major - is dissected over and over by the television commentators. This subplot receives nearly as much attention as the winner, especially when they happen to be uncharismatic, if deserving champions such as Angel Cabrera, Lucas Glover or Stewart Cink, as well it should. Woods has earned it.

Nobody expected it to be like this, not after he came back so strongly from last summer's knee surgery, capped by another dramatic, last-hole triumph in March at Bay Hill. Yet it demonstrated again the vast difference between a PGA Tour event, even one as respected as the first three Woods won this seaon, and a major championship. In majors, any flaw in one's game is exposed.

Take Saturday's third round at Warwick Hills. Woods hit two approaches from the wrong fairway. It didn't matter. If he hits it from the wrong fairway at Hazeltine, he'll pay a much heavier price.

There's also the matter of major pressure. Just because he's won 14 majors, don't assume Woods is totally immune to the gravity of the moment. As has been well-documented, he has yet to win a major when trailing entering the final round. Is it possible he could go his entire career without ever mounting a Sunday charge to win one?

Time is certainly not running out on his bid to surpass Jack Nicklaus' record of 18 majors. Yet one is beginning to suspect that it may not be quite as inevitable as it did two or three years ago.

Since his victory at the 2007 PGA at Southern Hills, Woods has won one major, the U.S. Open at Torrey Pines. Granted, he missed the British Open and PGA last year due to his surgery, but if we here to come up short at Hazeltine, he'd have captured only one of the last eight, and two of the last 12. At this rate, he won't catch the Golden Bear until 2017 when Woods will be in his early 40s.

He may well win this coming week at Firestone, finish the season with seven or eight victories, including the FedEx Cup and the $10 million payday, and be selected by his peers again as the Player of the Year. It would be quite a comeback after being gone from the tour for eight months.

But all of this will mean nothing if he doesn't come through at Hazeltine. source>>>

Taylor Swift has joined the cast of the film, Valentine's Day, her publicist confirmed Friday (July 31). The romantic comedy also stars Hollywood heavyweights such as Jessica Alba, Jessica Biel, Bradley Cooper, Eric Dane, Patrick Dempsey, Hector Elizondo, Jamie Foxx, Jennifer Garner, Topher Grace, Anne Hathaway, Carter Jenkins, Ashton Kutcher, Taylor Lautner, Shirley MacLaine, Queen Latifah, Emma Roberts and Julia Roberts.

According to MTV News, the Garry Marshall-directed film follows five interconnected stories set in Los Angeles on Valentine's Day. It is being produced by New Line and expected to be released just prior to Valentine's Day in 2010. Although it has not been announced what their roles are, Swift was photographed on set with Lautner. This is not Swift's first film role. She also appeared briefly in Hannah Montana: The Movie earlier this year.

Swift will open three concerts for Keith Urban this weekend, with performances in Boston on Friday (July 31), Philadelphia on Saturday (Aug. 1) and Rochester, N.Y., on Sunday (Aug. 2). She'll also appear at WE Fest on Aug. 7 in Detroit Lakes, Minn., with an additional performance with Keith Urban in Kansas City the next day. The next headlining date on her Fearless tour will be Aug. 9 in Omaha, Neb., with guests Kellie Pickler and Gloriana.

Swift also has two concerts scheduled in Chelmsford, UK, on Aug. 22-23, before returning to a sold-out concert in New York City's Madison Square Garden on Aug. 27. source>>>

Jennifer Nettles is well aware that some fans are upset over Sugarland's recent concert cancellations, but says she feared she would damage her voice even more if she didn't take time off for vocal rest. Nettles first noticed problems with her voice after the duo recorded new tracks in the studio between tour dates. "It's very scary," she told CMT Insider prior to a Thursday night (July 30) performance in Bend, Ore. "Because you think, 'All right, I can go out there -- and I can do tomorrow -- but I may not do the rest of the year if I do tomorrow.' And that is terrifying. And that is when you say, 'Wait a minute. Let's pull back.'" Nettles acknowledges she's disappointed the cancellations prompted some fans to publish negative comments about the duo on the Internet. "But at the end of the day, it also says, well, we have something that people really want. And sometimes they want it more ... than I have to give." Sugarland is scheduled to perform Friday (July 31) in Troutdale, Ore, and Saturday (Aug. 1) during Kenny Chesney's stadium concert at Qwest Field in Seattle. See the entire interview with Sugarland on the new episode of CMT Insider airing Saturday (Aug. 1) at 1:30 p.m. source>>>

One person died and two others remained in critical condition Sunday (Aug. 2) after a portion of the main stage collapsed at the Big Valley Jamboree, a major country music festival in Canada. Billy Currington had just completed his performance when the accident occurred Saturday (Aug. 1) at the festival in Camrose, Alberta, a community located approximately 60 miles from Edmonton.

The identity of the person killed has not been released, but reports indicate it was not one of the singers or musicians performing at the festival. According to the Edmonton Sun, Currington appeared to have been cut on the face by a falling pole. The newspaper also said his bassist, Shaun Smith, was pulled from the stage area by emergency responders. Photos of Currington and Smith showed them walking away from the debris.

With high winds and heavy rain moving toward the festival grounds, the performances had been postponed and security crews were clearing fans out of the concert when the stage collapsed at approximately 6 p.m. PT. One of the audience members, Ernie Gratton, told the newspaper, "The wind was unbelievably intense. We just followed the crowd out. My eyes were full of sand. There were tents flying all over the place." Danny Hooper, an air personality for CFCW in Edmonton, told listeners, "I can't describe the sky. It was brown and purple and green. The massive wind blew me backwards."

At least 75 people with various injuries were treated at area medical facilities. Emergency personnel worked throughout the night to account for all of those attending the festival.

The concert promoter has canceled all of Sunday's activities, including appearances by Tracy Lawrence and Tim McGraw. The four-day festival began Thursday with a lineup that included Joe Diffie and the Kentucky HeadHunters. Josh Turner and Glen Campbell were among those appearing Friday. Kevin Costner and his band, Modern West, were scheduled to follow Currington onstage to perform prior to Saturday's headliner, Gary Allan.

"We are deeply saddened by the events of Saturday night," concert producer Larry Werner said in a written statement. "Our thoughts and prayers go out to all of the families, fans and friends impacted by this incident." source>>>

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"Give a KiSS" can make a significant impact RIGHT NOW, one child at a time. These students need our help and so does the future of Africa. In Giving this KiSS you are forgiving your personal products and you are providing essential educational opportunities for the African children. This program enhances the educational experience of a child in Kenya.