The US D1 Grand Prix website linked to Wrecked Magazine’s photo gallery of D1 Japan’s final around out at Fuji Speedway. It is very cool to see that D1 would choose us to promote internal company activities above all other websites out on the market that cover the D1 Grand Prix. We are right there on the main page listed as “D1GP Finals in Fuji, Japan.” It links directly from the homepage into Wrecked!

Check out D1GP’s Official Site: http://www.d1gp.com/

As we are excited to be a part of Mobil 1 over the SEMA 2008 week they are doing some out of home marketing for the week as well. Mobil 1 will have this billboard up in Las Vegas, Nevada for the week. We are ready to attack Mobil 1 from the media side so be on the lookout for all of our SEMA coverage. I realize the text is a little hard to read on the right side of the billboard, so here it is.

“My cars push the limits of

Japanese tuning, so I have to use the

best parts for all of

my builds. That’s why I use

nothing but Mobil1.”

-Ben Schaffer - Bulletproof Automotive

Come see the Nissan R35 GT-R at the Mobil 1 SEMA booth #25173

Great work Theory Communications on the design of this billboard. We will see everyone next week at the SEMA show in Las Vegas.

Check out this 996 turbo Porsche that was built for the Mobil 1 booth at SEMA 2008. We got an exclusive sneak peak at it and wanted to give you guys a reason to stop by the Mobil 1 booth to check it out. This 966 that will be in the SEMA booth is gorgeous, I cannot get enough of this green color. Great selection they made for the booth.

This is a graph Elizabeth Churchill (Principal Research Scientist at Yahoo) presented today and was snapped on TechCrunch. Green icons are users that have their photos open and red represent people who have their accounts set to private. This cluster your looking at is a sample cluster of 1,000,000 unique users on Flickr from back in 2005 and their settings on photos. It appears the United States is extremely open with the exception of the Utah area and Hawaii. Europe and India are very private while South America is a very open place. An interesting way to look at the world and Internet privacy.

Well one year ago today we put up the new site live 100% out of BETA. We have enjoyed the last year and all of our experiences with Drifting content from around the world. After we pull our face out of our yummy birthday cake we just want to take a second and recognize our sponsors that have helped make this year happen.

AEM Power
Bosch Spark Plugs
Disc Brakes Australia
Enjuku Racing
Exedy Clutches
Konig Wheels
Mobil 1
NOS Energy Drink
S-Max
Spec Clutchs

While this isn’t huge news for online video (Google Video has had the option for over two years) it gets us excited that this option is available now in Youtube. To specify a point, append a tag to the end of your video link with the following syntax: “#t=4m15s” (you can change the numbers before the ‘m’ and ’s’ to edit the minutes and seconds, respectively. For example, a video we made for our client NOS Energy Drink is the X-Games 14 flip of the Evolution 9.

The video includes some additional clips that some people might not be interested in or have a focus on. Let’s say if someone was writing a story on the X-Games 14 and they wanted to just reference the actual flip to compliment the story, they could use our full length Youtube video but just send people to the rally flip. Here is a link

Link to the X-Games Full Video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z8yGXFrAcF4

Link to the X-Games Flip Directly:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z8yGXFrAcF4#t=19s

They don’t seem to have a simple way to link into a point of the video other than manually adding the “#t=2m49s” to the end of a video URL. Perhaps Youtube is going to phase this feature into it’s products as they have not even mentioned this new feature on the Youtube Official Blog yet. Make sure to enjoy this great Youtube video while linking to particular videos across the Youtube network.

The 2008 SEMA show kicks off November 4th, 2008 but the gossip, car leaks, and content is already flying around the Internet. If you will be at SEMA and want to know where the latest action is at then look no farther than the Wrecked Magazine x Twitter page. Anytime someone says the words SEMA on the microblogging service known as Twitter it will aggregate to our page. This way, you don’t have to wait for editors or reporters to crawl to their websites and let you know about the hot stuff going on during the show. Since SEMA is just around the corner we have the SEMA/twitter page live already as content is rolling in about products and cars on the way to the show. What a blast SEMA will be and make sure if your attending the show to turn on your twitterific/twitterberry or whatever mobile program you may use to connect and tweet about your week in Vegas. Just remember that if you twitter what happens in Vegas is certainly won’t stay in Vegas.

Follow everything happening at SEMA 2008 at Wrecked Magazine:

http://www.wreckedmagazine.com/twitter/sema08

The December 2008 issue of XXL Magazine features Slide America artist Blu on the cover. He provided the music for the St. Louis Drifting section that we shot with the Adrenaline Motorsports crew and our federal trespassing allegations from an Illinois police officer. We are glad to see Blu moving up in the world and very exciting that as he grows into a star that he was a part of our film back in 2007. Good luck on all your future endeavors sir! His song featured in Slide America is “Nuts Hang” from the “Clock is Tickin” EP put out by Clockwork Records. For you automotive industry buffs that read our company blog, Clockwork Records is actually Belle 1’s label, so make sure to give those guys some congrats as well.

XXL Magazine:

http://www.xxlmag.com/online/?p=27195

Watch some Slide America Chapters:

http://www.wreckedmagazine.com/videochannel/slide-america

More info on Blu:

http://www.myspace.com/herfavcolor

After this accident at HIN Nightshift Phoenix I have been in some debates on forums about the safety of media at events and I must say that some people’s replies have really blown me away. After watching this incident happen at HIN and witnessed other accidents in similar environments I think we need to grow up as a motor sports community already.

As someone who owns a company in the media business and does a ton of work around the automotive industry I just see something lacking in a major way. Don’t misunderstand me for a minute either, we have been to these same HIN demo’s and our crew has filmed them in the same fashion as the people above in this accident video. The link below is a video we made for NOS Energy Drink at Hot Import Nights: Nightshift New York. http://videos.streetfire.net/video/HIN-Nightshift-New-York_167950.htm

Now the shot you see from the Drifting demo seems very harmless because no accident had happened but that was filmed by a friend in film of ours who isn’t exactly an automotive media expert. If something were to of happened, he probably had no idea the danger he could of been in around that area. The other thing is anyone with a general credential can walk right up to that wall at HIN or into a hot zone of Formula D. Especially on the Formula D side I think they need to move into a teered system of media.

There is no reason many of the people cluttering the media pits at these events should be inside the area they are in and it just makes it generally more difficult for people who know what they are doing and have a purpose to get their job done. I have witnessed (especially this season at Formula D) some people just doing very dumb things on a hot track even though Formula D takes many great precautions for the media’s safety. Sadly Formula D cannot babysit everyone in the media section constantly observe them to assure they are not doing irrational things but they have to take the liability. Look at this perfect example from Formula D Long Beach. This kid during qualifying hopped on the k-rail and took photos for several runs until security ran and took him down.

This is the major issue I really see that is going on. When you receive a media pass at HIN, NOPI, BOTI, Formula D, Pro Am or any other organization no one delineates you from a official media partner, 5 year shooting professional, blogger, kid on Flickr, local forum or anything. This is where I think a teer system can help everyone’s headache and safety. I think bloggers and local forums/sites are a key and should never have to pay to enter an event but do they really need to be allowed inside the hot media area? Perhaps we need an approval/vouch system to get into the hot area or you have to attend an event first under a cold pass to understand more of what is going on?

Another main reason that got me motivated to right this post is the events that I witnessed at Irwindale Speedway this year. So Friday I woke up wayy early to attend a mandatory media meeting which was no problem. I was upset but swallowed my pride and rolled into this meeting even though I had to bolt out to LAX right after and then head right back to the track. Well after being told for a good amount of time the basics we left and were told we had to come to the meeting tomorrow. I show up to the next meeting on Saturday which wasn’t as early but seemed as brutal time wise. The basics were like don’t run out on the track, don’t be an idiot, stand here, don’t stand here. Well during the main event what does someone do? They jump right across the k-rail while track is hot. The course worker spots them and they did get yelled at immediately. It’s like really though? What if something happened to the guy? Was he really someone worth having the liability of being in a hot zone of the race track? Hopefully he will not be allowed to return after a brash action like that took place. With all of this being said, I want to hop off my soapbox by saying that most of these concerns I am bringing here because I hope we can get this stuff solved before a fatality is caused in the sport. That I feel would be tragic for all of us in the community. If anyone would wish to contact me I am open to help with any way to improve safety at venues from grassroots to the professional series. Just drop a line through the contact form and I will get back to you.

Watch the video that sparked this whole post from HIN Nightshift Phoenix: http://www.wreckedmagazine.com/watchvideo/s13-flips-at-hot-import-nights-nightshift-pho

A very cool web service with a horrible name is my quick review. The name Twitrratr that took me like six times just to get it right when typing it just now for this story. The site allows you to track the current “buzz” or trends about anything over three characters mentioned in Twitter. A very cool social media service that can help agencies and PR companies find out what the true buzz about a product in real time. No reason to wait to find out if your new product launch is going well when you can just twitrratr it. The program uses keywords that push things into one of three categories. Either positive (good marks), neutral (no emotional language), or negative (bad marks). It doesn’t seem to be fool proof but a pretty good gauge for success. We ran a trial with our client NOS Energy Drink and found 50% positive and 25% negative. If you actually read the negative listing however it isn’t something bad against the product. So as it seems to be a great feedback tool, make sure you read over some of th reviews before sending that report into the client.

Check out the Twitter Buzz Site:twitrratr.com