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Mainstream headlines right now are talking about how the United States is surviving on home delivery purchasing services – like Amazon, Instacart, and UberEats – in order to get the goods we need while maintaining stay-at-home orders. For many, it has become a way of life.

Now, the motorcycle industry is starting to catch onto the same idea, as Indian Motorcycle announces its Click.Deliver.Ride program, which the company says lets you shop, configure, and purchase your new Indian motorcycle online and over the phone – all without changing out of your COVID-19 sweatpants attire.

In reality, the program is just a basic online lead-generation platform for local dealerships, which have always been able to handle the bulk of a motorcycle purchasing transaction over the phone (or via an online form). Though perhaps the ability to home-deliver has not always been so prevalent at the dealership level.

The motorcycle media landscape is rapidly changing, and those changes have hit another publication: Motorcycle.com.

The original gangster of online motorcycle news, Motorcycle.com has seen its two raking newsmakers make their exits from the publication, Sean Alexander and Kevin Duke.

For those who don’t know, Duke was the Editor-and-Chief of MO since 2007, before losing the position in late-2017, while Alexander served as the Director of Powersports Editorial since November 2013, until about one week ago.

Both men now find themselves no longer part of the company, as Vertical Scope – Motorcycle.com‘s owner – re-organizes the brand.

This news has been a bit of a shock to the moto-journalist ranks, though perhaps not ultimately that surprising.

I know all you old-timers haven’t heard of it, but all the cool kids are using an app called Waze to get from Point A to Point B these days.

For motorcyclists, the popular “live map” program just a got a bit friendlier too, announcing today that it was adding motorcycles to its selectable vehicle types.

Don’t know what this means? Think of Waze like a social version of Google Maps. In fact, Google owns Waze and uses its data to power Google Maps’ route selector.

Unlike the users of Google Maps and the like though, Wazers (that’s the preferred nomenclature, dude) can report things to the app, like traffic jams, fuel prices, and our personal favorite: police speed traps.

Alongside the rise of self-driving cars, vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) technology is set to massively change the motorcycling landscape – arguably for the better.

The technology comes in a variety of forms, but its basics involves cars, trucks, motorcycles, and possibly even pedestrians sharing basic travel data, like which lane they are in, how fast they are going, and whether they are changing lanes, coming to a stop, or a similar action.

Being able to communicate these basic pieces of telemetry, and thus alert drivers and trigger self-driving systems, means a big safety increase for all motorists – motorcyclists especially.

Bosch estimates that one-third of motorcycle crashes could be prevented with V2V technology – basically any car-motorcycle crash where the car driver didn’t see the motorcyclist, or vice versa.

In the mainstream news, there is a lot of talk right now about net neutrality for internet service providers (ISPs), not to mention the whirlwind discussions about malicious electronic intrusions, like the Russian involvement in the 2016 US Presidential election, or the recent bout of ransomware that is being linked to North Korea.

The takeaway from these current events is that as our lives become increasingly dependent upon our online presence, we need to take our online security and privacy more seriously, especially during uncertain times.

Asphalt & Rubber might be only a modest motorcycle website, where you spend a handful of minutes during your day reading about all things two-wheeled, but we take these issues very seriously…and for good reason.

As such, we have enabled and forced HTTPS browsing for all users on our site, not only so your connection to our website is secure, but also so your privacy is protected from anyone who might wish to read or track your presence across the internet.

You know him as “Hey it’s Anthony from RevZilla!” in the online motorcycle store’s popular videos on YouTube, but Anthony Bucci is also the CEO and Co-Founder of RevZilla, and is part of the reason why the nerds are taking over the motorcycle industry.

Today, RevZilla announced the departure of Bucci as its CEO, effective on January 13, 2017. After that point in time,  fellow RevZilla Co-Founder Matt Kull will take on the job as interim CEO, while RevZilla continues to look for a full-time replacement.

RevZillians shouldn’t worry too much about the leadership change though, as Bucci will continue his customer-facing activities with RevZilla, and he will also remain an integral part of RevZilla’s advisory team.

This announcement also doesn’t affect Bucci’s position on the Board of Directors for Comoto, the holding company that oversees both RevZilla and Cycle Gear.

We are launching something very special today, which is geared towards our most diehard readers. We call it A&R Pro. It is a premium membership that offers more features to the Asphalt & Rubber website, and more of the A&R content that you have grown to love.

For some of our readers, Asphalt & Rubber is maybe one of several websites you stop to read during the day, and it helps feed your two-wheeled addiction during the work week.

For others, your relationship with Asphalt & Rubber is more infrequent, stopping by A&R maybe whenever an interesting article shows up in your news feed or social media accounts.

That is great, and we are stoked to have you here. Your experience of Asphalt & Rubber isn’t going to change very much going forward, as we are deeply committed to providing free access to timely news, smart analysis, and unbiased reviews to all of our readers.

But, for the Asphalt & Rubber readers who can’t get enough of A&R – often coming here multiple times per day to get the latest stories – we wanted to offer you more of the content and community that you thrive on; and in the same breath, give you a way to help support Asphalt & RubberThat’s where A&R Pro comes in.

The Suzuka 8-Hour endurance race is this weekend, and while the iconic race isn’t being broadcasted by a US television station, the Suzuka Circuit does make a live stream available via Ustream.

The live stream typically covers the Suzuka 4-Hour race (on right now, as of the time of this writing), as well as the free practice and qualifying sessions for the Suzuka 8-Hour. On race day, however, the stream usually just features a live-timing screen, which is still better than nothing.

You can find a schedule of the sessions on the Suzuka Circuit website, or just click right here.

If you have ever joined a motorcycle forum, you should probably change all your passwords – right now.

This is because VerticalScope, a Canadian company that owns the vast majority of motorcycle web forums (among other types of sites), is reporting that its servers were breached back in February, resulting in data the of 45 million users being compromised.

As our friends at Canada Moto Guide pointed out, VerticalScope isn’t the most recognized name in the motorcycle industry, but they are a major player in the space with their holdings in forum communities.

Asphalt & Rubber readers will surely recognize their top web property for motorcycles though, the aptly named Motorcycle.com.

I know a fair number of photographers whose main body of work is covering motorcycle racing, and the one tune they all sing in perfect harmony is how difficult it is to cover the expenses of traveling to races and then make some profit on top of that.

Some of these photographers do outstanding work, as many of you have seen here on the pages of Asphalt & Rubber, and yet they are trying to survive in an economy where the supply far outpaces the demand.

The demand that exists doesn’t often pay a premium price for premium work, preferring instead to get photos as cheaply as possibly.

This is understandable given that many teams and sponsors in motorcycle racing are themselves operating on shoestring budgets, with some fighting on a race-to-race basis merely to stay involved at their current level of competition. In this, they share something in common with many photographers.

One friend of A&R is the first we know of to use a crowdfunding site called Patreon to help stay involved in MotoGP. Scott Jones is bringing some pretty cool new content to his fans who support him in this way.

I want to take a break from our usual daily slew of news and opinion, to give my dear friend David Emmett a moment in the spotlight (something I’m sure he will hate), as this week will mark 10 years of David covering the MotoGP Championship.

David explains the genesis story of MotoMatters much better than I ever could, so I will simply refer you to his posting today on the subject, which can be found on his website. Simply put though, what started out as a modest forum posting on the ADV Rider forum, has turned into one of the most influential websites covering the MotoGP paddock.

As a mutual friend and colleague once said to me, there isn’t a press officer, team member, or rider that doesn’t read MotoMatters with regularity, and there is good reason for that – such is David’s influence on Grand Prix motorcycle racing.

It is a surprise that he has achieved such a mantle in 10 short years.