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If you are reading this, it should be fairly obvious that Asphalt & Rubber has undergone a bit of an upgrade.

This redesign has been a long time coming, but we finally gave the old girl a sprucing up, just in time for her 10th birthday, which will be in October this year.

I won’t bore you with the technical and editorial advantages that A&R 2.0 brings us, though there are many, but from a reader’s standpoint there are a few things we want to highlight:

  • Loads faster
  • More stories on the front page
  • Better category browsing
  • Mobile and tablet friendly
  • Photo galleries actually work (check it out at the end of this post)
  • New storytelling formats
  • Rich media friendly (videos, podcasts, etc)
  • Way more cowbell

The full transition to the new layout and site will take a few more days to complete, so pardon our dust while we work. The basics should all be ready for you at this point though: reading stories, navigating categories, and commenting.

Our A&R Pro readers have been taking the new site for a spin this last month, and we have gotten a great deal of feedback from them and are already making those changes to the site.

Now that it is live for everyone, feel free to kick the tires on the new design and leave us your thoughts on the layout.

We know things like the A&R Pro pages, contact forms, and sidebar need some work. Those should be ready by the end of the Labor Day weekend, if not sooner. 

A quick shout out to a few people who were instrumental at the various stages of this process, I doubt we would have gotten here without their hard work: Ivan Lo, Dustin Gibbs, Louda Peña, and Dan Lloyd. Many thanks to them for dealing with my reptile brain.

And as always, thank you dear readers for coming to Asphalt & Rubber every day. You all make the hard work worthwhile. Let’s all head to the comments section and sing kumbaya.

-JB

If you were on Asphalt & Rubber this weekend, you probably noticed that I switched the commenting system from WordPress’ basic system to Disqus’ more advanced commenting engine.

All previous comments should be imported now, and I hope there are relatively few bugs to reports. Hopefully this will mean a more engaged commenting section, since Disqus handles threaded comments more properly, and has already a good community following.

The slight downside is that some of our loyal commenters will have to register with the Disqus service, though that shouldn’t be too much of an issue since it is a very reputable one, and they won’t spam you once you register.

A question I pose to my photographer friends: why should I go to your site on a regular basis? For most of the photographers I work with, their websites are more like digital portfolios — selections of their best work, maybe a couple lines of prose to art things up, and a contact button. If they’re really savvy, maybe there are password-protected customer galleries available too…probably being hosted on SmugMug or some other prosumer service.

I get why that is the case, this is the online version of the physical portfolios that photographers used to carry around (some still do) to peddle their wares to editors and fans on race day. Maybe a few years ago, that is the kind of website I would have made as well. Show off my work, get my name out there, I’m starving damn it, buy my prints! Ah, but alas that’s not the kind of website that thrives in the cutthroat digital landscape — we want more, and for free.

As a publisher, I’m constantly juggling the interests of the photographers I work with with the needs and expectations of my readers. I want 10,000-pixel-wide shots that anyone can download without a watermark; that is after all what I would want if I was a reader of Asphalt & Rubber, and that is standard I use when trying to make decisions about this site. “Would I want to read this?” is a common question I ask myself.

For photographers, the game has traditionally been the opposite online. In a world of right-click-save-as, the opportunity for someone to snatch a high-resolution photo for just about any purpose is an easy one. There’s not much that can be done to stop it — for every trick, there’s a workaround. A for every click, money is being taken off the table. They only way to make sure your photo isn’t stolen when publishing online, is not to publish it, and even then…scanners.

I feel the plight for my photographer friends, and perhaps if my own shots were any good, I’d feel just as defensive about my hard work swirling around the interwebs with nary a check coming to my inbox. The game is brutal, and by the time you’ve finally “made it” as a bona fide pro-shooter, you’re on the backs of your feet trying to protect what you’ve worked so hard to earn.

Over the course of our many adventures, I’ve had the fortunate ability to debate these ideas with my good friend and colleague Scott Jones — maybe you’ve heard of him.

I absolutely love Scott’s work, he might be one of the most technically gifted photographers in the MotoGP paddock, and he has an amazing ability to pick-up on the subtleties of situations that are happening in a fraction of a second. I love the fact that I can look his work a dozen times, and each time come away seeing something I didn’t pickup on before. For as much of a bromance that we have brewing, I have however never been much of a fan of his website.

Three Harley-Davidson posts on Asphalt & Rubber in a single day? Surely the gods must be crazy. But like a Coke bottle to the head, things are about to get pretty out of control in the American motorcycle landscape in a big way. Setting up a dedicated launch site for its first electric motorcycle, Harley-Davidson isn’t tipping its hands too much officially, though in 11 hours we should know a lot more.

Usually with marketing lingo, you can see the hyperbole for what it is, but in the case of the Harley-Davidson Livewire, the Bar & Shield brand’s statement seems more like an honest assessment, rather than typical industry grandstanding:

“There are milestones that change history – those pivotal moments where the future is defined. This is one of them. Just like this country, Harley-Davidson has reinvented itself many times in our 111 years. This is the next chapter of our journey. Whether you’re a rider or not, we’re inviting you to take part in the experience, and be there for this historic ride forward.”

It is a brave new world when it comes to the internet and motorcycle companies, and I have no problem saying that Asphalt & Rubber has broken a number of stories simply because we bring a different set of skills to the table when it comes to sniffing out a lead: namely we’re a bunch of nerds, who spend far too much time with computers.

Motorcycle OEMs are still coming to grasp with this internet thing and how the opening of information has changed the landscape, and that is where Yamaha got itself into trouble today. Just hours ahead of their launch, we can confirm that Yamaha is ready to drop the Yamaha R25 250cc sport bike and the Yamaha Tricity three-wheel scooter.

This isn’t exactly new information — it has even been hotly tipped by a number of publications, including A&R — but where the information comes from certainly is: Yamaha’s website metadata.

So you want to watch AMA Pro Road Racing and AMA Pro Flat Track this year, but because DMG screwed the pooch on securing any form of TV deal, you think you’re up an apex without a kneepuck, right? Not so fast there speed racer.

To its credit, the Daytona Motorsports Group has created its own live streaming site for AMA Pro Racing, IMSA, and NASCAR content that is not on television: FansChoice.tv, which will be your go-to destination for watching the Daytona 200 live this weekend.

Have you ever wanted a .motorcycle domain name for your website? Us neither, but if did, your chance is coming soon. Dealer software solutions group Dominon Powersports Solutions has been granted…ahem…dominion over the new .motorcycles domain, one of many new interest-specific domain names made available by ICANN.

Like the .xxx domain name that came before it, the ICANN hopes that it can corral specific interests into these domains, thereby relieve some of the overcrowding that is going on with the current top-level domains (.com, .net, .org, etc). Will it work? Maybe yes, maybe no.

In what must be a case of an over-anxious webmaster, Aprilia’s dealer portal and service manual section now has links to manuals for Dorsoduro 1200 and Dorsoduro 1200 ABS models. Rumored to be in the works since the Dorsoduro 750 came out, the new 1200 will feature an 1197cc v-twin motor, and weigh 492lbs at the curb.

Power figures haven’t been quoted yet, but with the added displacement and increased compression, the Aprilia Dorsoduro 1200 should be able to handle that heft a bit better, but still would seem to pale in comparison to its rivals.

Online parts and accessories supplier BikeBandit.com has unveiled its own iPhone application to help motorcyclists deck out themselves and their motorcycle in aftermarket goodness…all from the comfort of the palm of their hand. The app, which rev’s and vibrates when you open it, is complete with the exploded parts diagram that loyal BikeBandit shoppers have come to use and love.

If this post sounds like a thinly-veiled unsolicited advertisement for a fellow Penn State MBA (We are!..), you’d be right, but for the weekend wrencher who needs to remember how to put a clutch back together without hopping on a computer (and then order the bolt/nut/bracket they just lost) this is a well done, and possibly invaluable addition to your iPhone addiction.