By Rob Einaudi

Editor-in-Chief

As many of you know we lost John and Jen at the end of 2008 and I had to run the blog solo this year. Lucky for me a bunch of friends agreed to syndicate us their stuff, including Brian Lohnes at BangShift, the guys at Speedhunters, Dan Strohl at Hemmings, Ben Schaefer at The Real JDM, Antonio Alvendia at Motor Mavens and of course Fireball Tim. We also added a bunch of new contributors, including Chris Trout, David Belau, Michael Berenis, Patrick Ernzen and Ryan Brutt. And of course let’s not forget old friends like Mike Musto, Sam Barer, Katherine Helmetag, Steve Neil, David Wallens and Jim Brennan. Ryan Porter even managed to blog from time to time, when he wasn’t too busy looking for the perfect 993. So thanks to everyone! (And I’m sure I probably missed a few folks!)

Things started to pick up in May when John got back on board in Los Angeles (though he now spends most of his time working on StreetFire). I’m really hoping to find a way to get Jen back in early 2010. We have a few other schemes for 2010, so stay tuned… But in the meantime, here’s the best of the blog for 2009:

The Caption Contest has become the most popular feature of the blog. I think this pic was my favorite.

We found a ton of cool and crazy rides on eBay this year. I really loved this chopped Duster.

We always go all out at SEMA and this year was no exception. And as usual, you guys helped us pick the best rides of the show.

Since we merged with StreetFire, we’ve had a bunch of great video in the blog (John will post his ten favorite StreetFire videos tomorrow). Me? I’m torn between the Ram SRT-10 burnout gone wrong and the Ken Block spoof.

We covered the heck out of Formula D this year. I made it to the Seattle stop and had a great time. This 240SX blew me away (best paint of 2009?). Here are the walk-around videos I shot in the pits.

I think the Fox body with the leaf blower supercharger was the single most hilarious thing in the blog this year.

VWVortex is always a great source for material. The Rabbit with too much camber killed me. So did this Vette.

Will rusty hoods continue to be popular in 2010? How about stretching tires?

Jim Brennan really went beyond the call of duty with his Obscure Muscle Car Parking Lot series. I think the 1970-71 Plymouth Sport Fury GT was my favorite, but I’m biased.

After the whole cash for clunkers debacle, it was refreshing to read Chris Trout’s post The Value of a Beater. We all really enjoyed Steve Neil’s The Forgotten Man of Chiba’s Shop. And David Belau’s tale of the possessed Dart was cool and creepy. Where else could you read a story like that?

Let me know if I missed anything, and post your favorites below!

By Rob Einaudi

Editor-in-Chief

Check out the details on this amazing ’59 Chevy Apache. And what do you know, it’s for sale!

By Ryan Porter

IN-N-OUT Editor

It’s been a long time coming. Users have been asking for years and many users have been doing it on their own, but now it’s official, YOU CAN LIST YOUR RIDE FOR SALE ON CARDOMAIN!

It only makes sense that after ten years of showing off your cars you can now list them for sale in the same exact place. And what better place to list your car for sale than CarDomain, where people will most appreciate highly modified cars for sale. Gone are the days when you had to list the value of your modifications in the body–that’s now a default data point for us.

This feature has been up for about a week with no fanfare, and we already have 400 cars listed. We’ll continue to enhance this features as time goes on, so please leave us your feedback or feel free to private message me if you have any questions of comments. I’ve also added a bunch of screen shots of the new feature after the jump.

Continue reading "CarDomain Launches Rides For Sale!" »

By Rob Einaudi

Editor-in-Chief

As part of our recently completed site migration (and yes we are still working out a few bugs) we revisited the way ratings work on CarDomain. Many people complained that they saw their ratings drop. That is not exactly the case. I asked Steve Crane, one of our developers, to explain the tweaks they made to the system.

The rating system is something we take very seriously. It serves as a two purpose piece of information that is extremely important. On one hand it gives a the ride owner a sense of how others think of their ride. On the other it shows users what rides they might be interested in spending some time learning about.

When we undertook to update the site we noticed a few issues with the system as it stood. The old system was rounding up improperly giving the impression of having a higher rating for everyone. Anything above 3 was a 3.5, anything above 3.5 went to 4 and so on. Similarly a system was meant to be in place that prevented rides with a few stacked votes (say three people voting 5) to beat out rides that have been getting consistently high votes for a long time (say fifty votes with 20 being 4 and 30 being 5) was not functioning. Both of these issues have been ‘fixed’ as it were. This will result in everyone seeing what looks like a reduction in rating.

For our long term goals a full redesign of the rating system should help everyone. We are working on a system that will reward rides that do well over the long haul and give rides that are new rewards for improvement. Also in the wings is a few ideas that will help give people who rate rides well over time more of a say in how rides rate compared to other rides. Our goal will always be to more truly reflect the votes and opinions of those doing the rating while not allowing for petty ratings or ‘bought’ ratings to influence the system.

Hopefully this answers more questions than it raises. Post your questions below and I’ll do my best to answer them.

By Rob Einaudi

Editor-in-Chief

Hey guys. Well, it’s been almost a week since we pushed out the new version of CarDomain, and we really appreciate your patience and feedback as we work through the bugs. We’ve come a long way toward fixing all the broken stuff in the last few days, but here are a few of the remaining known issues.

Loss of friends – We lost some connections in the transfer. Please send new friend requests to anyone missing from your list.
PM issues - We are scrubbing out erroneous messages from inboxes. We probably won’t be able to restore all missing PMs, though. Sorry!
Comments missing – We are restoring comments on most pages.
Background art - We are modifying this to accept an image url.
Avatar issues – Broken avatars on the profile page are fixed. Any avatars which were updated just before the migration will be repaired today
Ratings change – Yes, there were some tweaks to the system. Look for a separate blog post on this in the next day or two. It’s a big topic!

Did we miss anything? Post more bugs or feedback in the comments below!

By Rob Einaudi

Editor-in-Chief

Hey guys, we yanked the tired old 440 that’s been running CarDomain for the past ten years and replaced it with a brand new 6.1 Hemi. Our dev guys have been working on this project non-stop for close to three months and we just fired it up a few hours ago. So now we need your help with the shakedown. Play around on the site, and post any bugs you find in the comments below. Our developers will keep an eye on this blog post through the weekend and will be working to sort out all the issues. Thanks in advance for your dedication and patience! This new swap is gonna allow us to go much faster in the future!

By Rob Einaudi

Editor-in-Chief

We just got some new CarDomain stickers, and they look great. If you want one, just send us a SASE, but be sure to read the tutorial first! One sticker per request, unless you do something that cracks us up, and then you’ll get more. And be sure to use our NEW address:

CarDomain Stickers
3417 Fremont Ave. North
Suite 400
Seattle, WA 98103

And a special thanks to the crew at Sticker Giant. If you guys ever need stickers made for your car club these guys are awesome to work with. Great price, excellent customer service and super quick to get everything done.

By Rob Einaudi

Editor-in-Chief

Some of you may have noticed that we have a new events system. Woo hoo! Let us know what you think. We’re planning to add comments soon, and then next year we’re gonna turn it over to CarDomain members so you guys can upload your own events. In meantime, though, if you have new event pics you want published, shoot me an e-mail and if they’re good, I’ll get ‘em up. Thanks to Jeff Douglass for these pics from the Dublin Peanut Festival.

By Rob Einaudi

Editor-in-Chief

Here’s an e-mail that came into our inbox recently:

Im 16 years old and check this website religiously day in and day out for the past couple of years. Im almost 16 and have worked and worked to save up enough money for a car. My problem is that my parents dont think i need a car, and sure i dont but, im stuck driving my parents mini van everywhere. Im almost 16 and im just sick of it i want something i can love thats mine i dont need to go fast or anything but working with cars is something ive always wanted to do, but never have i got the opportunity to because my parents tell me that “i pretty much have a car, why would i need my own”. i just kinda needed to vent and i know the people at CarDomain will understand. thanks for taking your time and reading this.

Alex

What would you tell Alex?

By Alex Vickers

Katakuna

Since joining CarDomain, I’ve noticed that some people create new accounts for the sole purpose of  telling someone how ugly their car is, or to dispute performance specs, or in general just to be a prick. I haven’t just noticed them, I encounter them frequently. Some people just can’t seem to wrap their mind around the fact that yes, my car will reach sixty miles per hour in under eight seconds.

One user, whose name I shall not mention, opened their account right before he told me off and proceeded to type out numerous insults towards me. Since he doesn’t have a ride up yet, I tell him privately that he’s wrong. These exchanges go on for a week before he starts getting personal. Now I could care less how this person feels towards me, because once someone gets personal, it’s a sign they’ve lost and can’t think of any other way to argue. This whole thing means I pretty much owned him (yay for e-thugs!).

By now you may be thinking, “Why is this guy telling us this?” I’m telling you because there’s a difference between a healthy debate and a downright hateful screaming !@#$%fest. Most of us know what our cars are capable of. My advice to you when someone gets like this is to ignore them at all costs, because it makes you look a fool if you argue with a tool.

So, I pose this question: Have you been in an argument like this? How did you handle it?