Sidepodcast

Homepage is Where the Heart Is - The Drivers Part 1

In the midst of 2008, we took it upon ourselves to review F1 driver and team websites, searching for pages that reach out to fans, and that allow us closer inside the F1 paddock. Now almost two years on, the grid has changed significantly, as have many of the sites themselves, so we thought it was time to update our reviews.

As we go through the list, I will be approaching the sites from the point of view of a fan, looking for personality and style from our drivers. Mr C will take a more geeky approach, looking at the technical side of the various sites.

Of note, this year we've added a new metric to our reviewing process and all homepages are now tested for loading speed. We're using Safari on Snow Leopard and each page is refreshed five times with a mean average taken. All browser caching is disabled. Also new for this year, pages were tested on an iPod Touch and an Android mobile phone.

We'll be racing through the sites six at a time, in 2010 entry list order, so let us begin with the reigning world champion.

Jenson Button

Christine: Jenson's website hasn't changed enormously from two years ago - the navigation is in the same place, and the font is identical. The website was good back then, though, so it didn't need to go a huge step to improve. Jenson was one of the first F1 drivers to offer up videos from his time on the road, and he allowed lots of insight during the terrible Honda/Brawn winter crossover. Some of the flash elements are a little bit annoying but the content makes up for that. There's plenty of news and media to consume, and JB allows fans to upload their own photographs to share with others. We also know that Jenson likes to hold the occasional competition, designing his helmet for example, and that is a big plus as well.

Mr. C: The first site we look at and we're hit by the Flash problem. Jenson's site has been built using Adobe Flash, and that means neither the Touch nor the mobile are able to browse this site. Using a desktop browser, things remain larger similar to the way they were 18 months ago. Amazingly, nothing on the site yells "World Champion". There's no sign of his trophy, no mention of the WDC title anywhere in fact. The news section sadly appears to copy text from team press releases, but I do like the content contained with the "trackside" section.

The tracking statistics that adorn the right hand side of the page appeal to me. I like that it tells you the most popular day for traffic, and it's nice to know you're not alone when browsing the site. The biggest issue I have though is the mammoth load time, I just don't have the patience to wait around.

Site: http://jensonbutton.com/
Load time: 5.02 seconds
Fan rating: 7 out of 10
Geek rating: 4 out of 10

Lewis Hamilton

Christine: When it first loads, there is something that smacks of an intro, which I don't really like but it doesn't last very long. The black and red looks nice, and although white text on black isn't my favourite, this isn't too garish. This is a brand new concept for the Hamilton site, compared to it's looks back in 2008, but I don't know that much has changed in terms of its direction. There is the requisite news and video sections, but none of it seems particularly personal. The video thank you messages are very staged, and quite corporate, but so far Lewis has made a career out of that, so it's not out of character.

I do like the timeline section, although I didn't find it extremely easy to navigate.

Mr. C: I like Lewis' redesign. The colour and layout work for me and I only wish he'd taken the central "LH" button further - every driver needs a logo and that's a great one. Most of the site works using a mobile phone, although a few warning messages written in blood red text make you think something really bad will happen if you don't find that Flash plugin in a hurry.

The site renders fast, and the navigation is straightforward. Of concern is just how much of the place is geared towards generating income. It seems no matter which direction you head in, there's the continual encouragement to part with your cash. From the £20 fan club membership right up the £15,000 replica helmet complete with a Steinmetz diamond encrusted #1. Essentially the site begins to feel like an extension of the McLaren e-shop rather than a place to get to know Lewis.

Site: http://www.lewishamilton.com/
Load time: 2.95 seconds
Fan rating: 5 out of 10
Geek rating: 6 out of 10

Michael Schumacher

Christine: Back in 2008, there didn't seem much chance of Schumacher returning to the grid any time soon, but here he is and thus we have a website to review. The initial homepage is very, very simple. A photo of Michael, a signature, and some quick links to the latest news. It's not exciting, but at least it is clean and easy to use. After some further investigation, the navigation is good, there's plenty to read, and some excellent pictures as well. I like the season reviews, but there isn't much in the way of interaction with fans. Although, there are a couple of postcards to download if you are thus inclined.

Mr. C: There are very few things I hate in life more than sites that don't make proper use of screen real estate. I understand it's difficult to make content scale both vertically and horizontally at the same time, but there is never a need to do what Michael Schumacher's site does, and that is to try and squeeze everything into the smallest box available. It looks positively lost on my screen.

Credit does have to go to Schumacher though, not only for providing a multilingual site, but for providing one that works on every browser and handset I could throw at it. The only tricky moments relate to two finger scrolling inside the small boxes when using the Touch. Michael also has the fastest site we've come across so far, almost four whole seconds faster than Jenson Button's.

I do like that there's a section for Schumacher's biking adventures, and the wealth of other information shows just how many activities the man gets involved in outside of F1.

Site: http://www.michaelschumacher.de/
Load time: 1.13 seconds
Fan rating: 6 out of 10
Geek rating: 4 out of 10

Nico Rosberg

Christine: Of all the sites, Nico's is one of those that has changed the most. The last time we checked in on his page, there was some moody photographs, along with a message that Nico wasn't just a racing driver. It almost looked like he wanted to be a movie star as well. Now it seems as though the Mercedes driver has accepted his position, and although still a classy black, white and beige, the site is about being in F1. The "other side" of Nico has been relegated to at least one mouse click away.

On the main site, the font is a bit chunky and off putting, but there are links to Twitter and Facebook in easy reach. There isn't much to read other than news, but some of the items do link off to YouTube videos and items on his team site as well.

Mr. C: Here we have a site that has presumably recently undergone a redesign. Nico's homepage is chock full of social networking links and even includes direct Facebook integration, with fan images appearing on the homepage. It isn't the prettiest site in the world, but here content is king and Rosberg's "web team" provide regular, albeit brief, updates on his early season news.

The site ultimately feels unfinished. I can't for example work out what on earth the "likes" text on every post relates to, everything is equally liked in Nico's world I guess.

Additionally, the inclusion of the previous site although hidden away and rebranded as 'the other side of Nico' suggests someone isn't quite ready to accept the loss of one's concept site. The new pages do at least work on the move, even if they do take an age to load.

Site: http://www.nicorosberg.com/
Load time: 4.33 seconds
Fan rating: 4 out of 10
Geek rating: 6 out of 10

Sebastian Vettel

Christine: It bugs me that the site defaults to the news section, which is fine, except that is the second option on the navigation bar at the top. It feels like you've totally missed out on the About Me page, which is worth looking at. I did enjoy browsing through the photos of a baby Vettel in his kart. Particularly the one where he looks about the cry. Erm, what else is on there? The fan area says it is currently being updated, but there is a shop and archives to poke around in as well. My only real complaint is that if you select English as your language but accidentally click on the wrong thing, you get taken straight back to the German site. Not a major problem, but slightly annoying.

Mr. C: Seb is another driver with a logo, and I can't help but think Ayrton Senna's estate might be asking for their branding back soon. I do like the layout of pages, although you get the impression the big, bold images have been designed to hide a lack of content. A few of the links didn't work at all for me, so I've no idea what impressions Vettel had of Bahrain. More strange was the propensity of the image gallery to throw numeric alerts in my direction as if revealing some sort of code.

The site overall feels like a work in progress and no matter how hard or how often I click the "shop" link, nothing happens. On the mobile front, almost everything bar the homepage animation works as it should. At least Vettel is providing original content on his site and in multiple languages - it'll be worth keeping an eye on this one as the season develops.

Site: http://www.sebastianvettel.de
Load time: 1.92 seconds
Fan rating: 4 out of 10
Geek rating: 4 out of 10

Mark Webber

Christine: MarkWebber.com has just recently undergone a redesign, and I'm relatively impressed with the results. The previous incarnation had plenty of content but was a little bit messy. Now we have a much cleaner site to contend with. The Australian has debuted a YouTube channel and has recently joined Twitter, so they both feature prominently on the homepage. I like that he has separated out on and off track news, for those that are only interested in one or the other. There aren't an enormous amount of photos to look through, and the Mark Webber Challenge is only allowed a paragraph or two. I do really like the logo though.

Mr. C: Within the first 30 seconds of using this site, I felt right at home. The layout is very straightforward and there's no sense of clutter amongst the content. A video featuring Mark in his living room, presumably filmed by his other half, adds to the homeliness of the site and instantly it's my favourite driver site thus far.

Delving deeper reveals yet more treats. Each news post allows comments, which, although not a first for an F1 driver (Nick Heidfeld offered something similar last year), is a rare occurrence and something to be encouraged in today's ever more social age.

Beyond that Mark is rating each race as the season progresses. He's given Bahrain 3 out of 5 for on track challenge and 2 out of 5 for off track entertainment. I love this idea and I'll be checking back regularly to see how the man views the 2010 season. The last thing to mention is Webber has news stories dating back to March 2008, it's wonderful that he hasn't trashed history with every redesign and I intend to go and dig through the archives at the first opportunity.

I love Mark's site to bits. It's my favourite of the day and I'm so glad we got there because things were looking predicable on the driver's front up until now. Everything on the site works well when using the iPod or the Android and even the videos play as expected. The only thing I can knock it for, is the slow initial loading speed, presumably because the server is hosted in Australia.

Site: http://www.markwebber.com/
Load time: 4.91 seconds
Fan rating: 9 out of 10
Geek rating: 9 out of 10

Those are our first six reviews, we've got plenty more to come in this series. For now, though, why not tell us what you make of the driver websites we've covered so far? Who's doing the right thing and who is heading in the wrong direction?

A His and Hers Video Special

It took Virgin a while to get information about their new car up and out on the internet, despite the fact they were hoping to do an online launch and include everybody all at once. There's no need to go over how very badly they failed at launching in style, I can highly recommend the latest F1 Debrief show for such things.

What I would like to do is highlight two videos released by the team that show the things they can do right.

Firstly, they roped in David Croft to present this intro video, which makes Mr C a very happy bunny, as you might imagine. I'm not sure why this video isn't on the official Virgin Racing account, but we had enough of that during the Virgin Twitter debacle, so let's just sit back and enjoy.

The team took the car for a shakedown at Silverstone, in the pouring rain, and produced a video whilst they were there. This is the kind of thing I want to see from teams. Great editing, up close and personal with the drivers (even presenting in the rain!), and some insight into what it's like being there.

Clearly they're not giving too much away just yet, and if you want more detailed information about the shakedown, Scott found a great video with more raw car footage in. For now, though, I'm going to go and rewatch Lucas having a cup of tea. Delicious.

USF1 Launches High Definition Assault on Formula 1

It's been a long time coming, but the first team to design and build its own F1 car in the USA since the 60's, is finally beginning to show some of the potential we were promised over sixth months ago.

The USF1 team, backed in part by YouTube co-founder Chad Hurley, have for the past fortnight been publishing short video clips detailing behind the scenes footage of an F1 project coming to life. This morning two further clips were published, and a third is expected soon.

Notably, all of the videos thus far have been filmed and released in high definition format, and considering how long fans have been requesting HD footage, USF1 should be congratulated for being the first team to make the leap. While it could be argued Toyota made a similar jump last year, their feature only amounted to a one-off production, and they've since quit the sport anyway.

If you haven't already watched the new videos, they're embedded below. Hitting Play followed by the HD button, will allow you to see them in all their 720p (if not somewhat interlaced) widescreen goodness.

Dan Gurney on USF1

The first clip appropriately features an interview with Dan Gurney. His Eagle chassis was the last F1 car to be designed and built in the States and here you'll catch him reminiscing as well as looking forward to what USF1 can offer.

Bob Varsha Walk and Talk - Part 1

The second video is slightly more concerning. It's part one of a two parter and Speed TV's Bob Varsha takes hold of the microphone before setting off to interview some members of staff. The team have rightly come in for some stick recently - from most quarters - for failing to prove they really are getting on with the business of building racing cars, and this video won't help matters. The factory appears almost completely deserted before Bob manages to find the world's most introverted American and a Brit to converse with. Formula 1 factories just don't look like this.

Bob Varsha Walk and Talk - Part 2

In the second part of Bob's walk around the factory we get to see a more active office. Of interest, discussion turns to the merits of CFD versus wind tunnel development, and the engineers at USF1 seem confident that computational fluid dynamics is more than good enough to develop a brand new F1 chassis.

Regardless of content, we should say well done to USF1 for at least pushing F1 broadcasting boundaries in the right direction, however small a step it might be. With any luck, other teams might be taking notes.

Daily: 20th August 2009

It's Thursday once more, but it should be a better day for me as I'm off work and enjoying a week at home. We'll see though. Let me know how your Thursday goes, and check in with the comments often, so we know it's going okay. Some of the actual F1 topics we're talking about:

• Mr C has decided that yesterday's F1 Big Picture of a 2008 McLaren actually seems a little bit on the hideous side to him. I am not impressed. This year's cars are fugly and they will not grow on me. I fear I am the only one left that thinks so.
• I released the F1 Digest preview podcast for this weekend's race, and there are some interesting quotes in there. Badoer is simply hoping to finish the race,whilst Grosjean thinks that being the reserve driver has helped him ahead of getting behind the wheel in anger for the first time. Those new boys, eh?
• Finally, in non-plugtastic news, it was hyped up beyond belief yesterday, but the big reveal simply proved that YouTube will be involved in F1 next year, sponsoring USF1. It is good to get a big name on board, that can potentially bring big bucks and big awareness, but I'm not convinced YouTube are the right fit. It's just a little bit NASCAR for my tastes.

That'll do it for now, I reckon. There'll probably be more news out today, as we get nearer and nearer to our first Free Practice action in weeks. I'll see you in the comments.

Sidepodcast Diaries - The Return

Sidepodcast Diaries has seen quite the evolution since it was first conceived in the midst of 2007. We were travelling in the car, somewhat bored, and decided to switch the camera on. The idea was to feature some behind the scenes footage of us as we went about our Sidepodbusiness, so you could all get a glimpse at the inner workings of the podcasting scene.

However, it gradually evolved into my own pet project, a video blog of my thoughts on Formula 1. It lasted nine great shows in 2007, all exclusively hosted on our YouTube account. It was never really a part of Sidepodcast, more of an aside for anyone who happened across it.

In 2008, I tried to bring the format back, but whilst my production skills had clearly improved, the recording equipment left me slightly frustrated. Balancing a mobile phone on a bookshelf and hoping for the best didn't really inspire me to continue. Also, last season, we introduced live streaming, which in itself gave plenty of insight into our thoughts about Formula 1 - including those which don't make it into the podcasts themselves.

Nevertheless, the 2009 resolutions have spoken, and the Diaries have returned, with renewed enthusiasm.

The big question is, what to do with them? We didn't really have any intention of returning to YouTube, after a problematic year, but I discovered a neat bonus for sticking with the Tube. The Wiki allows video from said host to be embedded, meaning I have now managed to set up a nice little section for Sidepodcast Diaries to call its own. You can visit the Wiki page here.

Is that enough though? I've already had a couple of emails asking why the videos aren't part of the Sidepodcast site. I request comments in the show itself, and although there is scope to do so on YouTube and the Wiki, perhaps it is missing out on the majority of the Sidepodcommunity thoughts. There is also the added problem of letting people know that a new Diary is available.

However, bringing it into the site causes it's own added problems. Transcripts, hosting, and an RSS Feed become a necessity, plus a space on the Archives page, it's own images, and the fact the format already has a history. Quite a lot of work goes into adding a new show to the roster.

Nevertheless, while we ponder over the options, please enjoy the eleventh in the series. Your feedback is always welcome, on any of the issues I've mentioned above, plus on the show itself, and of course, your own unanswered questions.

Daily: 4th January 2009

Today was looking to be pretty low on F1 related fun, until we discovered that Fantasy Racers was up and running for 2009. There was suddenly a flurry of action as we tried to think up some new team names, decide that our old names will do, create the Sidepodcast league, and get all signed up. Either way, you can read all about it here. Elsewhere today:

• Sidepodcast Diaries is back! There'll be a blog post along soon to re-introduce it properly, but if you feel like checking it out before I get round to that, then head on over to the Wiki where I've set up it's own little Diaries home.
• Schumacher's words from yesterday caused a discussion in the comments over drivers moving teams. Is it easier to judge a driver if he's been through a few teams? Or is loyalty something to be commended? Check through some of the comments yesterday, and join in the debate today.
• The BATRacer game still has spaces available, if you're interested. Scott has written a brilliant guide if you're a newbie to the site - like myself and Mr C - but if you've never played before or are an expert, head on over and sign up. The password is sidepodcast

That'll do for today. I'm keeping my fingers crossed for some actual F1 news, as things were very slow yesterday. However, the comments were still excellent, so keep up the good work, everyone, and I'll see you there.

As if they Could Look More Ugly

Scott pointed out in the comments earlier this morning, that frequent F1 video uploader yossidlr has come up with the goods once more and provided some fantastic shots from this weeks Barcelona test.

Sadly, YouTube has pulled its favourite party trick and squished video out of proportion, making some bad looking cars, look a little bit worse. Thankfully, all is not lost though, as if by magic an anamorphic version has appeared (to plagiarise a line from Mr Benn).

Ahh, that looks... oh, it doesn't really help does it?

Outside the Bubble

I tend to judge how important a Formula 1 story is in the context of the wider world, by whether or not Fast Lane Daily make mention of it.

The show goes out five days a week and features lots of motoring related news, but it's based in the States so F1 rarely gets a look in... unless of course it's big news. Today's FIA vote predictably was the lead story.

The FLD guys win points for the best title of the day, with:

F1 Boss Mosley Scores Again

However we might have deduct some of those again because I swear I've seen this picture before.

Damnit, I wish people would credit photographs when they use them (even if we are secretly chuffed that they used it). Here's the original on Flickr.

As for Max, he's been making headlines for all the wrong reasons for too long now. He's unlikely to be breaking good news any time soon, so can we hope he goes about his business quietly from this point onwards?

Of Age and Gender

YouTube announced an update to their stats pages yesterday, and although I'm still quite mad at them, statistics are something I can never resist.

We like a good pie chart here at Sidepodcast and YouTube delivers the goods with their latest update, in fact we also get our hands on some demographics we've never had the opportunity to see before - ages and gender.

First up I should say that this data set is slightly flawed, because it relies on viewers not only being logged into das tube, but also that they tell the truth in their profiles too. Additionally, it doesn't account for viewers logged in as someone else (as so often happens here when I browse using Christine's profile).

That said, the charts are of a certain amount of use so for the basis of this post I've picked stats from last week's Turkey Preview video. It's been live for almost 7 days and offers plenty of data to work with (at the time the screenshots were taken 4,478 unique views).

Let's take a look at the demographic data relating to ages:

Of note, the two most popular groups are the 35-45's and the 45-55's. For some reason I imagined we were targeting a younger audience, in fact the group I thought we'd be targeting is the 18-25's but that's one of the least popular age brackets.

Following on from this we can peek into the world of the Sidepodcast viewer's gender:

Here we see a significant proportion of the viewers being male, but I'm slightly surprised that the female viewership isn't greater. Certainly a quick look on sidepodcast.com shows that three of the top five commentors are female.

I'm not sure what we can glean from this information, whether it tells us more about YouTube's user demographics, our own viewer demographics or those associated with Formula One in general? As we don't have this information for our own downloads, we can but guess. What we can do is return and compare these figures against future shows.

If you have any theories or spot any trends I've missed, do let us know in the comments as always.

All Your F1 Video are Belong to Us

As Christine pointed out already, yesterday was a bad day in the Sidepodcast office. In part because due to what can only be described as "some confusion" from the people at YouTube, we were served with a copyright infringement notice.

That kind of thing is never going to set your day off well, especially when it turns out to be completely false. Or at least we think it has, YouTube appear to have taken a vow of silence over the whole affair.

Just an Ordinary Day

The morning started pleasantly with some non-taxing file uploads planned for the latest video of Inside Track, when just after 11am, the following email arrived:

It was a copyright claim notice from YouTube's content identification team, and the important bits read (emphasis mine):

Motors TV has claimed some or all visual content in your video F1 Barcelona Race Preview 2008.

As long as Motors TV has a claim on your video, they will receive public statistics about your video, such as number of views. Viewers may also see advertising on your video's page.

That's pretty much all we had to go on. No further details were given as to which part of the video was the issue, nor if this was an automated or manual process. Neither did it tell us much about Motors TV, other than they'd probably be making some money out of this.

As a Matter of Principle

At Sidepodcast we've always been pretty careful to make sure we recognise content owners whenever possible. Be it photographs, audio or video content, and you'll often see a hefty list of credits at the end of our podcasts. We've never had any problem with previous shows, and this week's wasn't hugely different from the rest.

As a matter of course, YouTube do offer a 'disputes' process should we feel in the mood to disagree with such claims, but without knowing exactly which part of the video was the subject of the claim, defending yourself is quite difficult.

Long story short is we spent a great deal of time contacting all the relevant people and checking / rechecking to ensure we weren't in the wrong before submitting our complaint.

Thus far we've heard nothing back.

Nobody's Talking

Interestingly a copyright claim warning notice that had appeared on our account this morning, has now vanished, so presumably we're in the clear. But who knows for sure?

We've no idea what the problem was, nor can we be certain that it won't happen again. Couldn't YouTube have at least contacted us to acknowledge receipt of the dispute and / or to confirm that all is now well?

We've wasted a good many hours and are absolutely none the wiser. Ontop of this, we may now have to rethink our approach to content distribution, because after spending 20 - 30 hours working hard to put a show together, it's sure not nice being called a thief at the end of it.

Innocent until proven guilty? That's not the YouTube way.