Last night there was a great open house at the ID Agency in DTLA. I had some photos featured in the art gallery along with Estevan Oriol and Mo Satarzadeh. All three of us were on the 2009 Gumball 3000 rally and had some photos featured from it along with some of our other photography.

Here is a display of my photography hung up on the wall.

Here is the DJ with a great crowd going behind him at the Open House. Mo’s photography is stage left and you can see my Vaughn Gittin Jr. print over on the right.

Here is a close up of my T-Pain photograph I took years ago at his house next to Vaughn Gittin’s 2005 Sonoma drifting picture.

Here I am receiving Ricky’s special beer delivery. Not only is Ricky great at beer delivery he is an excellent photographer that does tons of work for Wrecked Magazine! The Corona was for him and the Bud Light was for me. It ended up being a great night and I really appreciate all the support of people who came out. Thanks to Bob Hernandez for these photos he put up on Facebook and I will make new posts when other people send me or put up some photographs.

I went to the 2009 JEGS Engine Masters Challenge in Ohio earlier this year to shoot some video and photography for Mobil 1 Racing oils. They had these hero cards out featuring my photography at Performance Racing Industry (PRI) this month in Orlando, Florida. Jason Small grabbed some for me at the Mobil 1 booth and they look fantastic. My photograph of BES Racing Engines had a great feature photography I took above with their LS7 that made 719hp all motor.

Down in Irvine I attended a Mazda event down at HQ in Irvine, California. It was a motorsports luncheon with free In N’ Out Burger which was amazing. Dean Case invited me down and I had a fun time learning about some Mazda information.

They had on display the 700,000th Miata built. I didn’t realize they had produced that many Mazda Miata’s since the inception of the product. I think I am going to hold out and score 987,654 when that comes off the assembly line.

This ProParts USA Mazda 6 is gorgeous and was my favorite car on display for the Mazda event. I love the paint scheme and the cage work was just gorgeous on this car. Part of my love for this Mazda 6 falls under the fact that I secertly really want to own one as well I think.

The event closed with an unveiling of Frankie Muniz (Malcolm in the Middle star) will be running in the Mazda Atlantic Championshi series. His title sponsor is a new video game Stargate Worlds and his teamate is Simona De Silvestro. That about wrapped up the day at Mazda!

Before I start this whole topic I want to state that I am a proud GM shareholder. Saturn was a brand that was going no where and doing nothing for General Motors except burning billions of dollars with no hope for return on investment.

I made a comment on twitter.com/joeyredmond yesterday “Saturn is dead! Finally some good news in the automotive industry.” I received a blast of e-mails, tweets, and facebook comments bitching that other GM entities should be taken out and why Saturn should survive. Before I get to into the topic let’s have a little history lesson on the great Saturn brand.

Saturn was launched 24 years ago in January of 1985. The Saturn brand launch was GM’s response to “to the success of Japanese & German small-car imports.” The brand doesn’t hold a candle to the dominating sellers in the market segment and they cannot come close to a competitive price point.

Let’s look at the facts:
2009 Saturn Aura XE Sedan: $22,655 MSRP
2009 Honda Civic Sedan: $15,505 MSRP
2009 Mazda 6 I Sport Sedan: $21,150 MSRP
2009 Toyota Camry Base Sedan: $20,195 MSRP
2009 Toyota Corolla Base Sedan: $16,150 MSRP
2009 Honda Accord LX Sedan: $21,555 MSRP
2009 Nissan Altima Base Sedan: $19,900 MSRP
2009 Subaru Impreza 2.5i Sedan: $18,495 MSRP
2009 Mitsubishi Lancer DE Sedan: $15,090 MSRP
2009 Volkswagon Jetta SE Sedan: $21,020 MSRP

I picked the sedan base model Saturn Aura XE Sedan which comes in the cheapest at $22,655 MSRP. I listed 10 cars that were similar in category and either Japanese or German origin. You know those “small-car imports” that Saturn was created to beat and destroy, maybe even save America!? Ironically I picked 9 other cars that were Japanese/German sedans base models like our Saturn. They were carry a  cheaper MSRP and I would rather drive all of them before a Saturn.

Without a price point lower than it’s competition and some lucky design what is the motivation for purchase? The car has no real culture or adoption from a segment in the market. Aftermarket support for tuners is out of the question and way behind many other cars on the list. Most people purchasing a car use it to identify with a person brand they believe themselves to fall in (or want to fall in). Running that list above most of those cars fall into a category of purchasers or stereotypes that most people put the owners into. When I see a Saturn no branding, thoughts, or ideas come into mind. I don’t put Saturn into any category or relate to the owners because of any culture behind the brand.

On my last note let’s also remember Saturn was a failure from the start. It was launched as a property outside of the GM super machine. Saturn even had it’s own dealership network at first. Then as sales faltered and never met expectations it was brought in as another badge under GM. Sadly the public and shareholders do not know how much Saturn has lost in recent years because they don’t report the figures separately (or at least where I can easily locate them.) A general figure I can find is that Saturn has lost over $1,000,000,000 in recent years on it’s own. Next time GM wants to beat Japanese car companies perhaps they should focus on quality, performance, and durability while scrapping the plastic body. Just my two cents but a $22,000 plastic paneled machine on four wheels doesn’t seem to be luring me into any dealerships over the next year or two. Perhaps they need to steal some guys on the new Hyundai project because they have clearly figured something out.

10. Los Angeles has amazing hamburgers and hamburger culture everywhere. The hamburger is my second favorite food item behind pizza and while putting forth great effort I have yet to eat at most of the amazing burger spots in Los Angeles. How I visited here for so long and remained unaware of this burger sensation in LA is beyond me to this moment! I will credit it with most of my friends being trendy “vegans” or into the lamest craze diet and unable to consume these products. If you really have doubts on the burger history of Los Angeles they made a movie about it called “Burgertown” which you can watch for free on Hulu so check it out.

9. People actually parallel park in Los Angeles. The only reason I kind of know how to do it or even what it is stems from the fact that to get my Georgia driver’s license I had to do it. In high school we talked about how stupid/funny it was that they made us do this because who in the world would parallel park? Once arriving in LA I figured I would just excuse myself from the task because I have a mid range semi luxury/performance car and surely that was a good enough reason to valet. That lasted about a week until I came to realize two very important things. I had spent $150 valet parking and watched one valet set off my car alarm and stall it twice driving it 500 feet to where I stood (not quite woth $150)! No one is above street parking here because you can find the likes of cars worth more than $250,000 wedged between cars everyday. Thankfully I have a backup camera!

8. Things like this photo above no longer shock me….if I saw someone dressed like above before living in Los Angeles I would either run away and hide or assume I missed the fact that today was Halloween. Now I just assume that someone is filming a movie or it’s Friday night.

7. How can we not talk about these tour buses…..Nightmare on Elm Street was filmed blocks from my current residence in Hollywood. No one really seems to find this a big deal EXCEPT every tourist from the midwest. These Hollywood Star buses are super annoying because they just stop randomly on the streets everywhere so these people can take pictures of places that look no different than any other block in Los Angeles. This boggles my mind.

6. Parking is virtually extortion anywhere in LA. It’s not like most major cities (Atlanta, Chicago, NYC) where the locals “know the spots to park.” These do not exist in LA, you are either going to pay $10 to valet, illegally park somewhere else, or stuff the meter and set your cell phone to go off 1 minute before it expires for a fill up. Most likely you will have several rolls of quarters in your glove box. If you actually take the time to read the 16 No Parking Signs or “Parking Rules” you won’t understand them anyway.

5. The years I wasted watching Saved by the Bell on TBS really taught me some useful things about California culture. Nobody likes the valley and anything over the hill is “uncool”, “gross”, and such “lower class” than everything in Los Angeles. Yet if you go to the valley nobody seems to be thrilled on Los Angeles. It’s just like the old Bayside/Valley High School wars I use to watch on TV. The secret here is 95% of the Los Angeles transplants all lived in the valley at some point before making it into actual Los Angeles County.

4. When your 2 miles away from someone that does not convert into 2 minutes. This was a habit I got into living on the east coast, it was simple math. Quickly I found that this is NEVER the case in Los Angeles. In fact, I found it a very hard habit to break and in turn was constantly late to appointments and meetings. In Los Angeles 2 miles is 20 minutes, it’s an easy formula, just move the decimal point. 1.5 miles is 15 minutes and 4 miles is just too far.

3. The only girls who actually WANT you to talk to them in LA are from the midwest. They are either aspiring movie stars/musicians/models but yet they all work in the food service Industry and YES they have a headshot/reel/demo tape. Please keep in mind they were the popular girls in high school (in case you were curious!)

2- People just don’t wear sunglasses to look cool in LA like the east coast. I have owned a nice pair of Electric Sunglasses for about a year that just sat in my door collecting dust. Once arriving in LA I have to use them at least once a day to avoid being blinded by the sunlight. Try driving down the 10 West an hour or two before sunset or really anywhere west in the evening and you will either put sunglasses on or crash.

1- No matter what anyone tells you, Los Angeles has HORRIBLE pizza everywhere. For a city so full of culture and delicious food (like the hamburgers mentioned in #10) you won’t see this one coming but as a diehard pizza fan I will tell you this has almost been the death of me. Luckily, I enlisted the advise of a former Philadelphia resident who pointed me to the only “acceptable” pizza joint in Los Angeles. It’s on Larchmont and called Village Pizzeria. Trust me on this, don’t let anyone else tell you about “amazing” pizza because it’s not true.

The bet has a fair play doctrine as well, since the bet is about me being a good citizen I cannot just go accomplish these tasks on December 30th and declare victory. So each month I will blog a report of my progress and hopefully I can crush most of these “requirements” of the contest.

1. Yelp 300 items – Add me here: http://joeyredmond.yelp.com/

2. Upload 3,000 photos to Flickr – Add me here: http://flickr.com/photos/joeyredmond/

3. Produce 52 Youtube videos – Add me here: http://www.youtube.com/thejoeyredmond

4. Favorite 365 Youtube videos – http://www.youtube.com/thejoeyredmond

5. Blog here 183 times

6. Answer 50 Mahalo Answers – Add me here: http://www.mahalo.com/member/Sweetcarz02

7. Stumble 100 Items – Add me here: http://joeyredmond.stumbleupon.com/

8. Tumbl 100 times – Add me here: http://joeyredmond.tumblr.com/

9. Digg 100 stories – Add me here: http://digg.com/users/sweetcarz02

10. Wish 100 friends Happy Birthday on Facebook: Add me: http://www.facebook.com/

Andy Williamson – C-16 Magazine

This card is super old from my collection and Andy actually owns the company of another card I have featured in this blog post. This is the few things I feel that make this card perfect. It’s see through and die cut but it’s still average business card size so it fits in my Rolodex sleeves. I do have another clear card but it’s annoying and bigger than a normal card. As cool as you think this is, don’t do it. It gets annoying and your card ends up getting tossed at least out of my book if it won’t fit in my Rolodex. Some failed marketing/branding at that point if it’s in the trash. The second thing that won this card for me aside from it’s uniqueness is that it tells you what C-16 Magazine is in case you didn’t know. “Car Culture Style and Design” is a great piece to throw in, especially something this simple since magazine is in the big title. So this way you can figure out that Andy Williamson works at a magazine about car culture. Then they nailed every topic you could need. Physical address, telephone, cell, fax, e-mail, web address. You need all this stuff!

Scott McNearney – SXSW Sponsorship Manager

This card is very simple but it sends a great message out. SXSW for those who don’t know is a music/film/interactive festival in Austin, Texas every March. The three men doing the topics with a bubble that goes up to SXSW is perfect and simple branding on a business card! One glance and I know what this company is all about in case I had forgot. The few negatives on this card are they don’t list a physical address. This denies FedEx/UPS deliveries I could make to Scott. With people I meet now I try to send a package to them overnight afterwards with some basic gifts and a hand written note, I cannot do this to a PO Box. The other flaw is if people do business with you they will forever be hitting you up for the physical address to send stuff since they will never remember it. At least invest $200/year in a UPS store box and have a pretend physical address. At least you can get packages and the UPS store will sign for stuff in your name, it’s quite marvelous. The only other strike on this card is nothing is on the back. At least print a little SXSW logo on it somewhere.

Dennis Trilles – Babe Blvd.

This card almost didn’t make the cut but I couldn’t find anything much better. Babe Blvd. is an automotive industry model website. The back of the card clearly has some good branding on it and even some space to jot notes about the meeting with this person. I should of done that because I don’t ever remembering meeting this guy. The card on the other side is nice and green but matches the sites overall branding and message. It has a phone number listed but doesn’t tell you if this is a cell/fax/office which is a small oversight. No physical or fake address listed either. A cool tid bit is that he did list his AIM name which is a cool creative reach out for contact on a card.

Haley Kilpatrick – Girl Talk (www.desiretoinspire.org)

Haley is an old buddy of mine from college and I almost passed up her card until the back sold me on hers big time. Girl Talk is a 501 (c)(3) non profit based out of Atlanta, Georgia. Her charity basically creates chapters in middle schools that are pier to pier support groups for girls in this age bracket. If you know any middle school girls then clearly you know this is important and needed. The simplicity and colors won me over on this selection. The light pink back with the website was an excellent touch and it really communicated the good feeling and female esque look without even visiting the website. This means the card is a great branding plug, you already know what your in store for. the front side lists all of her proper information including a website along with a logo that you can find and identity with on the website. Physical address is nailed along with e-mail and proper phone listings.

Phil Luis – Theory Communication and Design

This card is the company that I referenced earlier that Andy Williamson owns. This puppy is a homerun. The wood is unique and cool but the card is proper standard size. I haven’t gotten a splinter from the thing yet either or it would be off the list….injuring people you want to call you is never good or productive. This card has a front/back print that establishes the brand very well. He nailed all of the contact information again like in the C-16 card but I feel it lacks one major key element. I understand they are Communication and Design but I would like a little listing telling me about more of their core perhaps? Like automotive specialist or just a quick line  in however they want to niche themselves. 365 days of PR or something kinda neat that if this card sat in a pile with a ton of other cards it could communicate to the potential client we are what you need before they even hit your website.

That is all, hopefully I can take this into consideration when we make our next round of cards for PM Lifestyle. I have been doing quite a bit of brand studying over the past few weeks *hint hint* and it looks like next week is an Atlanta to Los Angeles roadtrip with Bertha so stay tuned for news on that.

The LA Auto show rolled out some great products like the Infiniti G37 convertible. This is the same exact color/wheel package I am running on my hard top and I must say that it has a nice look to it. Seeing the car in person and looking at these pics instead of the horrible sky blue render they released earlier. The new vert comes with powerful a 3.7-liter V6, good for 325 HP. In S trim the G37 will also get the same sport tuned steering and larger brakes. Both models have the choice of either a six-speed manual transmission or a paddle-controlled 7-speed gearbox. I think I am going to stick with my hard top but it is going on me.

So I have so much I need to talk about. SEMA 2008, the death spiral of General Motors, LA Auto Show, new content, and new features across Wrecked Magazine. We even have tons of new and excited stuff going on at Wrecked’s parent PM Lifestyle right now as well. So I haven’t forgotten about you blogites, great stories are coming soon. Right now I have to tackle some P/L charts, clean up the palace, and pay our 31-60 day late utility bill that was buried on my desk under some Fuze bottles and misc. credit card offers. And yes, that is me laying dead on Thursday at SEMA and Evan from Exedy sitting on top of me. I have no idea what is going on, who took this picture and why it’s on my blog. Ok this post is done.

Michael Arrington at Tech Crunch made this amazing post about how Voicemail is dead. Stop using it and welcome to 2008. Here is his post as he posed on Techcrunch.com.

Voicemail is dead. Please tell everyone so they’ll stop using it.

When I first started out in the real world in the mid-nineties voicemail was an important productivity tool. I remember people talking about the pros and cons of various enterprise voicemail systems – which had the best forwarding and group messaging, which allowed for archiving, and how many messages could be stored and for how long. Even though email was around, people were still unsure how to use it. Letters went on letterhead and were formal. Voicemail was informal and common. Email etiquette was still being developed. It was good for mass-forwarding jokes and moving Word, Excel, and Powerpoint files around, but it took a while for email to take over as older generations moved out of the workplace or got with the program.

But now an increasing number of people are just plain avoiding voicemail (for my impromptu and unscientific survey, see the comments here, which are predominantly anti-voicemail). It takes much longer to listen to a message than read it. And voicemail is usually outside of our typical workflow, making it hard to forward or reply to easily.

Typical voicemail messages today include things like “Please don’t leave me a voicemail, I rarely listen to them. Please just email me at xxxx@xxxx.com” Many people don’t bother setting up their voicemail accounts at all. Then there’s my favorite method, the one I use personally – let the message box get full and then don’t empty it. Caller ID still tells me who called, and I can simply call them back.

How many times have you called someone back and said “I saw that you called but didn’t listen to the voicemail yet, Is it anything urgent?”

Senders often feel guilty for leaving voicemails, too. And to make sure you get the message, quite often people will follow up with a text message – “Just left you a VM, it’s important” – just so you know it’s there.

There are startups that are trying to make voicemail more useful. Pinger, GrandCentral and YouMail are among them. The iPhone’s visual voicemail feature helps clean up the clutter, too. But at the end of the day you still need to take time to listen to those voicemails, and that usually comes after other equally urgent but less disruptive tasks.

The services that really make voicemail more usable are those that convert voicemail into text and then send it to you via email or SMS (Spinvox, PhoneTag Yap and Jott, for example).

More mobile carriers are offering text conversion for a monthly or per-message fee. It’s my guess this will become more and more common. Voice is here to stay as a data input method, but listening to messages will certainly become an increasing luxury, to be reserved for loved ones or those messages that aren’t transcribed properly (or you need to hear it for tone or emotion).

For now most people don’t have voicemail transcription services. So think before you voicemail, more and more people just find it annoying.

Source: Techcrunch.com