Wikipedia

Jerrycobra

Joined 17 January 2006

About Me

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Hello, this is Jerrycobra, a beginner in wikipedia editing. I have so far a background of of being too lazy to tag pictures, so i am working on it to improve on that area. so anyways, here's some things I have done. I am a airplane and car buff. I prefer Boeing and Embraer in commercial jets, but in cars, used to be only Ford, but i have expended to many makes all over the world


Aritcles I have started

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Redirected:


Articles I have contributed to

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Wikipedia Friends

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Threeonezero


My favorite websites

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streetfire article rough draft

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StreetFire.Net is the largest video sharing service for the automotive community. While it's principal feature is its video hosting/sharing service, it has extended the original Vidiac concept of creating video communities to include a photo sharing service, a forum for automotive and video discussions, and a MyHome service that provides opportunities for networking and sharing information about one's car, truck, or bike, and in a few cases, air planes. It also features a blog covering automotive news, a "For Sale" section, and "Channels" where StreetFire interviews conducted at SEMA and other events as well as productions created by Fastlane and others are featured.

Representative Statistics

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Video: over 100,000 videos and over 2 million unique visitors each month. Forum: similar types of stats...

More Than Video - Developing and Supporting the Automotive Enthusiast Community

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StreetFire's focus on automotive interests has allowed it to move beyond just offering a video sharing site. It also provides features that help make it a richer community for automotive enthusiasts. The MyHome feature, for example, let's one set up a profile for the person and his/her vehicles and provides a direct link to the photos and videos that person has uploaded. It also offers "friend" lists, and in this respect provides possibilities for the type of networking you see on MySpace. The forum provides members a place to discuss the videos, producing your own videos, announcing commercial video products, as well as general automotive and motor sports topics. The PhotoChops section, where members show their work and share their techniques at manipulating photos of cars using Adobe Photoshop, allows users to showcase their art. (Insert a cool PhotoChop here.) This video showcases some of the work done in the Photochops forum. The Photos section allows users to upload and share high-resolution photos and the For Sale section for people looking to buy or sell cars. All these sections are somewhat integrated in that a single log-on will get one into all sections of StreetFire, and a menu at the top of the screen lets you easily move form one section to another, but the user profiles in the forum are still separate from the rest.

Challenging Traditional Television

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The StreetFire staff will events such as SEMA and interview people at their booths, people such as Vic Edlebrock, and booths such as Michelin, Toyo, and Supechips. These interviews will then be uploaded and made available on the "Channels" section, providing excellent, unscripted, low cost exposure for the interviewee. Other productions, such as VODCars, Fast Lane Daily, RoadFly, and others are also featured here, which expands the offering of on-line video productions to include shows like those one used to only be able to watch on TV. (Insert screen shot of the "Channels" page)

Criticized for Making the Streets Unsafe

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StreetFire has been criticized for promoting illegal, irresponsible, and dangerous antics on public streets, for being the cause of unsafe streets. StreetFire answered these charges in their blog and also brought it to the attention of the members active in the forum. In short, the rebuttal was that the poor state of driver's abilities and the casual attitude of the public to driving, as if driving 4000 pound vehicles less than 10 feet apart at 70 mph on the freeways were like sitting on the couch at home and talking to friends on the phone, was much more a factor in making the road dangerous. The videos on StreetFire showing street races and the like are reflections of the scope of the broader car community and not anything StreetFire is doing to promote or encourage such activity. The rebuttal also noted that these illegal activities are not new and date back to at least the early hot rod era of the 1950's. It also makes a firm statement that the car enthusiast is probably the safest driver on the road because they actually understand the dangers and in many cases have the skills the other drives sorely lack.

StreetFire indeed hosts many videos showing street racing, most of them brief and spontaneous races, and some staged and clearly beyond the limits of what one might be able to excuse as momentary lapses of good judgment. (Keep in mind that StreetFire is an international site and that what might be illegal in one country may not be in another.) StreetFire also hosts videos made specifically to discourage street racing, and unlike many other car forums, the discussion of these videos in the forums almost always admonish street racing outright and reflects the take-it-to-the-track attitude of most of its members. Legal racing, whether it be club racing or professional, on the other hand, is admired. Having a forum that can showcase bad behavior next to good is much better than having one that ignores or excludes just the bad.

There is a general tendency in society to look for, find, and punish a scapegoat for the ills that society at large is often responsible for. Street racing, speeding, and similar juvenile behaviors that end spectacularly and tragically make great news stories and make a lot of people angry, as they should. But equally tragic and more frequent accidents caused by improper lane changes or inattention while changing the channel on the radio are treated like "accidents", as if chance and misfortune were the root cause, not driver skill. The difference, in one case the acts were willful and irresponsible at the time they occurred, in the other cases, the acts were willful and irresponsible when the marginally skilled driver inserted the key into the ignition switch.

Uploading and Playing the Videos

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Most common types of video files can be uploaded to this site. Uploads are currently limited to 500 MB files and videos running 15 minutes or less. Once the upload is complete the video is optimized, a process that can take up to 15 minutes, depending on the file size. When this is done the video becomes available for viewing immediately.

The final optimized video is replayed using either a Macromedia or Windows MediaPlayer plug-in. One can switch between the them if one is not working well. The replay is done at (size) and (frame rate) with audio... (Insert screen shot of player window here)

In addition to the replay, viewers can comment on the video and can grab code that they can use in their web sites or posting on other forums that support bb-code to play the video. The bb-code code will display a thumbnail and gives a link to the video on the StreetFire site while the HTML embed code will let one play the video in another web site, whether that be a personal site, a sponsor's site, or even a MySpace page.

Early Development

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StreetFire established in Atlanta, GA in ...

In October of 2007 StreetFire, INC received funding that it would use to develop partnerships with top content providers and to with top content producers and to add more social networking elements. Soon afterwards it moved to Marina Del Rey, CA...

The Vidiac Connection

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Vidiac allows people to essentially create their own Internet TV channel where the users create and upload the content. It includes tools to allow site managers and moderators to mange the content and it also provides the resources required to bring sponsors to the site. Vidiac is available at no charge in a "banner-supported mode" and in enhanced mode which can be add-free or contain the site's sponsor's ads.

Many of the Vidiac communities focus on automotive and motor sports interests, but other communities include music, hobbies, entertainment, video games, and social networking. StreetFire is the leading site in the automotive category.

Comparisons to Similar Sites

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YouTube

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YouTube is the well-known video sharing site where you can find videos on just about anything from episodes of The_Daily_Show to crazy Christmas lights. Billed as a "Broadcast Yourself" site, you can upload your video into selected categories (there is a category for Automotive & Vehicles), a Channels section which includes things such as YouChoose 08, and a Community section where ... But most notably, YouTube is huge! As noted here has 100,000 viewers each day and an estimated 6.3 million videos have been uploaded.

At YouTube only registered users can upload videos, while at StreetFire anonymous uploads are allowed. Like at YouTube, there are restrictions on the types of videos that can be uploaded. At YouTube uploading pornography and nudity are not allowed, and while this is also true at StreetFire the restrictions extend to all things not related to automotive interests. Also, videos that fit better in other automotive categories, off-roading for example, may be rerouted to sister sites that specialize in that type of vehicle. Also, neither site allows you to download the videos, but there are simple ways to get around this.

Youtube is banned in some countries and increasingly in some schools in the US due to concerns or objections concerning content and bandwidth usage. (Has StreetFire been banned anywhere?)

Differences in video and audio quality, size, etc.

One of the biggest differences between YouTube and StreetFire is that by focusing on the automotive enthusiast StreetFire is able to incorporate additional features that will build a community around its site. This also allows it to focus its efforts on certain types of sponsors and to form partnerships with like-minded sites and content producers.

CarDomain

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CarDomain bills itself as the "Web's largest community of auto enthusiasts". Over half-million custom cars...

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