It's been a quiet week in Cardom, so for Autoblog Podcast #92 we take time to address some of the excellent emails we've gotten at our new podcast at autoblog dot com address. Feel free to send in questions, comments, SHO-centric ribbing, whatever! We can't promise that it will make it onto the 'cast, but it just might. Before we dive into the binary mailbag, we discuss some of the vehicles that we've been sampling - so basically Damon talks about what he's been hooning around in at track events. Thanks for your 57 minutes this week! SUBSCRIBE to the Autoblog Podcast in iTunes
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New KITT Attack Mode revealed at Comic Con
London 2008: Honda OSM concept roadster says, "Cheerio!"
London 2008: Lotus unveils the Evora
2010 Chevy Camaro - Official Details and Images
2010 Chevy Camaro - LIVE from the reveal
First Drive: Maserati Quattroporte S in Europe
First Drive: 2008 MINI Cooper S JCW
In the Autoblog Garage:2009 Nissan GT-R
North American Exclusive First Drive: Alfa MiTo
First Drive: 2009 Kia Borrego
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Seoultrain @ Apr 10th 2008 2:40PM
Autoblog Gran Turismo Smackdown!
looking forward to it, guys. make it happen.
Oh, and thanks for answering my email about comparisons. Piggybacking on someone else's comparison test seems like a good idea.
epilonious @ Apr 10th 2008 3:30PM
How to really, really piss off some of your listeners in just three easy steps:
1. Vigorously request, over and over again, that your listeners send you things.
Emails, Voicemails, any type of content that requires them to sit down and think for a bit about what they would like to say... and then go through the effort of saying it. Plug that email address or voicemail number out there multiple times. Talk up how you will answer questions and respond to praise and criticism.
2. Upon receiving content... Don't respond with quick thank-you's to everyone that sent you email.
You definitely shouldn't acknowledge the time they spent in thinking of something to say to you with a brief reply of some sort... and it will really put out that tone that you don't really care that much about the people that send you content. They should know they are damned lucky to get their question read, and otherwise their responses are about as important as the spam that sits in the mailbox.
3. Respond to maybe 10 of the 40 things that come in...
and rather than try and answer as many as possible on an admittedly slow day... just gab on and on about video games and backoffice stuff and explore all those tangents and giggle. Chew up that time.
By following these three easy steps... you are sure to really piss off at least thirty people.
Now, as one of the people who listened religiously since day 1 (back when the podcast was being sponsored by Volvo)... I can't tell you how excited I was to ask you a question... How much more excited I was when you talked about having a slow day and were like "ohhh, we have all this time to answer these questions"... and then how pissed/sad/unhappy I was when after about 30 minutes of "question answering" full of generic Bee-Essing and fumbling around ("do you have yours up?").. you signed off without answering it. I guess my question sucked. I guess that time was wasted. I guess I got excited over nothing.
So, now I am pretty much thinking of going home and hitting "unsubscribe". I am thinking several other people are too. So to avoid this type of thing happening again here are a few actual tips:
1. Warn people that you have more than you can chew.
If it hadn't sounded (from the post and the tone of the podcast) that you were going to get to everything that was sent in, I wouldn't have been on the edge of my seat wondering when you were going to talk to my question, only to be devastated when you were like "whoops, it's an hour, we have too many, fu[bleep] the critics, bye!!"
2. Send back notes to the people that send you stuff.
If you're not going to play it on the podcast it's the least you can do "thanks, this took time, we appreciate it". The nicer thing would be to go "this is great, we'll definitely talk to it" or "this isn't really what we're looking for, but thanks for taking the time..." so people know whether or not they're gonna get their questions answered.
3. Turn the professional:gossipy-crap ratio from 50:50 to 90:10.
All this stuff should have been happening before I came in to chide you. You are supposed to be the voices of Autoblog... and yet you were dicking around for half the podcast, when it seemed like you were going to try and answer a lot of questions. Well, you failed, hard, because it seems like you couldn't even handle 50% of them. The negatives of the gap between this blog and actual publications became quite clear here.
Now... granted... this might all be one horrible mis-understanding. I might have gotten the address wrong, and you might have been sending out thank you notes and "we might not get to all of them" warnings all-along.
But if you weren't... and you really were just soliciting content submissions only to fart around and be choosy and treat a majority of the questions like spam... then f[beep]k you.
rndmnme @ Apr 10th 2008 4:05PM
Somewhere in the south of France, someone is playing the worlds smallest violin for you.
Seriously dude, not everyone gets their 15 minutes, but I see you've tried with your diatribe.
I doubt AB responds to 1/4th of what they get in. It's the interwebs man, there's a lot of stuff on them tubes.
Oh, and FYI you're sob story isn't going to get your "content" any higher on AB or any other blogs/podcasters priority list. If anything you just go yourself completely knocked off.
In other words, "You're doing it wrong."
Seoultrain @ Apr 11th 2008 3:02AM
tl;dr
ugg.tryptophan @ Apr 10th 2008 4:03PM
make that 31 listeners!
epilonious @ Apr 10th 2008 4:13PM
If I wanted them to answer my question here, I would have posted ithere. So this idea that I am posting about how pissed I was as some sort of ploy to get my question read doesn't really work out.
I was posting about how pissed I was because of how pissed I was.
Frankly, I could care less what the autoblog boys do with this
information... While it would be nice if they turned up the
professionalism a notch to avoid pissing people off in the future... they very well might not give a crap about reading comments (and that wouldn't be surprising)
That being said... I don't give much of a crap what some person spouting 4-chan memes thinks of me either... and I am probably not going to try and correct your perceptions after this. That should remove any reason for you to say anything else to me.
MiniguyVegas @ Apr 10th 2008 6:20PM
Umm, the new Jag XF is not based on the XK, it's a refreshed S-type platform. Ford didn't have the budget to create a new platform, so it's S-Type 2.0. It reuses some of the XK suspension components, but they're still bolted to the PAG platform.
FThorn @ Apr 11th 2008 7:50AM
Can you guys or can you hire an Indian firm to, edit your podcasts? It's more a recorded conversation than an on-topic, purposeful delivery of interesting car stuff.
Learning to drive a stick chap that asked: test-drive (w/o salesdude) a manual. Have a friend that knows how to drive one take it off the lot, then switch. Pick a car with a great clutch, low bog-ease. Pick a two-seater if you really must NOT have a salesdude follow you. DRESS nicely, drive a good car to the test.
Or
try to find a rental with a stick. Not sure if you can.
I took my wife on test drive-and-learn, option.
rndmnme @ Apr 11th 2008 9:44AM
Maybe you should hire epilonious to edit your posts.
FYI, obsessive, comma, use, is, annoying, for, those, of, us, that, actually, read, them, as, pauses, in, thoughts. It's also totally unnecessary unless you're William Shatner.
Sales dude is two words.
"Learning to drive a stick chap that asked" - Say what now?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grammatical_conjunction
Pete @ Apr 11th 2008 11:58AM
guys, great podcast.
also, try to get vid of the gt5 prologue smackdown. it'd be hilarious to watch.
keep the cursing up!!! f*ck the anti-SHO f*ckers and f*cking biblebashers!!!
XGM @ Apr 11th 2008 10:31PM
Add an other listener, really like the podcast.
Dan @ Apr 11th 2008 11:36PM
I just finished listening to the show, and there was one thing that really caught my attention.
Toward the end of the show, it wasn't "Be sure to subscribe via iTunes". You actually acknowledged that some of us listeners don't actually use the CrApple software or iPlods to listen to your show.
Finally!
As for the BAC that asked you to watch your language, here is what you say: If you think you can do it better, go right ahead and do it! Ain't nothing stoppin' you, man!
And if you lose that listener (or any other) there are always more coming into the fold to replace them.
Keep it up!