Kevin & Johna .com

On Friday, Kyler will be seven months old. Man, has that gone quickly! Since he’s (technically) still in the half-way to a year point, I thought we should sneak in some six month pictures before the end of the week.

My car (Nissan Murano) has a lease that’s up in just a few days. As I near the end of the lease term I can’t help but reflect on what a great car its been. Its a great value, excellent size and gets really good gas mileage considering how big it is (ave: 21-24 MPG, depending on who’s driving).

Its also one of the most clever cars I’ve owned. Everything is laid out really well. I can rip apart any car design, but this one causes me to list only minor complaints (like the color of the background behind the instrumentation).

Speaking of clever, check out the picture below. Note the “Pause/Mute” button. This is brilliant! Let’s say you’re in your car listening to a CD. Your phone rings and you need to take the call. You can simply hit “Pause/Mute” and the tunes stop and screen blinks until you press it again. Sure, you could turn it off, but that would require the CD to have to spin up again when you are done with your call. This way, you can quickly get back to your music.

Brilliant feature! The number of times I’ve used it: 3.

I always remember that feature is there after I hit the power button. Doh! And I bet some point in the future, I’ll complain about how my next car (TBD) doesn’t have it!

Johna is officially a CPA now (proof below). It wasn’t until I watched her go through the process that I realized just how much work getting your CPA is. She spent countless hours studying, practice test taking and watching some of the most boring (to me) instructional video lessons I’ve ever seen (imagine the guy who does infomercials for “placing TINY little ads…” teaching a CPA course!).

Congratulations, J on this HUGE accomplishment!

Kyler took a moment from his busy schedule to put a “personal touch” on the birthday card he was sending to his Grandpa Hansen. As you can see, he thought hard about what he wanted to write, took special care to write it nicely and sealed it with a kiss. He was also quite upset at his parents when they took the card away before he could finish sending his love along with the card.

Happy Birthday “Grandpa Hansen!”

One of my goals with Netcot this year is to really take advantage of the renewed success that its seen in the last couple of years. For those of you who don’t know, it was actually one of the very first Disney fan sites on the internet and for a period of time considered to be one of the Big 5. As more sites came on-line, we tried to differentiate from the rest of them as much as possible.

Netcot quickly became the opposite of everyone else. If other sites put watermarks on pictures to prevent you from re-using them on your own website or computer - we put up twice as many in higher quality without any watermarks. If other sites banned people, we encouraged people to speak their mind and be constructively critical about EXACTLY what they thought of Disney-stuff. The format worked. People found Netcot to be a refreshing change … except other sites, who seemed to see us as an enemy. To this day, I don’t understand why we couldn’t just all get along.

We then hand the brilliant idea to massively redo the site with a new design that was unlike anything else out there. It was an ambitious idea… and it didn’t work. The site eventually launched (on our 4th design concept) 3 years later than expected. We came back on-line and found that only a small group of core fans were still there waiting for us. (There was also a whole “legal” incident related to a misunderstanding of our satirical approach on ride reviews - but I’ll save that for another day).

We regrouped, retooled and restarted.

The latest generation of Netcot started a little over 2 years ago when we launched the Netcot podcast. Since then, Netcot has become bigger than ever! The podcast has been one of the featured iTunes Music Store podcasts (on iTunes & AppleTVs) for 26 months in a row (”Kids & Family” category)! Tens of thousands of people download the show each month. Our first-ever video podcast episode also continues to attract attention over at YouTube.com.

Last June, we launched the newest version of Netcot.com, this time determined to be one of the best sites to find the biggest and most interesting Disney news. In the last 6 months, well over a million people visited Netcot.com and the numbers continue to grow every week. Google’s news site polls Netcot.com frequently and often uses Netcot as a news source in their Google Alerts system. We’ve even been told that some radio station DJ’s have mentioned Netcot as their source of a Disney-related story.

We’ve even attracted the attention (in this case, GOOD attention) of Disney themselves, who recently wrote us to clarify confusion of Netcot visitors over details of a press release we covered. We got advanced notice of these corrections a full day in advance of the press release being corrected and re-issued to the media!

There are a number of people that have also stepped forward and offered to help at Netcot. We have 5 people on “staff” that donate their time to helping out with the site writing editorial articles, covering news stories and publishing original artwork for the site. We have a number of sponsorship deals in the works, including one with an upcoming book publisher. And today, our first full page ad hit a targeted magazine audience…

The site continues to grow in popularity and I continue to be amazed and thankful to everyone who follows it, listens to the weekly podcast and participates in the message boards. Their passion for Netcot fuels my late nights of keeping the site updated and cranking out a podcast. Long after Johna and Kyler have been asleep, I can be found in the “studio” working on last minute editing before that week’s show is launched.

I’m thrilled about where the site is now and I can’t wait to see where it goes from here…

Be sure to check out the pictures (below). We couldn’t help take a few videos either… and I couldn’t help work some editing magic…

Kyler got another surprise gift today. This time, from his Great-Grandparents (Hansen). As you can see, Kyler is really excited to get to wear these and can’t wait to check out the pool his mom and dad keep talking about down at HIS Grandparent’s house in Dallas.