My first blog post... ever.

Today is a milestone in my life. March 1st, 2008. This is the day in which I take my first step into the world of, what are the kids calling it these days, the blog-o-sphere?

I already know what you're all thinking: "Yeah right his first blog post! That fool was online before I even knew my computer could make that God-awful screeching noise and hog up my phone line."

Well, that may be true, but my feelings for blogs have somewhat paralleled my feelings for printers. I just didn't like them. I don't think I can pinpoint an exact reason why, but it just seemed so trendy and unnecessary to me. Let's face it, everyone has a blog! Some of us, *cough Jefra *cough* have multiple!

So I guess the whole point here is to post things we like, what's on our minds, and what is going on in our lives. Well here I go!

My latest adventure, which many of you may be aware of, is with my latest project wheresmycellphone.com. It's a simple site to help your find your misplaced cell phone, for those of you not in the know. Because of this, I have been forced to delve into the world of blogs, podcasts, and news sites just trying to get the word out.

So I have a confession to make. I'm starting to actually appreciate, dare I say enjoy this bloated, unnecessary, and repetitive online revolution. While a lot of it is pure trash, that's a fact of a just about anything in excess these days.

Hello blogs! I know I'm late but I was hoping you still had some punch left for me?

And now, some news about what's going on in my life:

Where's My Cell Phone.com

• This site is an idea I had one day when I couldn't find my misplaced phone. Surprised no one had thought of it before, I made this site in about an hour.
  
• Since launch, traffic on this site has steadily gone up. With the occasional spike when some larger publication, blog, or website acknowledges or mentions it:
• MSNBC - It took me a while to find where exactly it was mentioned, but it's just one sentence near the end quoting a line from my site.
• digg - I wouldn't say digg is responsible for a significant amount of traffic, yet. But the potential is certainly there as digg is hugely successful and brings a lot of traffic to a lot of sites all over the net.
• Google Gadgets - If you use iGoogle, this then you know about adding custom stuff to your homepage. This also has a lot of potential in the future. Thank you for all the entertaining reviews!
  
• Stumble Upon - This site is one of my favorites. It's like channel surfing the internet. You press the stumble button and it takes you to a page it thinks you will like based on topics you specify and sites you give a 'thumbs-up' to. The more thumbs up a site receives, the likelier it will come up in the rotation for everyone else. A pretty steady amount of traffic comes from Stumble Upon, and that is going up.
• CNET - This one just popped up last night. I spend some of my free time whoring out the site to various bloggers and such. Apparently CNET took the bait and quoted my e-mail in their latest podcast. I trimmed off all the fat and you can listen to it here if you want.
• Some other random blogs - Yup. Spanish ones, too!
• And of course all of your wonderful mentions in your personal blogs as well. Thank you!
• And now you may be asking "Okay Trey that's great and all, but you're not making any money off this so why are you wasting your time? You're no Everson!"
  
  Hold your horses there, my dearest entrepreneurial tech savvy family. I admit I'm not making a killing off this site. But I am making a little bit of revenue off the little ads on the bottom. See those little guys? Yeah Google pays me each time someone clicks on one. So next time you use the site or are feeling extra bored, mosey on over there and click an ad. I'm not looking to make a living here, it's really just a fun project I started just for the hell of it. If it takes off and Google decides to buy the domain name and idea for $15 million, that'd be great! But I'm not holding my breath.
• So that's the skinny on wheresmycellphone.com. If anything big happens, like a hostile takeover, then I'll certainly let you know!
  

In other news, school is great, I am loving my classes and am about to graduate in May. One class I am taking is a video effects class where we are learning a program called After Effects. I have fallen in love with this program. It's like Photoshop for video, and lets you do just about anything. Some of you might be aware that I do my freelance design work under the guise of a company called Über Studio, and I've made a few studio plug animations for this class. You can watch them here:

Plug 1
Plug 2
Plug 3

My teacher liked them so much he asked me to submit them to a southern California advertising competition, and rumor has it from the judges that our school did really well. It's not for certain, but it sounds like one of those plugs I did won a category in the competition. More on that later in March.

Well I hope this wasn't a complete waste of your time, but I rather enjoyed it and could get used to this whole "blog' thing. Thanks for being such an awesome family, and have a great weekend!

-Trey