I’ve been wanting to get this Iron Man strip out of my system for some time now, but wanted to wait until the movie was out.

This is once again one of those times when my artwork was too ambitious for a simple webcomic strip. But I’m still fairly happy with the outcome. Still feels like a lot of work for a dumb joke

Update: Got up this morning to find that none other than Jon Favreau, director of Iron Man retweeted this strip! Such an honor!

At the recent F8 Developers Conference, Facebook recently changed “Become a Fan” to “Like” when it comes to registering your feelings about your favorite brands, artists, etc. Seemed that “like” was kind of a generic feeling and maybe Facebook should provide a few more choices.

Also, I did the Twilight poster artwork separately, so I may make that available if anyone wants it.

This strip was inspired by my recent trip to the South by Southwest (SxSW) conference in Austin, TX. They had these stations set up to plug into power and recharge your laptops and phones, which always had a group of people huddled around them. Struck me funny and I wondered what such a group might be called.

I knew the actual name was key to this strip’s success, but I had zero idea what it should be. I wrote several things down but wasn’t happy with anything. I tried crowdsourcing via Twitter. I got some good suggestions, but nothing that felt right.

Then I was on Otis Frampton’s Ustream watching him draw and asked if I could poll his audience. Immediately, Otis suggested a “Google of Geeks”, which I thought was brilliant. And frankly, I don’t know why I didn’t think of it.

Here are some of the other contenders:

My ideas:

• Clusterhub
• Nerdmob
• Spazpod
• Nerdswarm

Follower suggestions:

• Nerdpod
• Herd of nerds
• Quaffle
• Gang
• Forum
• LAN
• Package
• Deployment
• Pod
• Swarm

The strip seemed to take forever and by now, I’m kind of sick of it. So I have no idea if it works anymore. But let me know if you like it.

Watch this strip being created!

Facebook recently was granted a patent for their news feed, they claim to have invented in 2006. This strip looks ahead to what else they might try to claim.

This strip is in reference to the recent brouhaha between filmmaker Kevin Smith and Southwest Airlines.

This thing has already been described ad nauseum on countless other blogs, so I’ll limit this to the short version. Kevin Smith (Clerks, Mallrats, Chasing Amy, etc) had bought two tickets on a Southwest flight from Oakland to Burbank. In an effort to get home quicker, he decided to get on standby for an earlier flight, which only had one seat available. Once he was seated, he was informed he was a “person of size” and needed to another seat, which there was none. They essentially pulled him from the flight for the safety and benefit of the other passengers.

What resulted is a case study in how social media can rock a brand to its core, but also how it can be used effectively to combat the effects. At the time, I think Southwest had about 25,000 followers (someone fact-check me on that), and Smith had 1.6 MILLION. This was a fact that the filmmaker wasted no time in disclosing. In his podcast explanation, he pretty much said, “you should know I’ve got over a million followers and a really big mouth” (paraphrased). Clearly the Southwest staff on duty that day was unaware of who they were deeming “too fat” for their airline.

Almost immediately, Smith started twittering. And twittering, and twittering. And twittering some more. Southwest handled it as well as could be expected, I suppose. They offered apologies via Twitter and their blog, and even (eventually) called Smith directly.

It remains to be seen, whether this will have a lasting effect on Southwest’s business. They’re often referred to as the commuter bus of the skies. So maybe their regular customers will take their chances with poor service to save a few bucks. But as of today, Southwest now has over  million followers, which is obviously a direct result of the controversy.

But on the flipside, as I write this, a Google search for “Southwest Air” yields a photo of Kevin Smith in the #3 position. The moral of the story? Don’t f**k with someone with more followers than you.

Some things are best kept to yourself.

Update: Thanks again to Mashable.com for picking up this comic!

According to a “source”, Silicon Alley Insider posted recently that Facebook was working on Foursquare-esque check-in functionality. While Facebook has not officially commented, I think there’s little doubt this will actually happen. The article points out a few reasons why Foursquare should be worried.

For one thing, Facebook is something you (probably) already use, and you’d be sharing this information with people that are already your friends. Convergence of your existing Facebook account and check-ins could eliminate the need to use one or more other apps. And it follows one of the tenets of social media apps, in that you’re going to gravitate to the apps your friends are already using. As much as I used to like Pownce, hardly anyone I knew used it….and so neither did I.

The other point, and this is the one the strip makes, is that Facebook “can afford to fail”. With their engineering talent and money, why not throw some developer’s time at a “beta” check-in app? If it takes off, great. Foursquare then needs to evolve, and fast. If not, whatever. It’ll just get thrown on the pile of other stuff Facebook is surely working on that we may never see.