Man, it’s good to be back in Austin. I’m not completely thawed out yet, but I’m still beaming after watching two good college friends get married in Boston this weekend.

Weddings are pretty amazing things. We’re surrounded by friends and family, and love seems to be everywhere. And of course, like the sap I am, I found myself falling in love too.

With a clothing iron.

Now, feel free to chuckle (the rest of the wedding party sure did), but I’ve never been so enamored with a home appliance. As I was getting ready on the morning of the big day, nothing seemed unusual about this device that emitted a beep and a cool, blue-colored glow as soon as I plugged it in. But after a short pause, another soft beep and a hue change to green, I wondered if something might be amiss.

I propped up the iron and took a step back. Am I doing something wrong here? Had I deviated from my tried and true Ironing Playbook™?

- Plug in iron. Check.
- Crank the dial all the way up. Check.
- Start ironing immediately. Check.
- Singe shirt. Check.
- Quickly spin the dial way down. Check.
- Realize I went too far and crank it back up. Check.
- Get frustrated that it’s 2011 and I STILL don’t have a flying car or a robot to iron for me. Check.

Seemingly sensing my apprehension, the iron beeped softly once more and turned a rosy red. It was only then that I noticed the colored dots on the temperature dial. Subtly, and elegantly, this device had obliterated years of pent-up frustration with ironing, with a small light that simply told me how hot it was.

The lament I hear most often from budding entrepreneurs is that “I want to go out on my own and start something, but I just don’t know what to build.” Sadly, most follow the crowd and try to catch a ride on the hot wave at the moment, but my advice is always the same: Find a pain point and remove it. Figure out what annoys you, your friends, and your family every day, and create a novel way to eliminate it.

The very best products remove that pain and make us mini-superheroes. Whether it’s my personal goal of turning fans into Super Fans that are never the loser at the watercooler that missed the big game, or you’re the product designer that transformed me into an Ironing Ninja creating shirt creases so sharp I need a concealed weapon permit, your goal should be to make customers better at what they do every day.

Build a product or service that’s able to do that, and you just might see me walking it down
the aisle.

(ed. note: i’m still the only person on the internet to use the phrase “fail whale’s teat“.)

It’s been 4+ years since the News Feed launched, and it’s hard to remember the site without it. Four years is no insignificant period of time. There have been countless startups either influenced by, or were flat out clones of the News Feed that no longer exist. A couple are still hanging on, the occasional one gets beamed up to the mothership, but most ease their way into the deadpool.

This one (massive) feature has become as ubiquitous as the dropdown, but it hasn’t changed at all in the past four years. Maybe there are a couple more options to hide annoying Farmville badges, or keep your ex out of sight, but it has always answered just one question: “What just happened?”

On the surface, that’s only subtly different than “What is happening?”, but at the core, the difference is vast. Why must News Feeds be focused on the Past? Aren’t the Present and the Future just as, if not more important?

What if you took the notion of a Past/Present/Future News Feed and installed it at my bank? Wouldn’t it make me a more educated customer? Couldn’t it be the perfect home for “good behavior incentives”?

October 11th
- Your Visa payment of $101.86 was received on time

October 19th
- Late Fee charge of $35.00 waived

Today
- Pending charge of $6.44 at Chipotle
- Pending charge of $21.64 at Best Buy

Thursday
- Your 2nd Mortgage payment of $334.98 is due

January 4th, 2011
- If you continue making payments on time, you will receive a $500 credit limit increase

What if you took the notion of a Past/Present/Future News Feed and installed it at a sports startup?

Find out tomorrow.

Here’s 12 minutes of me talking about sports and race, along with a veiled shot at Twitter tossed in just for fun.

I’ll actually be at work during the Super Bowl, sweating through one of the most nerve wracking launches I’ve ever been a part of. My contract gig at HomeAway is wrapping up, and after two months of ActionScript-slinging and Airport-sprinting, we get to share it with the world.

Third Quarter. Griswolds. Stay tuned.

Admittedly, it’s hard for me to hate Walmart more than I already do—the real travesty is that this puts Halloween officially in our rear-view mirror, and I must bid adieu to The Mash. It’s easily in the Top 5 of cool projects I’ve had the luck to contribute to, the best use of Facebook Connect I’ve ever implemented, and the team was an absolute blast to be a part of.

Check it out quick before it’s retired and we’re left with another season of going to Jared.

You should come check out my talk on building add-ons for Firefox and Fennec at this month’s Refresh Austin meeting.

Tonight. Buffalo Billiards. 7pm.

There’s food. There’s beer. There’s ample time to heckle me.

Be there.

http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=170821558189

I sometimes think I was the last person on Earth to fall in love with Pandora. It was a quick courtship—in just a matter of weeks, Pandora became the background music to my day. It didn’t matter if I was at work or at home, the world just felt silent without her. And once I found Pandora for Blackberry, we were joined at the hip. Literally.

It seemed perfect. I had found a limitless library of music that was sincerely interested in me. I would talk, she would listen. I would “thumbs up” Mos Def, and she’d introduce me to Atmosphere. I’d “thumbs down” The Offspring, and she’d remind me how much I loved The Darkness. It was summertime and I was in love. It was kismet. And it was free.

July 7th started off like any other Thursday, but that morning I got an e-mail that I’ll never forget. Pandora was leaving me for someone new. His name? “Revenue”.

I was crushed.

Our favorite Web sweethearts, YouTube, Facebook, Digg and (my favorite) Twitter, all operate in the red. Despite their rock star status and the seemingly endless amount of time I spend on these sites, not a single one has turned a profit. Emulating King Gillette is a great game plan, but why give away the razors when you have no clue how to make a blade?

Lately, we’re seeing more companies try to buck the trend. Small startup 37signals and their hugely popular project management tool Basecamp has been charging from day one. On the other end of the spectrum, global media mogul Rupert Murdoch plans to build an online pay wall for the New York Post and Wall Street Journal in 2010.

But will anyone actually pay? More importantly, will I pay for Pandora after having my heart broken? On the Internet, the gap between $0.00 and $0.01 is a chasm, and we’ve been trained to expect the former. Pandora’s new $0.99/month charge for access to more than 40 hours of music (or $36/year for unlimited music via Pandora One) is absolutely miniscule, but I still remember a fraternity brother strolling into my room a full 10 years ago babbling about free music and some program called “Napster” that some kid down the street had built.

As a die-hard geek, this was a watershed moment for me. Am I really going to pay for music? A co-worker (and fellow Pandora user) summed it up best in an IM, “Mark–you could pay that 99 cents, or, maintain your dignity. Time will tell…”.

So what did I decide? Let’s just say I’m one hour away from hitting my 40-hour quota for September, and for the second month in a row I’ll be selling my geek dignity for the price of a Biggie fries.

I’m sure my Commodore 64 is rolling over in its grave, but paying for a service this good actually feels right. And if an early adopter like me is okay with it, what does it mean for the mainstream? After an atrocious 18 months for tech companies that saw many enter the deadpool, expect many of the survivors to start charging monthly subscriptions. I’d also bet we’ll see companies in different industries band together with package deals, “Get music from Pandora, news from the Post, traffic alerts from Fox, and weather alerts from AccuWeather for just $9.99/month with the SuperGloboTron Everything Plan!”

So how does that saying go? “Once is an aberration, twice is a trend”? After two months of ponying up, be sure to check back in to see if I crack the wallet open in October. I’m pretty sure three times represents a seismic shift.

I’ve submitted an idea for this year’s SXSW Interactive conference that I’m really excited about. To actually get selected, I need tons of votes on the SXSW Panel Picker. The concept is The Last Panel In and is powered by Refreshing Cities.

SXSW’s massive size forces panel selections well in advance of the conference. Occasionally, this leads to panels that are vague or out of date.

With The Last Panel In, we’ll reserve one spot in the schedule for a topic that we’ll vote on in early 2010. This experiment will let SXSW attendees choose a timely topic that they’ll be excited to learn about.

For a brief moment this morning, Facebook and Twitter were both down. I quickly crafted a few succinct, snarky sentences before realizing I had nowhere to post it.

While Facebook seems to be back up and humming again, Twitter has confirmed that the site was forced down, and is being kept down, by an ongoing Denial-Of-Service (DDoS) attack. What’s a DDoS? Imagine 10,000 people descending on your local grocery store, not looking to buy anything, but just stroll up and down the aisles. Everything gets congested, and no one accomplishes anything.

Well, no one except for the people orchestrating the attack. Regardless of your feelings on Twitter the medium, there’s no denying its full-blown media darling status, or the huge bulls-eye that status places on its back. And Twitter’s (surprising) single network provider architecture certainly doesn’t help.

So what does this outage mean for users? Well, a lot and a little. We’ve all seen the stats on low retention rates for users that don’t dive into the conversation quickly–there are a lot of nascent n00bs that I’m sure will completely drop off because of this.

But then again, Australia and much of Japan will sleep right through it. The early-adopting Twitterati will probably enjoy the nostalgia of the Fail Whale. Heck, I’ve read reports of people taking strolls around the block to kill time while it’s down. What crazy times we live in!

So what does this mean for your brand? Well, a lot and a little. Companies like StockTwits and Bit.ly get smothered while sucking on the Fail Whale’s teat. Symbiotic relationships are great as long as there are multiple sea anemones for your Clownfish. No brand should place all of their customer service, marketing, or customer acquisition eggs in the basket of a pre-revenue startup still trying to find its way.

But then again, that’s not a news flash, because you knew that already. Right? Right?

Many great products fail because they’re not explained well. But with its intentional, palpable disdain for servers, this video absolutely nails it, with language everyone can understand.

I should be in bed.

But I have one statement and one question.

I’ll make it quick.

Tech Marketing Folk: Stop using the word algorithm when all you mean is a really big If statement. I know you’re exaggerating. You know you’re exaggerating. Stop it. Now.

Twitterati: If the despicable Ahmadinejad had been robbed of an election and was using social networking to organize his supporters, would there be as much of an outpouring of support? Would people be changing their profile pictures to green ribbons? Would Twitter be pushing back scheduled maintenance? I doubt it.

“It is clear from the public response over the last two weeks that there is a great deal of misunderstanding about our plans to roll out additional tests on consumption based billing. As a result, we will not proceed with implementation of additional tests until further consultation with our customers and other interested parties, ensuring that community needs are being met. While we continue to believe that consumption based billing may be the best pricing plan for consumers, we want to do everything we can to inform our customers of our plans and have the benefit of their views as part of our testing process.”

Time Warner Cable Backs Off Metered Broadband Everywhere

For those who haven’t heard the back story, after running a trial in Beaumont, Texas, Time Warner Cable has decided to introduce metered Internet pricing in Austin. Instead of unlimited usage as before, it’ll work a lot like your cell phone. You choose a plan, and if you use more bandwidth that you ordered, you’re charged an overage fee.

TWC is spouting off scary numbers like the Top 1% of users are using 20%+ of the bandwidth, but instead of targeting the 1%, they’re changing the plans for everyone.

In the end though, this move isn’t about bandwidth—it’s about content. YouTube, Hulu, and Netflix are crowbars, prying long-time customers away from Time Warner’s locally monopolistic cable TV services. Bandwidth hogs all, once the seed of “overage fees” is planted in consumers’ minds, these services quickly shift from being a pleasant, free alternative to an indulgent, possibly costly treat.

And once you have customers counting videos the way we count cell phone minutes, Time Warner can slide in to deliver their own content…free from bandwidth metering, of course.

A cable company having trouble isn’t normally news, but when that one provider dominates an entire state it’s a big deal. Tweets started trickling in 50 minutes ago, and now they’re starting to flow in.

If you provide a service that people find mission-critical, having an external site (hosted by a different hosting company!) that monitors status is mandatory. Whether it’s a site like status.oceanic.com, or just a freakin’ Twitter account. If you wait for a crisis to establish the line of communication, it’s already too late because no one will no where to find it.

Merry Christmas, Hawaiian Telecom’s advertising agency—you just had a new campaign dropped in your lap.