Are you a hard core XHTML/CSS designer/developer looking to work collaboratively with a strong team of experts challenging and learning from each other daily while building the next big thing in web publishing?

Ideal candidate has superb skills in XHTML and CSS, a working knowledge of JavaScript, SVN, web design experience, and is comfortable with webpage templating principles.  

Crowd Fusion is an exciting virtual company, made up of people who love what they do, which relies heavily on strong communication skills and interactive tools like basecamp, campfire and email.   Contractor needs to be able to commit to 10-20 hours per week and be available at least half of these hours to collaborate with the Crowd Fusion development team.  Ideally available 2-3 days a week 4+ hours a day during EST work hours.

Send examples of your work, hourly contracting rate and resume to Craig Wood, Crowd Fusion CTO at craig (dot) wood [at] gmail (dot) com.

Virtual reality seems to be a completely played-out cliche as we approach the 2nd decade of the 21st century.  However augmented reality is here.  It is about to explode into the common culture with an intrusion that will make 70s NYC Subway graffiti seem tame.  I first started thinking about the possibilities after reading William Gibson describe locative art in Spook Country.  How appropriate for the visionary who brought us the harshest visions of cyberspace to be on the forefront of this new art form.

Augmented reality uses a computer and a camera to overlay digital items on top of reality.  The interaction with these items is only limited by the programmer's imagination.  Tonight, I had the two kids cut out patterned pieces of paper.  We sat in front of my laptop with the iSite on.  Holding up the patterned paper created over layed 'snowflakes' on our video stream and played different notes based on the which square was recognized.  Try this--you won't regret it. 

Once you've had some fun with this, if you are a paranoid cynic like me, you instantly see how this could proliferate out of control.  Don't see it?  Review the technology as used in advertising. Or Japanese Anime. Think about the player being on your cell phone, combine geo-location triggering with graphical triggering and everything in the current world could be over layed with multiple dimensions of art, games, or advertising.  It's spooky, sexy, exciting. It feels like that first time I saw the pacific ocean waves breaking real-time on a web camera in 1995.  The internet has only just begun to leave the prison of the computer and escape to our mobile devices. I can't wait to see what else the creative collective can do to entertain and enlighten us.

My parents are to blame for me being a geek.  When I was 11 my father bought me a Vic 20 that he had seen in a Computer Store while he was trying to sell IBM big iron.  I was so excited about having my very own basic compiler that they let me skip school to see if I could fill up the 3.5K with some bloated code.  

But, this was not their first attempt to thoroughly geekify me--3 or 4 years earlier I was handed an original Rubik's Cube and given the task of figuring it out.  Most of my friends had them, and most of them could get one or two sides solid then give up, deciding that playing on the playground or a pickup football game was more interesting.   Not me--I obsessed until it was finished.   I solved it a couple of times before I decided to study other people's solution books.  The next challenge would be to see how fast I could complete it.

I remember like it was yesterday, one Saturday morning at my bowling league, solving the cube while my teammates timed me.  One minute 10 seconds... I can do better.  55 Seconds.  One more try.  39 secs.  Looking back, I can't believe my hands moved that fast.  Unfortunately, my cube had gotten soft and routinely it would explode, throwing small square chunks of plastic all over the lanes and sending young children scurrying to find them. 

This was the moment Justin walked by, "No one can solve that".   Justin had a hook, and led the league with an average around 200.  The gauntlet was thrown, how could I respond? "Wanna bet?"  The question came from somewhere buried deep.  "Yeah sure, 50 cents says you can't do it," Justin responds.  My fingers fly into action - colors whirling, one side down.  Now all the corners finished.  Filling in the top and bottom.  Now the Rubik's maneuver.  Wait!  Arggh!  I had put the broken puzzle together with one piece inverted.  I couldn't convince Justin that a single piece couldn't be flipped by anything other than taking it apart and physically flipping it.

I lost the bet, but learned a great lesson about preparation.  It still amazes me that people think the Rubik's Cube is some great mystery and that you must be an astro physicist to solve it like Neil Degrasse Tyson on Jon Stewart's show.   I still have one kicking around the house and will bring it out to dazzle friends.  I can no longer solve it in less than a minute, and no one takes my bets.

I have to admit it is hard to miss New York when my memories of leaving 4 days ago are snow covered highways and waiting in an airplane while being covered with a thousands gallons of antifreeze. I am anxious to get back this evening, we've had a remarkably productive trip.  Crowd Fusion is being well received by everyone that we've shown it to.  Jason and Jade have been superbly gracious. I've been bowling more times in the last 4 days than the previous 4 years.   The Mahalo tech team was in town, and well met.

This morning we were promised bagels as good as New York, right here in LA.  I've been disappointed by that line throughout the world, so I instead chose huevos rancheros, possibly the best meal of the trip.   Besides the great eggs breakfast conversation was lively with a chance meeting of Miles Beckett of lonelygirl15 fame.   You can trip over an internet celebrity just about anywhere these days, but I'm pretty sure the density is significantly greater here.

 UPDATE: Brian Alvey posted the video of an ever so insightful round table discussion on Vimeo.