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.

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.

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.

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.

All the world's a stage

Rock Stars love the limelight, the cheering adoring fans with every eye fixed on every detail, the hair, the wardrobe.  Excellent Coders, we crave quiet spaces where we can dress comfortably, enter a private world and interact minimally with the rest of the world.

New cities and towns.

A Rock Stars' life is a new hotel room every night, buses, seeing new towns.  Lots of people like to travel, but resettling every night, finding a good source of pizza and coffee, the lack of a comfortable chair, etc.  These are not things craved by Excellent Coders.

Everyone's a critic.

The struggle between art and popularity brings drama and excitement to the Rock Star.  Code review and collaborative creation are the source of inspiration for an Excellent Coder.

Rock-n-roll all night and party every day.

Everyone loves a good parry and I've been to some great ones at SXSW, but partying like there will be no tomorrow is just not a skill that Excellent Coders will list on their resume.

I think it's time to find a new term for the coding elite. I've heard Coding Jedi thrown around but it just hasn't taken.   I'm looking to hire some great coders, help me find the right words to describe them.

I didn't watch the Inauguration speech, I watched the people, who watched Obama.   They've been empowered, they feel like they can make a difference.  Grass roots community activism can work.  These newly empowered voters need to not lose hope when help is slow to come from Washington.

My biggest hope is for our planet.   We don't need anything but a strong leader with a stronger message to mobilize the masses towards a lifestyle of cohabitation with our planet.  I cheered when Barack Obama stated, "Each day brings further evidence that the ways we use energy strengthen our adversaries and threaten our planet". 

I'm trying to do my part, so along with the Crowd Fusion team, I'm please to announce that we've launched Super Eco to help educate people on the little things you can do every day to make a difference.  Super Eco will help dispel the Eco myths,  show why reading labels matters, and give a voice to the people offering solutions.  Join the movement, tell us how we can help, and become part of the Super Eco community.

I'm not sure where from, but sometime back in December, Carrie dug up a truely old skool Star Wars T-shirt for our 2 year old.   We both got a kick out of it, but had no idea the memories it would create.   During the holidays, I wanted to test my son's ability to get his grandfather's attention and put the T-shirt on him with instructions to go show it to Grandpa.  To my surprise he stuck out his chest and proudly pointed to the characters for my dad.  They proceeded to have an involved conversation about the empire and the force.

After a couple weeks of the t-shirt going in every wash and Owen pointing proudly to CHEW-BAHT-TA it was brought to our attention that Audrey's classmates were playing Starwars during recess.   I'll spare all the details, but digging out my VHS tapes of the trilogy put the final nail in the coffin of 10 year old CRT TV.  Now we're watching Digitally remastered Starwars on a 42" LCD, having light sabre battles, and walking around with a colander on our head professing "Owen Wobot".   

Much to my wife's dismay I've started studying all of the zombie lore and am compiling a list of things that are nearly universally accepted as the zombie laws.   With this in hand you can at least have an idea of what you are going to be up against.

1. Zombies can be your mother, your brother, your drinking buddy, but they are no longer your friend.
2. They carry a virus that is spread by their bite.  The virus comes from outer space or more likely - the government.
3. They can only be stopped by dismantling their brain or severing their head from their body.
4. Zombies feast on human flesh and won't stop until they've consumed every last living human.
5. They have no emotion or feeling.  You can't reason with them or tame them (see Fido).

It's pretty much that simple.  There are rules that many tales hold in common. For instance, they move slowly and are easy targets.  However, more recent tomes such as I am Legend and 28 days later have surmised that they are much more agile than earlier seers have predicted. 

I hope that armed with this knowledge you won't panic when the dead break down your door.   In future segments I'll give you tips on survival.  Lets hope I get to write them before those well meaning scientists destroy our future.

Is it possible that we are ready now to see convergence of Internet and TV ?  Oh pretty please.  There are a couple of things that needed to happen before we could see this reality,  quality TVs that display computer screens in a quality format (1080p) were a must, web style advertising during shows which Intel is working hard on, and a willingness from broadcasters to allow consumers to view content at their convenience.   

The broadcasters are finally being dragged screaming and kicking online. CBS is the latest to join the fray with TV.com as a response to Hulu.com.  Netflix has been instrumental in moving the needle on Web based content with their willingness to partner with nearly any hardware provider including Roku, LG, and Xbox.   

Unfortunately as of late Netflix has consistently been giving me a network error and slowed to a crawl.  Hulu would do well to be more forthright about what 'new arrivals' means and to actively email me when they add content.  We've got a long way to go, but for the first time 'convergence' looks like science-fact not fiction.

Photo credit blakespot

I was watching the Giants collapse this weekend with some friends :-(  And the new Friday the 13th commercial came on.   A discussion ensued about horror films and I brought up that I only watch Zombie movies - that brought silence to an already depressed crowd.  Zombie movies ?  Like 28 days later ?  I guess that's OK.   So I found myself defending the genre.

Why Zombie movies ?  Because it could and probably will happen.   How easy is it to believe that the government - or big business will create some crazy ass virus and inject us all "for safety reasons".  Have you been to a casino lately ?  The invasion has already begun.  

What are the pillars of the horror industry ?  Vampires and Werewolves, sorry the aren't among us.   Psychopathic killers, CSI does too good of a job weekly for me to need the big screen. Creature Features, scientists  would carve them up before they got a chance to be a threat.  Supernatural Thrillers ? No, it's Zombie movies for me.   Simple plot, simple rules and quite the motivator to watch every move big pharma makes.

With a simple website and the Internet. It was surprising simple to make sales using Search Engine Marketing, a brand new advertising method.  There was very little competition and AtariAce.Com quickly brought in sales.  For a couple years I mainly worked on the Atari 2600 and during the Christmas holiday it took all my free time to get systems up for sale.  One holiday my parents were in town and my father became very interested in the business, enough to start helping with Atari 2600 Systems.  Within 18 months my Dad was doing all of the Atari 2600s allowing me to collect and sell other systems including Nintendo, Sega, and Sony.

In 2007 I all but stopped collecting and selling Video Game systems as Crowd Fusion and my second child started to consume a tremendous amount of time, however every Christmas my father still gears up the advertising and the site for an Atari 2600 rush.   This past year it was hard to see any interest coming with this now 30 year old system and we were pretty sure that it was time to close up shop .. and then Lexus came along with this commercial.

Not only did sales start immediately but we sold a lot of Centipede as well.   I'm sure my father is struggling everyday with whether he should stock up on systems for next christmas, or accept that the risk / reward has become too high.  

Over the last 10 years I've built a large collection of vintage video games, systems and accessories.  I've built up some very nice pieces that could turn into a great traveling museum piece.   I haven't given up on adding to the collection, but I've definitely taken well deserved break as family and work have made demands.   I'm glad I have a hobby but most of all I'm glad that my father and I have been able to work on it together.

Maybe next year I'll brave the inevitable travel delays and go to CES.  This year I'm happy to be watching from home.

The first step in the process is to capture the edit stream.  Wikipedia provides this reasonably up to date at this web address.   I'm currently not capturing Robots or Minor Edits, getting 500 edits a page spreads a time frame of 5-10 minutes depending on time of day and day of week.

The second step is to visit the page editing for every entry that was found in the list. Wikipedia lets you see that here. I log all of these actions in a database.

To give some background to the edits I pull a synopsis of each Wikipedia Page and look for flags on the page like cleanup and current event.  As I'm writing this, the Russia-Ukraine gas disputes page shows examples of flags that editors place on Wiki content.

One more piece of contextual data is captured by capturing all links from the home page and Featured Ariticles Archive.

Once you have all of the data you can now do a summarization routine to build the lists of what's hot. I run summarizations 6-10 times an hour for the data points of 1, 6, 24, and 72 hours.  The summarizer for weekly and monthly data are run once a day.

 Undo, Reversion, and Vandalism are notes that are put on the edit trail and I keep track of these statistics individually.  Total Edits and Unique Editors are exactly what they describe.  Quality Edits is the Total Edits minus Undos and Reversions.

Please feel ask for clarification on any of these points, or just post thank you if you find Wikirage helpful and/or fun.

Crowd Fusion is progressing at a rapid pace and helping build exciting new ways to consume media.   The Obsessable team is showcasing the platform right now with their CES 2009 Coverage.    If you visit the CES 2009 page you'll notice a stream of new products being announced and released, news, and features.  This conversation stream is a great way to look get all your tech news in an easily digestible format, and quickly drill down to the things that most interest you.

I'm curious to see the new Netbooks and HDTVs. Samuel Axon got his hands on the new Sony Vaio P ultra portable. Toshiba announced a whole bunch of HDTVs.

OK, back in the ring, shuffling my fingers, exercising my dictionary, and it feels good.

The easy answer is Crowd Fusion.  The platform allows us to attract great talent and let them act superhuman.  Speaking of Superhumans, we hired Barb Dybwad. Take a look at an individual product page like the T-Mobile G1. It's not only description and specs or stories we've written, there are stories from around the web, that we are curating through an internal RSS reader.  This gives us a deep search experience, helps us find news stories and new products faster than other sites, and assign them into the work flow with ease.

How are we going to get recognized over the all the noise ?

Another strategic hire can provide some of that answer. C.K. Sample is now our Social Media Evangelist and is making sure we all leverage our networks to their fullest potential while building a strong network for Obsessable at the same time.  The platform provides another answer.  I've pulled out all my White Hat SEO tricks for this one and within 5 hours of letting Google Spiders see our site we were ranked number 1 for TMobile G1 MSRP. 

Why is Crowd Fusion that good ?

Experience, Passion, Hustle, Creativity and Vision.

[UPDATE] In case you are wondering we launched Obsessable.com yesterday.  It wouldn't have been possible without Randall Bennett and his great team.