This wasn't a password that you type in. It was a verbal passphrase you have to give the account rep over the phone, but how is a customer going to know what his phrase got changed to until he calls and finds himself giving the wrong password?

A few years ago when I was having trouble with my cable company I remember setting my password to "morons". I was having to type it in over and over as they were missing installation appointments and really dropping the ball, so it was an easy one to remember. Imagine if they had seen my insulting password and changed it. It would have the situation so much worse. Now imagine it was your banking password that got changed without your knowledge. Not good.

Crowd Fusion is seeking talented JavaScript contractors. We have an immediate need for developers with experience in jQuery to help build web publishing tools and mind-blowing public-facing apps. Candidates will have exceptional skills in JavaScript, CSS, XHTML, object-oriented design patterns and DOM manipulation.

Projects will have clear specifications written in BDD by the Lead Developer. Candidates will need to communicate specification refinements with the Lead Developer, other developers and other contractors. Some projects will have AJAX components requiring interaction with API procedures that will be maintained by other developers.

Crowd Fusion is a new publishing company with its own platform, focused on creating vertical destination sites. We are a virtual workforce and rely on strong communication skills and self-motivated team members.

This position is for hourly contract work. There is the potential to qualify for a full-time position for the candidate who excels within our platform and with our development team. Please send an email with a cover letter, a resume and links to a few of your past projects to craig at crowdfusion dot com – with the subject line "JavaScript Developer" or click this handy TinyURL mailto link.

One of my favorite Weblogs, Inc. memories was when we launched our movie blog Cinematical and Roger Ebert himself commented on one of our posts. How cool is that! Roger gives a great history of the show's 33-year run and details on the closing of the balcony on his blog.

A couple of weeks ago, while I was on vacation far, far away from the web, GigaOm acquired jk On The Run. They're such a great fit for what Om does. jkOTR covers mobile devices -- from ebook readers to tablet PCs and ultramobile personal computers (UMPCs). If you own one of those products, the site is a daily read.

Congratulations to Kevin, James and Om!

Velocity Interactive Group released some details on Crowd Fusion's funding. Reading it now I just noticed how my contributions were edited. No offense to the other less famous people at our VC's, but my original quote was:

There's no better way to validate an early stage business like ours than to have smart people like Jon Miller, Ross Levinsohn, Alan Patricof and Marc Andreessen tell the world that they believe in what you're doing enough to partner up with you.

Thank heaven for blogs.

Of course, there are way more people working with us than those four -- specifically Ian Sigalow at Greycroft (who is now on our board) and Jorge Espinel at Velocity -- but those are some fantastic investors, don't you think? I am extremely happy with how our money raising project worked out. Jason was a great coach for me on that front.

Here are some more details on the funding:

• Our valuation was "somewhere south of Facebook's".
• Because Crowd Fusion didn't exist when Jon Miller left AOL, Time Warner's non-compete couldn't block him from joining our board.

But seriously, there is some confusion as to whether Crowd Fusion is a publishing company or a platform company. I'll have to do another post to clear that up better, but for now just know that we're a publishing company with our own platform and both are named Crowd Fusion. Did that help?

We are not taking on hosting customers. ComicMix and all of our personal sites are enough of a distraction. Right now we are focused on building out some sample sites so we can show people how it all works. More news on that front coming soon.

I was offline all day yesterday spending time with my family. I sent no text messages and only one email. Today when I loaded up Twitter, this was my status:

REALLY FREAKING BUMMED BECAUSE I'M NOT AT THE DARK KNIGHT. =[

I never posted that to Twitter! I don't use all caps and my smileys are always winking, not an equals sign and a bracket like Gavin always makes. ;-) See?

Here are my theories as to what's going on:

1. Someone guessed my Twitter password, deleted my previous message and posted this new one;
2. Someone figured out a way to hack Twitter or their API, deleted my previous message and posted this new one;
3. Twitter had a database error and swapped one of my tweets with someone else's.

If it's #1, then it only happened to me. I already changed my password. We'll see if it happens again.

If it's #2 or #3, then people who use Twitter are in trouble.

Even stranger: when I tried to get you all a link to my current status message, I get a "this page does not exist" error.

UPDATE: Here is the message I used to have:

In West Dennis, MA unloading our car. Ten great years of marriage complete. Will eat lots of seafood to celebrate.

It was safely preserved in the sidebar of my site because Crowd Fusion spiders my Twitter feed instead of having me just load it via JavaScript. That protects my site from hanging when there's a Twitter outage.

UPDATE 2: Twitter is having an outage right now...

UPDATE 3: The tweet that wasn't mine doesn't show up in my personal timeline. I searched for tweets with "West Dennis" in them and mine from the other night is lost (according to http://search.twitter.com/search?q=west+dennis), but one from my ComicMix editor Rick Marshall does show up. Wild that he was out here in the same town a month ago. What a small world.

So I did a search for some of the text from the message that was showing up as my current status (before I Twittered about Twitter being hacked -- now it's gone from my stream, but I have a screen shot) and this search (http://search.twitter.com/search?q=freaking+bummed) finds that crazy line that I didn't write! It was a message by TaylorIsGreen.

Okay, I think I get what happened now. My account wasn't hacked. Twitter itself wasn't hacked. The Twitter system just had some kind of screw up. The tweet that it said was mine about The Dark Knight was here:

http://twitter.com/frankensite/statuses/861650927 (failbird says "That page doesn't exist!")

and the one I found by TaylorIsGreen is here:

http://twitter.com/TaylorIsGreen/statuses/861650927

Mystery solved! Since they both have the same ID, it just means that Twitter screwed up and lost my tweet from when we arrived for our vacation and started showing the wrong message as my latest one. That bad tweet never seemed to go out in my feed or it would have been on my site in the sidebar.

I'm not thrilled, but it could have been much worse. Even though I've had some laughs at their expense, I am rooting for the Twitter team and I might be the only techie dot com entrepreneur I know who isn't building a Twitter killer.

Of course, then we wouldn't have Tony Shaloub's wicked Monk or NPH's legendary Barney Stinson on How I Met Your Mother.

Anyway, Joss Whedon, of Buffy TV fame, has a new Internet show that debuts today called Doctor Horrible's Sing-Along Blog and it stars NPH. He talked to ComicMix's Rick Marshall about the show. I can't wait to see it.

Doctor Horrible isn't loading for me right now, but our ComicMix interview is. Go check it out!

For now I just wanted to say this: I prefer homage over baiting.

Bill Amend's FoxTrot did a really funny parody of popular webcomics, including my favorite XKCD. I loved it and I'm sure those creators loved seeing their work referenced in thousands of printed newspapers.

Compare that to something sensational like Forbes' Attack of the Blogs, which was probably responsible for a good chunk of their site's traffic and display ad delivery that quarter as well as far more links than they deserved (including mine here).

Homage rules. FoxTrot rules.

I ordered FiOS in May. I got an installation date of June 11. On June 11, Verizon Guy #1 came to my house and said:

I am here to install your FiOS. Did someone from Verizon bring the fiber line up from the street to your house yet?

Of course not.

The next day, Verizon Guy #2 came to my door to bring the fiber line up from the street and said:

Did the guy who came here yesterday leave all the equipment I need so I can bring the line up from the street?

Of course not.

Every week since then I've called Verizon to get my FiOS order back on track. Last week they identified me as a person who "wants to reschedule his installation" and said the best they could do was mid-July. I explained that I didn't want to reschedule at all. I wanted them to come out on June 11 and give me FiOS. Finally someone figured out what was going on and -- after giving me grief for ordering my service online instead of over the phone -- said they would get someone out this week.

Just now Verizon Guy #3 showed up at my door and said:

I am here to install your FiOS. Did someone from Verizon bring the fiber line up from the street to your house yet?

I don't get it.

This is fantastic news: One of our ComicMix titles has been nominated for "Best Online Comic" at this year's Harvey Awards.

Among its competition are Perry Bible Fellowship (we interviewed its creator Nicholas Gurewitch) and Penny Arcade. How cool is that?

If you haven't checked it out, you can read the entire EZ Street run from the beginning -- just keep hitting page down over and over until you're done. Then come back and let me know how you liked it.