Joseph Howse (Joe) is fanciful. So to him, the virtual world always seemed to reach out into reality. One of his earliest memories is of watching an animated time-bomb on the screen of a Tandy Color Computer. The animation was programmed in BASIC by Joe's older brother, Sam, who explained, "I'm making a bomb. Get ready!" The bomb exploded in a rain of dots and a rumble of beeps as Joe and Sam ran to hide from the fallout.

Today, Joe still fancies that a computer program can blast a tunnel into reality. As a hobby, he likes looking at reality through the tunnel of a digital camera's lens. As a career, he develops augmented reality software, which uses cameras and other sensors to composite real and virtual scenes interactively in real time.

Joe holds a Master of Computer Science degree from Dalhousie University. He does research on software architecture as applied to augmented reality.

Joe works at Ad-Dispatch, an augmented reality company, where he develops applications for mobile devices, kiosks, and the Web.

Joe likes cats, kittens, oceans, and seas. Felines and saline water sustain him. He lives with his multi-species family in Halifax, on Canada's Atlantic coast.