The Huffington Post Contagious Festival is a new exercise in traffic building and also, in their words, "a unique opportunity for talented designers, political activists of any persuasion, filmmakers and comics to reach millions of people with creative, viral online work. The contestants that create the best projects get Internet fame and the chance to meet with friends of Huffington Post from the worlds of entertainment and politics to discuss future projects and opportunities."

The first round of entries will go live starting February 1, but you should Enter Now to reserve a spot on the official Contagious Festival server. You simply create an account, build your project on the server and launch your site. Then you can watch the live rankings to see if your entry is being forwarded, linked, and IMed around the Internet. At the end of the month, we award two prizes:

The People's Choice Award for the contestant that creates the entry that gets the most total traffic during the month. The winner dines with Arianna Huffington and receives $2,500.

The Jury Prize for the favorite entry of our jury is a meeting with the judge most interested in their work and receives $2,500. Judges will vote based on creativity, originality and social commentary.

Judges include Noah Baumback, John Cusack and Nora Ephron. Meanwhile, at the Huffington Post blog Diane Keaton posts about the upside of turning 60.