Author Archives: Devin Reams

About Devin Reams

My name is Devin Reams and I founded this site to provide a useful news and review resource for Colorado skiers and snowboarders (and mountain enthusiasts). I've been skiing since I was a little kid (we moved out here when I was five years old) and I plan to ski for years beyond that. Although cosnow is not my full-time job it is my full-time winter hobby. I've been an "Epic Local" passholder since 2006 (when it was called a "Colorado Pass" or "Five Mountain Pass"). My favorite resorts are Beaver Creek and Breckenridge.

Crowd Favorite fragmentation on Facebook

Data fragmentation on Facebook

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Since we can all agree that Facebook is “the internet” to most people, it’s pretty important what comes in and goes out of it. Since the beginning of Facebook, there have been various “types” of content. It started with Harvard students, then Stanford students, then just students. From there we saw things like groups of people, and photos, and tags. The site evolved into high school students, and human beings, and events, and networks and so on.

Facebook has also invented the “open graph” which is yet another atomic element that can describe nearly any “type” of content from movies, to music, to musicians to business, and so on.

Plus, there is now the concept of “Places”, yet another type of content typically representing a business.

All of this leads to why you can search for a business, even a small one like “Crowd Favorite” and turn up no less than four separate results:

Crowd Favorite fragmentation on Facebook

Crowd Favorite's group, page, company (network) and local business (place)

Which leaves us with these various web addresses to point people to:

– [http://www.facebook.com/pages/Crowd-Favorite/154204807926246](http://www.facebook.com/pages/Crowd-Favorite/154204807926246)
– [http://www.facebook.com/pages/Denver-CO/Crowd-Favorite/378155388161](http://www.facebook.com/pages/Denver-CO/Crowd-Favorite/378155388161)
– [http://www.facebook.com/pages/Crowd-Favorite/115570975120068](http://www.facebook.com/pages/Crowd-Favorite/115570975120068)

Which, if there’s no way to associate all of these, a lot of hard work in establishing brands using pages, and encouraging people to “check in” is completely useless. As a business, I would want to know who and when people check in to my location. When they visit my “Place” they can “Like” it and I can start making a deep connection.

But I already have a Facebook Page with thousands of “Likes” and potential customers and fans that I’m reaching out to, pushing people to from my website, and so on. What now?

And in Crowd Favorite’s case, we also have both a group (which you can’t actually click through to) and a “company”, both of which are fragments left over from the transition of having a company’s “network” of employees.

I feel like this will be solved. I hope it will. There is a lot of data cluttering the web and Facebook is not helping right now.

Don’t even get me started on Apps. How do I know the various “Coca-Cola” apps are really by Coke?

Fisherman's Wharf

Visiting San Francisco

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This past weekend Rachel’s family and I visited San Francisco for a little weekend getaway. We stayed in SoMA which is always a nice downtown experience. With Samovar Tea, SFMOMA, and an Apple Store within walking distance, what else could you ask for?

Beyond the typical attractions (Fisherman’s Wharf) we had a chance to explore some of the less hectic areas in the Bay area. One foggy afternoon we had the pleasure of taking a leisurely walk around Golden Gate Park. This park alone is worth the cost of living in San Francisco. I felt the same way about Washington Park in Portland, Oregon.

We also enjoyed walking around the Marina area and visiting the Exploratorium. I’ve been to some pretty good science museums (Denver, Smithsonian) but this place is amazing. The energy and exhibits possibly could’ve kept us there all day.

On Sunday morning we woke up early, crossed the Golden Gate Bridge and stopped in Sausalito to grab breakfast at Fred’s Coffee Shop. The fried french toast was unanamously decided to be as good as it sounded.

We moved on to Muir Woods and spent most of the morning hiking through the redwoods. Having lived in Colorado and traveled much of the Rocky Mountains, I can safely say those trees are unlike any you’ll find inland. It’s a good thing we arrived early because by 10 AM there were busloads of visitors showing up and lines of cars waiting to park. It was not unlike showing up at an amusement park or a beach on a crowded summer weekend. Though, I did realize that what I like most about California mountain roads are the steep pitches and sharp turns; things that can’t coexist with snow.

Questions and thoughts raised by #NewTwitter

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Twitter, the non-social network social network has announced a new web interface.

Some initial observations and questions:

– Why does the introductory video take nearly 90 seconds to get to the demonstration? That is nearly three times the length of a television commercial. For a company that originated with brevity in mind… wow.
– This appears to be a simple effort to move people to Twitter as a product (not a platform that you use other means to access it) in order to control the eyeballs and eventually, add advertising and other means of monetization.
– How many people use the web interface currently? I doubt this re-design will have the same backlash a site like Facebook expects. Not enough people use the web interface, they’ve moved to third-party apps and this is a push to get Twitter-proper back in control.
– Will Tweetie for Mac ever be updated now? Or is this Twitter’s approach to become the product *and* the platform on desktop computers?
– How can designers like TweetyGotBack get back into a competitive position of designing wallpapers with a huge stockpile of existing themes? No matter what they do, they step on the toes that helped get them where they are today.
– Is there even enough room for wallpapers (with your contact information in the gutter) to even exist on this new design? I surely hope not. Who visits a twitter profile only to go and type in another URL pertaining to how to find you (use the website link in your profile). Social media experts…

And with that said, I don’t know why I use Twitter. Alex and I were chatting and I’ve come to the realization I get nearly no value from it. Perhaps that speaks to the people I follow. It’s not that they aren’t great people, I just don’t like their online personalities. Instead of the typical nerd values you expect to see from the people you know in person (quiet, smart, witty, polite) you get the vices (self-importance, loud, benign). I’m the first to admit I look at my profile and realize, I don’t think I would follow me.

Devin doesn’t tumble

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…but he does write in the third person.

I like to experiment on the internet. Tweaking, testing, and optimizing to find what works best for me and my web presence. I tried posterous for a while and that didn’t work. I recently gave Tumblr a shot. In short, I am back to WordPress to stay. Not only am I most familiar with WordPress, it offers the right mix of simple and advanced functionality.

Through the use of plugins, I can make my site and my blog as plain or as powerful as I want. Plus, I can jump into the code and make changes that other hosted platforms couldn’t. I always thought simplest was best; let someone else worry about hosting and features. It turns out I can’t give up that power.

In short, this post is an apology to everyone who had 10 unread items from me in their email inbox or feed reader this morning.

On changing icons

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>“Since iTunes is about to bypass CDs in sales, we thought it was appropriate to ditch the CD.” – Steve Jobs on the new iTunes 10 icon

Ok, so when are you and the rest of the industry going to remove the floppy disk (which you killed) as a ‘save’ icon?

Facebook Places prediction

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Facebook is announcing something today. It’s some form of location-based blah social media stuff blah blah social graph blah blah thing. In short, everyone says Foursquare and Gowalla will be dead because FACEBOOK SMASH and the entire developed world will use Facebook’s offering over theirs. I doubt it. Put simply:

**Facebook Places will compete with Google Buzz, not Foursquare. It will work the same way that Twitter Locations works.**

Your identity lives with Facebook. Things like Twitter, Foursquare, Gowalla, etc. push structured data to Facebook. It just needs a way to organize location-based data (Places). Google is trying to come at the same space from the other direction: Maps, Latitude, Buzz.

On tech writing

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“Why _____ (popular company) should ____ (buy|destroy) ____ (other cool thing or company)” articles are so trite. They’re really:

“Why _____ (my name) wants _____ (edge case) in ____ (other cool thing or company) magically fixed with no economic sense by ____ (popular company)”

It’s like a really topical MadLib populated with keywords from Techmeme:

– “Why Apple should buy Skype”
– “Why Google should buy Gowalla”

I click on these articles *all the time*. Those titles always look so appealing and savvy. They’re not.

They work the same way as “Top 10 (reasons|ways) _____ (popular thing) (should|could) ____ (sexy verb or name or service)” articles.

– “Top 10 reasons Apple should buy Palm”
– “Top 10 ways Facebook could rule the world”

I’m think I’m starting to figure this whole tech writing thing out.

Introducing Carrington Build for WordPress

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The team at Crowd Favorite has been working on one of the most innovative drag-and-drop page layout tools I’ve ever seen. In fact, I can’t think of a web-based content management system with anything like this. We call it Carrington Build and it’s been very popular with current and potential clients alike. In fact, the ability to quickly create a page layout with drag-and-drop abilities helped me and the team build our own company website quickly and easily (no custom coding required).

I enjoyed being a part of the packaging, delivery and marketing of Carrington Build and it’s corresponding WordPress theme, Carrington Business. Helping oversee internal initiatives like this are much different than managing any client project because we are our own boss. It’s pretty unique, actually.

Anyway, if you’re a WordPress designer, developer, or are an organization looking for a top-notch WordPress theme for your website check it out.

Services for busy people

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This is such a first world problem I thought about not posting it. But, I feel there’s an opportunity to make some money and make people happy. I hope I’m not the first to think of this…

How often do you come home to a “missed delivery” notice? I often get it once a month because I forgot to change the shipping address to my office. I’m one of the lucky ones: many people can’t have things shipped to them at work. Consultants are in a different location every week. Where is the delivery service that can drop off my package at my house between the hours of 6 and 10 PM?

Do you hear horror stories of trying to schedule a doctor’s appointment? Not only do they not answer the phone between 12 – 1 (because that’s their lunch break, coincidentally the only time some of us have a chance to make personal calls). Some of us have to take a half-day from work just to get there, sit and wait, meet with the doctor, and then go back to work. What about an oil change? Most of us go to our jobs somewhere between the hours of 7 AM – 7 PM. Oh, and you’re closed on Sundays? How convenient, that’s a day of rest…

Is there no demand for an “after hours” delivery service to make sure I don’t have to drive 10 miles out of my way to get that package I missed? Are there really no doctors willing to work evenings (after we all get off of work) so they can spend the day with their kids? And you’re telling me nobody at Jiffy Lube will work on evenings or Sundays? Let’s be real…

Services like [UberCab](http://ubercab.com) are headed in the right direction. They are geared toward people willing to spend a few extra bucks for regained time and service on our schedules.