Fitwatchr now available for iPhone and iPad!

I’m excited to announce that Fitwatchr is now available on the App Store for both iPhone and iPad.  

Fitwatchr retrieves your daily Fitbit device activity minutes and breaks it down by 3 levels of intensity - useful for collaboration with popular weight loss programs.

Current Features: 
- Connect your Fitbit account to Fitwatchr 
- Exercise, then sync your Fitbit device 
- Use Fitwatchr to see daily earned activity minutes across 3 levels of intensity

Promotion to Senior Software Developer!

I am excited to announce that I’ve been promoted to Senior Developer at SAVO!  

I started at SAVO just over 4 years ago as a junior developer coming straight out of college.  When I began, it was just my manager and I, flying pretty much under the radar of the rest of the company, doing custom development jobs here and there.  I was brought in when my manager needed assistance on a long multi-month project for a large pharmaceutical company.  4 years later, that project is still being actively used and built upon (last update went out thursday night!).  

Getting Started with a new 3rd Party API

3^rd party APIs offer tons of creative possibilities for developers.  Despite that, getting up and running with a new one can be painful, as each provider seems to implement either authentication or request handling slightly differently.

When working with a new API, I like to approach it in the following way:

- If the API will be an integral part of your application, start by exploring it first, before designing or implementing any other functionality.  If for some reason you get stuck (lack of support or clear examples, beta APIs that are constantly changing), you want to minimize wasted effort.  Read documentation and see samples of the data you can receive.  Some providers even have online tools that allow you to run requests in the browser – these are especially handy.