Midwest GiveCamp and That Conference 2013 Recap

The 2^nd annual “That Conference” software development conference held in the Wisconsin Dells was a few weeks ago and I personally think it was even more successful than last year.  I met a lot of great people and attended some fantastic sessions.

This year I was able to come up to the Dells the weekend before the conference for Midwest GiveCamp.  I was fortunate enough to work with a great team on a web application for Humanitarian Toolbox, a newer charity focusing on disaster recovery via software solutions, building a system for tracking and assigning volunteers during disasters.  In less than 2 days, we built a fairly solid version 1.0 that I’m happy to say I contributed to and hope to continue contributing to.  Code is available on GitHub.  

Fitwatchr - Architecture Overview

Throughout the entire year I’ve been focusing heavily on web development, especially JavaScript.  When I decided to create another mobile app a few months ago, building it with web technologies made sense!  Here’s a breakdown of the tech used to build Fitwatchr:

• HTML5, CSS3 - The entire app is a web based SPA (single page application). The only HTML consists of one main file, with divs for each tab.
• Knockout.js - for easy control of dynamic HTML views
• QUnit - for unit testing and practicing a TDD development approach.
• KendoUI Mobile - An absolutely amazing HTML5 framework.  This is the real bread and butter, which gives you the ability to give your app a native looking experience.  This allowed me to focus on the core functionality of the app and not the design as much.
• PhoneGap Build - PhoneGap is an open source framework used to build native apps that are written in HTML5 and JavaScript.  PhoneGap Build is a cloud-based service by Adobe that allows you to upload your code and have it create the finished apps for you.  This was crucial for building both the Android and the iPhone/iPad version of Fitwatchr using one unified codebase.
• PhoneGap Build plugins - On the occasion that there is some common functionality not available to you via PhoneGap, you can leverage community-submitted plugins (Java or Objective C native code that exposes JavaScript endpoints).  I used ChildBrowser for the browser window that opens up during the Fitbit authentication process.

Initial thoughts on these design decisions:

Announcing Fitwatchr: Convert your Fitbit activity into WeightWatchers Points!

Connect your Fitbit account, calculate your daily activity points, then launch Weight Watchers mobile site to log them:

Update 2/23/2014: Fitwatchr has been updated to include an expanded focus - everyone, regardless of weight loss program, can enjoy the app. 

More background details:

A while ago I joined WeightWatchers.  They have a pedometer you can buy that tracks steps and thus calculates earned activity points; neat, but I wasn’t thrilled that it was tied to their platform (plus a monthly sub fee!).  Incidentally, a couple of months after that, my company sent out a notice about allowing us to purchase Fitbit activity trackers.  Fitbit is more than just a pedometer - it counts steps, stairs, and sleep patterns along with a very healthy community with forums, groups, etc.  I bought one and love it!