I never worked with an API before, so I didn’t know what to expect, but now that I’ve done it, I think they’re pretty easy to use. Expect more cool API features to come in the future.

Anyway, because this is first and foremost a development blog, I’m still going to update it with changes I make to the site. So tonight’s change is a small one, but important none the less.

Previously, the “Send a Free Text Message” form on the homepage wasn’t checking the suppression list before sending out a message. Kind of defeats the purpose of a suppression list, don’t you think. Well a change has been made to make sure the list is checked. There may still be other areas of the site that doesn’t properly check the list, so I’ll be going through the code soon to make sure people who don’t want to receive text messages don’t.

The New Year is once again upon us, and it’s time to start planning out the best way to make the most of the holiday.

From Parties to Resolutions, here are the 10 Tips you’ll want to keep in mind…

10. Take Pictures - Everyone has a camera, be it a point-and-shoot or on a cell phone. Enter the New Year with the mentality that you’re going to capture some of these memories on film. Keep your camera out, and make sure you take as many shots as you can. You’ll see why when you get to #1.

9. Call Family - I know you just saw them at Christmas, but it’s always nice to be thought of around the holidays. Just give them a quick call to see if they did anything special for New Years Eve, or if they made any new resolutions.

8. Beware the White Elephants - Grab bags are popular around both Christmas and New Years. If you’re going to a party where there will be a grab bag activity remember 2 things…

1. Don’t Wrap Up Garbage - It’s much more fun when everyone brings gift that people actually want.
2. Don’t Let Kids Play - Sure kids want to play with the parents, but too often they choose a gift and get wayyyy to attached to it. Then when someone wants to take it away, they begin to cry and everyone feels bad. Besides, they just got a few hundred dollars worth of toys last week. It’ll give them something to look forward to as an adult.

7. Remember of Friends - If you’re getting together with friends this New Years, get them a small token to let them know you were thinking of them, but nothing large enough to require an exchange. Maybe a small bottle of wine if you’re going to their house, or a fun board game everyone can play that evening.

6. Plan out your Activities - Figure out what you’ll be doing, who you’ll be doing it with, and what’s going on afterward. Call your best friends up, decide on a party, or several, to attend and make any necessary driving arrangements. Nothing is more stressful then waiting till the last minute to make plans.

5.  Sleep More -  The holidays are a stressful time, and your body needs time to recover from the eating, partying and general excitement. There’s nothing good on t.v., so find some downtime and try to catch up on some zzz’s.

4. Set Goals the Right Way - If you’re making resolutions, write them down, make them public and review them often. Set deadlines for each resolution, and give yourself a reward when you accomplish them. If need be, send yourself a text reminder to keep your goal top of mind.

3. Do the Opposite of Last Year - If you partied hard last year, take it down a notch and have a low key get together with some friends. If you mellowed out last year, give your holiday some gas and plan a more active event. The key is not to get into a rut.

2. Do Something You’ll Remember - Get a new pet, go on a cruise or see the ball drop in person. The years seem to all much together, so it’ll be nice to have an outstanding memory to tie to a specific year.

1. Spend a Moment Reflecting - A lot can happen in a year. Take a moment to go through each month of the previous year and try to recall what you were doing at the time. Bust out your photo album, or go online and look through your friends pics. See if you can’t find pictures from last years New Years party.

After you’re done reminising, grab your camera and head to your friends and start making some new memories.

Let me explain the functionality through an example…
Let’s say that I’m hosting a new years party at my house, and I want to get the word out to friends. Well, I can now manage the whole event through textReminders. First I’ll create a new event. I’ll choose the event details and upload a picture. Then I’ll choose which friends from my contacts I want to invite and “boom” a text & email invitation gets sent out.

Now that the invitations are out, people need to RSVP. Well, they can click the link in their email or text message to see the event’s page. Once they’re there they can get all the details, RSVP and leave a comment.

As the date rolls closer, I may want to remind some friends that the party is near. I can do so by either sending instant reminders to the invitees, or by scheduling a few reminders to be sent at a certain time.

Over time, this new functionality is going to be a key part of the site.

I love fixing problems like this, because it means that the site is improving. Most of the major issues on the site have been address, and now it’s just a matter of squashing the little bugs that pop up. Now that doesn’t mean that there aren’t areas for improvement. In fact, next week I’m going to restructure the way reminders are handled, so that you reliably get your messages on time.

I’m also going to redo the “inbox” areas, so that it’s easy to send private messages back and forth through the site. If you like where the sites going, leave a comment or use the “tell a friend” widget.

I moved away from the in-line pop-up window towards a side-bar style management system. It’s hard to explain, but if you log in and click around you’ll soon see what I mean.

I labeled this post, “best of breed”, because I truely believe that this site is quickly becoming one of the finest sites of it’s kind. There aren’t a whole lot of sites who do what we do better, and out of those that are better, they don’t have any social functionaity.

Anyway, I’m very excited to be releasing these changes so quickly. I’m going to be pretty busy this weekend, but when I get back to the site, I’m going to focus on improving the deliverability rate of the text reminders.

G’night all.

My next task is to redo “create reminders” layout. Then I’ll systematically approach the “manage reminders” and “contacts” areas of the web site. I want to make the site’s look and feel consistent across the board. Once the front-end is completed, I want to circle back around to the backend to clean up code, and make things more efficient/stable.

**update**
After a little trial and error, I finally got the timezone issue under control. Text Reminders should now be sent on time again.

On a side note, the site’s membership is doing well with 444 members as of today. A big thank you to StumbleUpon for all the exposure.