The Birthday Helper

URL: http://www.thebirthdayhelper.com

Summary

My birthday hack. A little app that I created (mostly) on my birthday in 2013 to manage the birthday posts that I received on Facebook.

Features

• Displays a list of "happy birthday" posts from your friends
• Allows you to "like" them all with just one click
• Creates a customized comments to add to their posts
  • You can use nicknames, instead of their FB name
  • You can add your own comment templates

Tech Stack

Server:

• Node.js
• Express

Client:

• jQuery
• Mustache.js
• Bootstrap (as you can tell)

What is a Birthday Hack?

At least two things were true on my birthday in 2013:

1. I wanted to write code, to make something.
2. I had way too many birthday wishes on Facebook to deal with personally

So I did what any lazy programmer would do. I wrote an app to deal with the birthday wishes.

I built and launched it on my birthday (the easiest time to test it), and made a few minor tweaks since. It's a little rough around the edges, but I'm ok with that given it was made in just a few hours.

Roadmap

• Extend this to other social platforms
• Store user prefs in "the cloud" so that any settings/customizations follow you round from device to device.
• Allow greater customization of messages