I get by with a little help from my friends

I would like to thank everyone who has helped with Gratefulapp.com. I really appreciate it. I would like to single out a few people for special recognition:

• Jeanne Turner (@jean_marie), thanks so much for your encouragement and help with the User Experience design.
  
  
• Matthew Clarke (@MatthewClarke), thanks for the awesomely stylish design it is a great improvement on my black and white prototype!
  
  
• Rebecca Lerner (@UrbanForager), thank you for your help with the press release and lots of good tips on how to distribute it.
  
  
• Adam Duvander (@adamd), thank you for our first press mention. Link: Programmable Web Post
  
  
• Finally Captain My Captain - Will Moore (@syrupcore) , thanks for handling all of the front end development with aplomb (especially your jQuery ninja-ry). I will eat pie and write code with you at Random Order Coffee anytime.

Without the help of these brave volunteers, Gratefulapp.com 2.0 would never have seen the light day. Thanks so much!

Alright guys, play me out...

How you can help - United Services Organization

For over 67 years, the USO (United Service Organizations) has served as the primary bridge between the American people and America’s Armed Forces, delivering a unique combination of morale building, counseling, and recreational services to our troops and their families all over the world.

The USO is chartered by Congress as a nonprofit, charitable corporation. However, the USO is not part of the U.S. government. Instead, it is funded almost entirely by donations from individuals, organizations, and corporations. A full 89¢ out of every $1.00 donated to the USO is spent on the delivery of programs and services to our troops.

Please Donate: Link

The idea behind Grateful App

It all started with Stephen Colbert, which I am sure if you ask Stephen, he will tell you, is where most good things come from. In June of last year Steven Colbert guest edited the monthly edition of Newsweek magazine. Finding myself with ample time in a doctors office waiting room, I had the chance to read this issue (I only read Newsweek for the articles).

The article "Why I took this crummy job" (Read the Article) really struck me. In it Stephen, in his own sarcastic way brought up the fact that there are 135,000 troops still stationed in Iraq and that most of America seems to be blissfully unaware of this fact. Stephen explained that he took the gig at Newsweek to try and raise awareness of our troops, to make sure they know they were not forgotten.

In the past you could remind our troops they were not forgotten by writing a card or letter and addressing it to "Any Service Member". The card or letter would be delivered to a member of our Armed Forces serving our country. Due to the ongoing security threats to our troops the Department of Defense has cancelled the Any Service Member program, so mail must be addressed to specific soldier (Link).

I don't personally know anyone serving in Iraq or Afganistan, so this presents a problem. They say "when you all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail". When you are a web developer everything looks like a web app. I decided to try and build an app that would leverage social media to help fix this problem.

My hope is that people will take a moment to tell our troops thanks and let them know how much their service means to us, either through the site or via Twitter.

Welcome!

Welcome to the Grateful App Blog. This is where we will share updates and information about GratefulApp.com. Grateful App is a web application for creating micro-posts ("grateful messages") to our soldiers here and overseas.

You can post messages on our website GratefulApp.com or you can send messages via Twitter.

To use Twitter to post a message just write a message and append the hashtag #wearegrateful to the end of your tweet. GratefulApp will grab the tweet and put the contents into postcard on the site. Gratefulapp filters out @replies, (RT) ReTweets and spam messages.

We are planning to post updates a couple of times a week.