Filed under: iPhone, App Store, App Review
Get your social notifications on the cheap with Boxcar
Since the arrival of the Push Notifications feature in iPhone OS 3.0, all manner of apps have added support for it. Games, task management applications, you name it -- they're all more than happy to make your phone beep at you in the middle of the night and prompt your spouse to kindly insist that you silence that infernal device. Or so I've heard.It seems like a no-brainer to me that this type of functionality would exist among the throngs of social networking applications. If the game where you flick the thing while the music is playing can tell me when I've got a new challenger from the Far East, why can't my favorite Twitter client let me know when I've got a new direct message? Sadly, most of the apps in the store (as far as I know) haven't implemented this functionality yet. I realize that it has some sporadic adoption, but certainly not the universal support that I personally expected.
Enter Boxcar [iTunes Link]. This little free app has existed in the store for months now and has received some very nice reviews, and for good reason. I've been a faithful user of this app for many moons and I find it pretty indispensable. Here's how it works:
When you install the app (which is free at the time of this writing), you can choose to enable a single service for notification -- Twitter, Facebook or an email account. It will poll the selected service at a short interval and send you a standard push notification message if there are any updates. In the case of Twitter, you can configure it to open one of several supported Twitter client apps. If you want to enable additional services, you can do so through the in-app purchase mechanism, and most options cost $.99US.
I'm a big fan of Boxcar and use it for Twitter and Facebook. It's one of those free applications that's actually worth more than what you're paying for it -- a quality that's becoming increasingly rare among free iPhone apps these days! Version 2.1 was just released a few days ago and includes several new features like support for Facebook Mail and better accessibility.
Pick up Boxcar now for free from the App Store.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
magnus77 said 10:06AM on 10-28-2009
"It will poll the selected service at a short interval and send you a standard push notification message if there are any updates"
Doesn't sound like push to me
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Brett Kelly said 10:13AM on 10-28-2009
I probably could have been a little clearer in wording this - sorry about that. The Boxcar app maintains a separate server that does the polling and notifications - it doesn't actually happen on your device.
magnus77 said 10:16AM on 10-28-2009
Ok, thanks for clearing that up
billchase2 said 10:16AM on 10-28-2009
For Twitter, use Echofon. It supports Push Notifications.
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David said 10:16AM on 10-28-2009
A much better Twitter app with push notifications is Twitbit. IMO it's better then Tweetie (either version) and included push notifications, which is the kicker for me.
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Caleb said 10:31AM on 10-28-2009
Second that. Echofon (formerly Twitterfon) supports push notifications and works perfectly. You do have to purchase the full version ($1.99 if I remember correctly) for push.
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Rob E. said 10:33AM on 10-28-2009
I like this ap, but it has a few issues: The badge shows you how many push notifications you have received from Boxcar, but, as far as I can tell, you can't read them. Opening the ap simply resets the count. As a result if you miss a notification because it was replaced by another notification, you'll never know what you missed. Also if your phone was off or, if you have an iPod Touch, out of Wifi range, the messages you missed you will never know about.
Also, while the ap itself and the first service are free, every additional service costs 1.99. I'm probably just being stingy, but .99/service seems more reasonable.
Right now I'm using Boxcar for Facebook because anything I really don't want to miss will also show up in my e-mail. I get Push notifications of Twitter posts via Twitterific (desktop), Growl, and Prowl. I could do something similar with Facebook if the ap I use for that didn't keep crashing. Something similar gives me e-mail notifications, but that has not been very helpful as it just says, "You have a new e-mail" or something like that, rather than any sender/subject info. Boxcar looks like it has much better solution for e-mail notifications.
I like the idea of Boxcar, and I'd probably be less stingy and add more services, but for now I like how Prowl saves my messages. Prowl also plans to cache those messages for offline viewing, which would be great for me, since I have an iPod Touch, but might not be a feature that useful to an iPhone user. But Boxcar is a much easier solution to set up, and it doesn't require you leave programs running on your home machine, so I can see it being very attractive to many people, including myself if they ever address the couple of issues I have with it.
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iaian7 said 10:42AM on 10-28-2009
Prowl is a far more versatile service, acting more as a push notification platform than a single dedicated service. While it's set up by default to work with Growl installed on a desktop or laptop, there are free server-based systems setup for Gmail, Twitter, and maybe others.
It also keeps a record of every push notification recieved (easily removed if you prefer, either individually, or as a whole), automatically highlighting links and phone numbers, and opening any app you want on the iPhone based on keywords or app keys in the notifications themselves. Like I said, far more versatile, and doesn't seem to have the issues that Boxcar has (albeit with no built-in support for sites like Facebook, which could be a deal breaker for some, I suppose).
Jonathan George said 12:42PM on 10-28-2009
Hi Rob,
Sorry you're having trouble finding the Notifications Inbox. Please do get ahold of us on Twitter (@boxcar) or by email (support@boxcar.io) so we can find out why you don't have the "View your notifications" button on your Services list. We added the Inbox concept in for the 2.0 release, specifically for the use-case that you mentioned: people were missing notifications, since newer notifications overwrite older ones.
The $1.99 pricing for services was an experiment, as we've stated all along. Just like making the application itself free, instead of charging $2.99 for it like we used to. In fact, with the 2.1 release we went ahead and dropped the prices back down to $.99c for each additional service. At some point, we may start to charge for the initial download again as well. That's the beauty of all this: we want to figure out what works best, and we're willing to play around to do that.
outphase said 12:47PM on 10-28-2009
I am also a prowl user. I use mail2prowl.de and forward my facebook emails to there to push to prowl. I can then use prowl to open up the facebook app.
I would use boxcar if I didn't already have prowl running good :P
Rob E. said 3:10PM on 10-28-2009
Thanks for the info, Jonathan. Knowing that there is an inbox and knowing that the price for additional services has dropped makes me feel even better about Boxcar. I have never seen or known of the Inbox. Perhaps now that I know such a thing exists, I'll be able to find it. If not, I'll look for support. While I do like Prowl, and I won't be abandoning it any time soon, the more specific-services focused aspect of Boxcar does have a lot of appeal, mainly because Prowl depends on my home computer being always on to send me notifications.
J said 2:09PM on 10-28-2009
Not working...I keep getting an NSURLErrorDomain error 403. I'm def connected to the internet...maybe the servers are down?
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Jonathan George said 3:13PM on 10-28-2009
We see that error with some, but not all, jailbroken devices. You've installed something that is preventing your device from either a) connecting to HTTPS services or b) sending your UDID. Unfortunately, I haven't been able to track down which unauthorized package it is.
IGx89 said 11:51AM on 10-29-2009
Turn on push notifications. I had them off and got that same error when I tried to register, but once I turned them on and tried again it then worked.
Jason said 2:55PM on 10-28-2009
I am a absolutely devout fan of Prowl, written by zac west.
Great software, great service, great integration. More flexible than boxcar too.
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Jack Brewster said 5:08PM on 10-28-2009
I've been beta testing Ultimate Notifier - http://www.ultimatenotifier.com/ - for awhile now and I'm very happy with it.
Twitter, FriendFeed, Gmail, Google Apps, POP, IMAP - it's all in one.
Probably my biggest favorite feature is the ability to define when I get alerts. I've completely disabled the iPhone's new mail alerts and have the notifications set to turn off at night. I can actually leave my phone on my nightstand now.
The biggest problem at this point is that the app has been in review forever (originally submitted on 9/19).
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