7 ms·

Show HN: Airgram - Send iOS/Android notifications, without building an app

121 points by navneetloiwal 15y ago

joshu 15y ago
Boxcar?
- jdg 15y ago
  thanks for the mention josh. it's pretty cool that you know we exist. -jdg
  - joshu 15y ago
    i think i learned about it on HN. i was using it for home automaton notifications a while back.
- iamjoshua 15y ago
  At SEscout.com we used notifo for user rank change notifications until they announced they would be ending the service. We have been testing boxcar for a future replacement and are pretty happy with it. Feels like a solid product.
- mnutt 15y ago
  Boxcar is great. It was very cool to be able to curl the Boxcar API and have a notification on my phone in a fraction of a second. My startup uses Boxcar for deploy notifications, new paying customers, etc.
navneetloiwal 15y ago
Push notifications are a great way to consume time-sensitive information, like price/airfare, sports, stocks, app reviews, etc. Airgram makes it dead-simple to deliver these alerts without having to build your own app, so that you can focus on building interesting services. Give it a spin! http://www.airgramapp.com http://www.airgramapp.com "I think notifications will become the primary way that we consume on the mobile device and may be the reason we move away from downloadable software and back to web based software on our mobile devices." - Fred Wilson (http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2011/03/mobile-notifications.html http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2011/03/mobile-notifications.html)
- pxlpshr 15y ago
  This what Notifo was trying to do but ran into quite a few challenges with adoption. You should talk with them more to see how you differentiate and solve the problem they had...
  - navneetloiwal 15y ago
    Yes, we are already talking to him to learn from his experience
- mirsadm 15y ago
  I'm running it on my Android phone now. It works pretty well. I wish it uses Facebook/Google/etc. for user accounts though. The last thing I want to have to do is have another user/password. Also, what is the difference between this and Notifo (yc2010 I think)?
- there 15y ago
  Congrats on the app, it looks nice. I launched Pushover (https://pushover.net/ https://pushover.net/) this week, which looks to be pretty much the same exact product as yours: an HTTP API to push messages to an iOS and Android client. I built it over the past 4 weeks to replace my use of Notifo, which shut down last year. There are a few other apps already available, like Prowl, Boxcar, and NotifyMyAndroid, but none were cross-platform, so I built Pushover. I am charging for my app as a way to pay for the server costs, as I'm not sure how else these types of apps can make money and stay around. Notifo had a lot of users but their apps were free and I don't know if they even had any paying content providers pushing large amounts of messages. How do you plan to make money with yours?
  - LokiSnake 15y ago
    Charging for the app will work for the DIY hacker types, but it'll be hard for other services to convince their users to purchase your app.
  - jwr 15y ago
    So did Notifo actually shut down or not? I mean, it still works for me, and the web page is up. I offered many times to pay for the service.
huhtenberg 15y ago
Can you explain how Airgram compares to (now deceased) Notifo?
- navneetloiwal 15y ago
  We believe that mobile web apps need to become much more powerful than they are today. Developing native apps for various platforms is not easy, and frankly, unnecessary for most services. This is just our first step in bridging the gap between native apps and mobile web apps. We are looking to provide a suite of services around notifications that not just make it easy to deliver the notifications, but provide better targeting, management and analytics.
  - nupark2 15y ago
    > Developing native apps for various platforms is not easy, and frankly, unnecessary for most services [emphasis mine] I think the fact that you've developed a native app here provides sufficient falsifying evidence for this declaration. When looking for the optimal (for the user) solution, the decision as between a web site or a native application should be made on the basis of user requirements, and the solutions that best meet those requirements, not based on the technologies that you, personally, are comfortable with. If you ignore an organization's existing investments in web engineering and web-focused infrastructure, webapps aren't empirically and objectively easier or cheaper. Rather, they're a mechanism by which an organization can leverage money they have already invested in building a web-centric team. I see this as a temporary state, initially caused by the rapid adoption of the web, and will ultimately disappear as more broad, less web-centric development experience and infrastructure investment becomes the norm.
    - marknutter 15y ago
      You're right, native apps will win out. Just like they did on the desktop..
      - nupark2 15y ago
nchuhoai 15y ago
I like the idea of unified notifications, but ultimately you have the chicken-egg problem, and for that you need to find an entry point. I'm working on the same problem and whoever solves it, it will create some great value. Can't wait until notifications get detached from email.
- joering2 15y ago
  excuse me, but what kind of chicken-egg does he have??IF someone needs notification pushed to their phone, they can use his simple web/app. There is no chicken/egg here...
  - nchuhoai 15y ago
    users are not gonna download the app unless many services are using his api, and not many services are gonna use his api unless there is a big user base ... sounds like a prime example of chicken and egg
    - DVassallo 15y ago
      The way I see it is that non-mobile application owners can recommend their customers to install this app, rather than create and publish a new one just to listen for notifications. That's why I don't see the chicken-egg problem.
      - jazzychad 15y ago
        This is not as easy as it sounds (speaking from experience). The chicken-egg problem is huge in this type of service.
      - joering2 15y ago
        exactly! pretty much everyone in "too expensive/too complicate/we don't want this know" wagon that still want to have some sort of presence on the mobile devices could still have it without any investment other than redirect to his site.
startupcto 15y ago
I actually had the same idea and eventually decided not to pursue it. The main reason was i couldn't convince myself that people will go though the loop of downloading an app and mobile is way fragmented, so you can support iOS but what are the other 4/5 platforms? If you could remove the requirement for the need to download an app, you'll have a better change.
esharef 15y ago
I like this. I do think my phone is starting to become a bit too noisy though (too many text messages that start being more like email) and I am not sure how to keep it all organized. Perhaps you guys can help.
- tommytsai1984 15y ago
  Thanks for the feedback! We are thinking about various ways to give users a good, easy-to-understand set of controls to manage the noise. Stay tuned.
jwr 15y ago
Ok, so having tried the app — I won't actually use it until there is a "quiet hours" setting. Notifo got that perfectly right: there are certain hours where I do not want to be interrupted by notification sounds from the service (but I might want to keep other sounds on).
- navneetloiwal 15y ago
  Yes, absolutely. Quiet hours will show up in a day!
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
rasmusbe 15y ago
would be nice if I, as a Service Owner, could see how many subscribers the service has.
- navneetloiwal 15y ago
  This first version is light on management features for the service owner because we wanted to get it out early to get feedback. What you suggest is absolutely on our list of things to do soon.
haar 15y ago
The API page seemed to break on smaller resolution pages (read: thinner).
- tommytsai1984 15y ago
  Tommy here, Airgram co-founder. Thanks for the bug report; we are looking into it. Which browser are you using?
Splines 15y ago
Just curious - what's your privacy policy? Are you storing any of the messages that get pushed through this service?
- tommytsai1984 15y ago
  Tommy here, Airgram co-founder. Currently, we are storing these messages, but if our users have some use cases that require messages to not be persisted, we'd be happy to add this feature. Do you have a use case in mind? Would love to hear about it -- e-mail me @ tommy at aircrunch dot com
godfreykfc 15y ago
I am really skeptical (though I'd be more than happy to see someone prove me wrong) about these "framework" apps, that doesn't actualy do anything by itself, except to provide an API of some sort for others to take advantage of. They reminds me of those obscure ActiveX plugins (3D model viewers, etc) that sites make you install. I am usually somewhat hesitant about getting them on my computer unless a see great value (eg growl), but I suppose I'll be even less willing to have these on my iPhone, as an app that sits somewhere on my home screen. My users might feel differently about this, but it certainly would be very difficult for me to explain to them what is it that they are installing and the experience could become quite confusing.
- Roedou 15y ago
  I would really like to send mobile push notifications to users of my service. (I send emails and/or SMS right now.) Developing an iPhone & Android app - even a simple one that simply lets me alert users - is beyond my mobile dev abilities, and (I assume) would cost tens of thousands of dollars for someone to build. Airgram might be the answer for me to let users get push notifications as an alternate alerting mechanism.
  - tommytsai1984 15y ago
    Thanks for considering Airgram! We would love to chat with you to understand how you plan on using us, and what new features you would like to see. Please e-mail me @ tommy at aircrunch dot com if you have some time to chat.
teyc 15y ago
Have you figured out how could a website determine if your app is installed? It'd be cute to have a reddit style notification when people reply to your comments in a forum etc.

121 points by navneetloiwal 15y ago

joshu 15y ago

Boxcar?

jdg 15y ago
thanks for the mention josh. it's pretty cool that you know we exist. -jdg
- joshu 15y ago
  i think i learned about it on HN. i was using it for home automaton notifications a while back.
iamjoshua 15y ago
At SEscout.com we used notifo for user rank change notifications until they announced they would be ending the service. We have been testing boxcar for a future replacement and are pretty happy with it. Feels like a solid product.
mnutt 15y ago
Boxcar is great. It was very cool to be able to curl the Boxcar API and have a notification on my phone in a fraction of a second. My startup uses Boxcar for deploy notifications, new paying customers, etc.

navneetloiwal 15y ago

Push notifications are a great way to consume time-sensitive information, like price/airfare, sports, stocks, app reviews, etc. Airgram makes it dead-simple to deliver these alerts without having to build your own app, so that you can focus on building interesting services. Give it a spin! http://www.airgramapp.com http://www.airgramapp.com "I think notifications will become the primary way that we consume on the mobile device and may be the reason we move away from downloadable software and back to web based software on our mobile devices." - Fred Wilson (http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2011/03/mobile-notifications.html http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2011/03/mobile-notifications.html)

pxlpshr 15y ago
This what Notifo was trying to do but ran into quite a few challenges with adoption. You should talk with them more to see how you differentiate and solve the problem they had...
- navneetloiwal 15y ago
  Yes, we are already talking to him to learn from his experience
mirsadm 15y ago
I'm running it on my Android phone now. It works pretty well. I wish it uses Facebook/Google/etc. for user accounts though. The last thing I want to have to do is have another user/password. Also, what is the difference between this and Notifo (yc2010 I think)?
there 15y ago
Congrats on the app, it looks nice. I launched Pushover (https://pushover.net/ https://pushover.net/) this week, which looks to be pretty much the same exact product as yours: an HTTP API to push messages to an iOS and Android client. I built it over the past 4 weeks to replace my use of Notifo, which shut down last year. There are a few other apps already available, like Prowl, Boxcar, and NotifyMyAndroid, but none were cross-platform, so I built Pushover. I am charging for my app as a way to pay for the server costs, as I'm not sure how else these types of apps can make money and stay around. Notifo had a lot of users but their apps were free and I don't know if they even had any paying content providers pushing large amounts of messages. How do you plan to make money with yours?
- LokiSnake 15y ago
  Charging for the app will work for the DIY hacker types, but it'll be hard for other services to convince their users to purchase your app.
- jwr 15y ago
  So did Notifo actually shut down or not? I mean, it still works for me, and the web page is up. I offered many times to pay for the service.

huhtenberg 15y ago

Can you explain how Airgram compares to (now deceased) Notifo?

navneetloiwal 15y ago
We believe that mobile web apps need to become much more powerful than they are today. Developing native apps for various platforms is not easy, and frankly, unnecessary for most services. This is just our first step in bridging the gap between native apps and mobile web apps. We are looking to provide a suite of services around notifications that not just make it easy to deliver the notifications, but provide better targeting, management and analytics.
- nupark2 15y ago
  > Developing native apps for various platforms is not easy, and frankly, unnecessary for most services [emphasis mine] I think the fact that you've developed a native app here provides sufficient falsifying evidence for this declaration. When looking for the optimal (for the user) solution, the decision as between a web site or a native application should be made on the basis of user requirements, and the solutions that best meet those requirements, not based on the technologies that you, personally, are comfortable with. If you ignore an organization's existing investments in web engineering and web-focused infrastructure, webapps aren't empirically and objectively easier or cheaper. Rather, they're a mechanism by which an organization can leverage money they have already invested in building a web-centric team. I see this as a temporary state, initially caused by the rapid adoption of the web, and will ultimately disappear as more broad, less web-centric development experience and infrastructure investment becomes the norm.
  - marknutter 15y ago
    You're right, native apps will win out. Just like they did on the desktop..
    - nupark2 15y ago

nchuhoai 15y ago

I like the idea of unified notifications, but ultimately you have the chicken-egg problem, and for that you need to find an entry point. I'm working on the same problem and whoever solves it, it will create some great value. Can't wait until notifications get detached from email.

joering2 15y ago
excuse me, but what kind of chicken-egg does he have??IF someone needs notification pushed to their phone, they can use his simple web/app. There is no chicken/egg here...
- nchuhoai 15y ago
  users are not gonna download the app unless many services are using his api, and not many services are gonna use his api unless there is a big user base ... sounds like a prime example of chicken and egg
  - DVassallo 15y ago
    The way I see it is that non-mobile application owners can recommend their customers to install this app, rather than create and publish a new one just to listen for notifications. That's why I don't see the chicken-egg problem.
    - jazzychad 15y ago
      This is not as easy as it sounds (speaking from experience). The chicken-egg problem is huge in this type of service.
    - joering2 15y ago
      exactly! pretty much everyone in "too expensive/too complicate/we don't want this know" wagon that still want to have some sort of presence on the mobile devices could still have it without any investment other than redirect to his site.

startupcto 15y ago

I actually had the same idea and eventually decided not to pursue it. The main reason was i couldn't convince myself that people will go though the loop of downloading an app and mobile is way fragmented, so you can support iOS but what are the other 4/5 platforms? If you could remove the requirement for the need to download an app, you'll have a better change.

esharef 15y ago

I like this. I do think my phone is starting to become a bit too noisy though (too many text messages that start being more like email) and I am not sure how to keep it all organized. Perhaps you guys can help.

tommytsai1984 15y ago
Thanks for the feedback! We are thinking about various ways to give users a good, easy-to-understand set of controls to manage the noise. Stay tuned.

jwr 15y ago

Ok, so having tried the app — I won't actually use it until there is a "quiet hours" setting. Notifo got that perfectly right: there are certain hours where I do not want to be interrupted by notification sounds from the service (but I might want to keep other sounds on).

navneetloiwal 15y ago
Yes, absolutely. Quiet hours will show up in a day!

deleted 15y ago

[deleted]

rasmusbe 15y ago

would be nice if I, as a Service Owner, could see how many subscribers the service has.

navneetloiwal 15y ago
This first version is light on management features for the service owner because we wanted to get it out early to get feedback. What you suggest is absolutely on our list of things to do soon.

haar 15y ago

The API page seemed to break on smaller resolution pages (read: thinner).

tommytsai1984 15y ago
Tommy here, Airgram co-founder. Thanks for the bug report; we are looking into it. Which browser are you using?

Splines 15y ago

Just curious - what's your privacy policy? Are you storing any of the messages that get pushed through this service?

tommytsai1984 15y ago
Tommy here, Airgram co-founder. Currently, we are storing these messages, but if our users have some use cases that require messages to not be persisted, we'd be happy to add this feature. Do you have a use case in mind? Would love to hear about it -- e-mail me @ tommy at aircrunch dot com

godfreykfc 15y ago

I am really skeptical (though I'd be more than happy to see someone prove me wrong) about these "framework" apps, that doesn't actualy do anything by itself, except to provide an API of some sort for others to take advantage of. They reminds me of those obscure ActiveX plugins (3D model viewers, etc) that sites make you install. I am usually somewhat hesitant about getting them on my computer unless a see great value (eg growl), but I suppose I'll be even less willing to have these on my iPhone, as an app that sits somewhere on my home screen. My users might feel differently about this, but it certainly would be very difficult for me to explain to them what is it that they are installing and the experience could become quite confusing.

Roedou 15y ago
I would really like to send mobile push notifications to users of my service. (I send emails and/or SMS right now.) Developing an iPhone & Android app - even a simple one that simply lets me alert users - is beyond my mobile dev abilities, and (I assume) would cost tens of thousands of dollars for someone to build. Airgram might be the answer for me to let users get push notifications as an alternate alerting mechanism.
- tommytsai1984 15y ago
  Thanks for considering Airgram! We would love to chat with you to understand how you plan on using us, and what new features you would like to see. Please e-mail me @ tommy at aircrunch dot com if you have some time to chat.

teyc 15y ago

Have you figured out how could a website determine if your app is installed? It'd be cute to have a reddit style notification when people reply to your comments in a forum etc.