

Startup Update: Notifo iPhone App v2, More - PStamatiou
http://paulstamatiou.com/startup-update-notifo-iphone-app-v2-more

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jazzychad
Our other big announcement today is that Notifo/Pushly have partnered with
Twitter to have access to their new Site Stream API -
[http://blog.notifo.com/pushly-partners-with-twitter-site-
str...](http://blog.notifo.com/pushly-partners-with-twitter-site-streams)

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PStamatiou
\+ youtube app walkthrough: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aW5hp3aoF9M>

\+ updated Chrome extension (Chrome updated to 6.0+ today and we use new
context menu APIs it now supports):
[https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/lgffhepmapgeepjn...](https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/lgffhepmapgeepjnhchaabmaoijfcnhi)

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aepstein
Great job guys, and excellent walkthrough Paul.

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kilian
Targetting Whatsapp and ping (chat) is a clever hack. A lot of my friends use
it as a free alternative to texting, and i'll be sure to tell them to start
using Notifo for that...As soon as it displays them as easily as whatapp
does.*

I've found sending a message to twitter to be completely unintuitive though. I
had to send something to 'twitter', typing it out without any sort of hint
that I was doing it correctly. Then minutes later, I get a Notifo message that
it tweeted. Which I just did myself, via the same device.

*it reads your phone's addressbook and displays all contacts that also have whatsapp, probably based on telephone number

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PStamatiou
> phone's addressbook and displays all contacts that also have whatsapp,
> probably based on telephone number

We've been chatting internally about such an onboarding process.

> I've found sending a message to twitter to be completely unintuitive though

It's more of a proof-of-concept for anyone to built bots. We'll be updating
the API documentation for that and opening the doors. We know that the twitter
bot implementation definitely hacky and not quite sure why anyone would use it
over a full-blown twitter client. Other proof-of-concept bots: dicebot (send
"help" or hi), notifo (send "temp sf" or help), jill (not run by us, not sure
if still up), et cetera

Thanks for the feedback!

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kilian
> not quite sure why anyone would use it over a full-blown twitter client.

I use notifo + push.ly to receive message when someone mentions me. As I have
a 3G, switching over to the twitter app is slow and cumbersome, so replying-
in-notifo is a good usecase :)

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PStamatiou
Well there ya go. ;) We enabled URL schemes in this version so that means we
can add a "Notifo" app addition to Push.ly if someone wants to use that as
their primary so when they tap a pushly notification it can switch to the
convo tab and make a new msg with the twitter bot/msg already filled out ready
for reply

P.S. - I got notifo'd of your reply, both on my iphone and OS X with our
desktop app haha

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jamesotron
Nice work guys. I'm really impressed with the App updates today and the
website update. One thing I was surprised by was that you don't have an option
for "Allow Notifo to send me information about service updates and new
features" and then have this announcement out to peoples devices. The other
thing is that if you're going to use Paul's blog for announcements then it
would really pay to have a mobile friendly version of the blog given your
target market.

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jazzychad
We would love to do notifications about updates, new features, etc, but that
is against the Apple APNS terms... so we can't. We can, however, add a 'nag
box' inside the app that will check with the server about new version numbers
and then tell the user to update (that has been added to this new version, so
it won't be seen until the next version).

Agree about the mobile version of Stammy's blog. I'll keep nagging him about
that too :)

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jamesotron
I guess that makes sense, I would be pretty annoyed if Facebook sent me a
notification every time they roll out some random new feature.

I like the idea of bots, but I don't see a lot of consumer grade users using
it. Seems more like a toy for the nerds amongst us, although I am sorely
tempted to whip up an Eliza bot for notifo. That said, I also wanted to modify
a z-code interpreter to allow people to play infocom games over twitter.

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samratjp
Whoa, awesome work guys. I've been using Notifo as a quasi bot for a
telepresence robot my friend and I have been building. The new features are
very much welcomed. Thanks!

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PStamatiou
> telepresence robot my friend and I have been building

Whoa that sounds interesting - any details you can share?

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ivey
Congrats, guys. This is excellent sauce.

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PStamatiou
Thanks for giving us some fantastic user feedback the last few months!

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there
will your android client be using c2dm or just doing constant polling?

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PStamatiou
c2dm where available (2.2+), polling as fallback for older versions
unfortunately. we are as anti-polling as you can get and will only do it out
of pure necessity.

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there
excellent. anxiously awaiting your android release!

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zbruhnke
Excited about Notifo, downloaded the app and loving it!

