

Push Notifications to Mobile Devices Using Amazon SNS - jeffbarr
http://aws.typepad.com/aws/2013/08/push-notifications-to-mobile-devices-using-amazon-sns.html

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dengnan
For those who want to setup a similar service on their own server:
[http://github.com/uniqush/uniqush-push](http://github.com/uniqush/uniqush-
push) It is free and open source, written in Go and It can run on most major
platform.

~~~
cmer
This seems like an awesome project! Correct me if I'm wrong, but it doesn't
support Kindles yet, right? Only Android and iOS?

~~~
dengnan
Well. Considering kindle does not support GCM, no, uniqush does not support
kindle. But there's some work around: there's another piece of program which
maintains long term TCP connections: [http://github.com/uniqush/uniqush-
conn](http://github.com/uniqush/uniqush-conn)

However, uniqush-conn is still under construction (more precisely, the server
side program is almost there, but the client library is still under
construction.) The whole picture of the system is described here:
[http://blog.uniqush.org/uniqush-after-
go1.html](http://blog.uniqush.org/uniqush-after-go1.html)

I haven't heard that amazon has any free public service for push notification
for kindle, like GCM or APNS. If there exist one, I will definitely add
support to uniqush-push. Otherwise, a long term TCP connection may be the only
choice for uniqush.

Supporting Windows Phone would be a trivial job. But I do not have a Windows
device to work with, the support for windows has to be delayed.

~~~
dengnan
Well. It seems that kindle does provide some cloud service for push
notification [1]. Then I will add this support in recent release

1\.
[https://developer.amazon.com/sdk/adm/concepts.html](https://developer.amazon.com/sdk/adm/concepts.html)

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dcaunt
This is significantly cheaper than Urban Airship, which charges $0.50 to send
500 messages. Amazon will deliver between 500k and 1M for the same money.
That's at least one good reason to use the service.

~~~
supercoder
.50c ? that's crazy for that kind of service, especially when Apple is
actually doing the delivery.

~~~
level09
plus apple doesn't guarantee the delivery as well

~~~
sqnguyen
Push notification services never guarantee delivery.

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yoda_sl
Interesting new addition from AWS. Directly competing with some features from
Urban Airship or Parse. I will have to dig into the code/library they provide
since right now for a cross platform app of mine I used my own server (+DB)
for iOS, and Parse for Android, but was getting ready to switch iOS on Parse.

One of the main thing that bug me with Parse -and I believe it is still the
same: they implemented their own Android service to watch for notification
coming in, when I will prefer to have my app use the local native notification
system... More work for them since it require different integration on Android
and Device like Kindle Fire, but better from a user point of view.

Anyway competitions in that space is good

~~~
tszming
It is also interesting as Parse is being featured as one of the AWS prominent
customers in the past, but now AWS compete directly with them.

[1] [http://aws.amazon.com/solutions/case-
studies/parse/](http://aws.amazon.com/solutions/case-studies/parse/)

~~~
barista
Looks like Azure introduced their own version the same day.
[http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2013/08/12/windows-
az...](http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2013/08/12/windows-azure-
general-availability-of-sql-server-always-on-support-and-notification-hubs-
autoscale-improvements-more.aspx)

~~~
jessegavin
Azure had this implemented and available a while ago actually. The "General
Availability Release" happened 5 days ago.

~~~
imissmyjuno
is 5 days really "a while"..

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Dogamondo
I'm always quite nervous submitting apps to the Apple app store using 3rd
party notification services. Have used both Parse and Urban Airship in the
past, given Apple's brash attitude or the fact that either services
potentially could shut down due to any unforeseen circumstances. I wonder if
this could be a viable alternative given their branding and reach. Using APNS
is quite straight forward until you start worrying about what may be getting
monitored / violating the TOS

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sologoub
Interesting that they compare push notifications to SMS. While the delivery
experience may be close (text popping up on screen), the ubiquitous
addressability of SMS is still lacking. If only Apple and Google offered an
app-independent way to address devices, that would reduce friction and
probably end SMS as we know it, or case SMS prices to fall to bandwidth cost-
levels.

~~~
jmduke
It's beyond me why Apple hasn't leveraged iMessage in this regard.

~~~
AsymetricCom
They have no financial reason to do so. Amazon is motivated by its developer
customers to provide a platform to empower them across as many end user
devices as possible.

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sandfox
I wonder how long till AWS provides some form of realtime websocket/whatever
connection service. (I admit it will be some time before things are stable
enough to make it sensible for AWS to get involved).

This marks as interesting expansion nonetheless. Probably need to work out
what extra cost of this is like (pretty hard to compare though)

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Rezo
It seems fairly limited right now, and doesn't do much to alleviate the pain
of supporting many different push notification services.

You still have to code the client side pieces for each platform separately
instead of providing a uniform SDK, you then communicate the notification URIs
"somehow" to your own backend and store them on your own. The only difference
seems to be that you would then talk to Amazon's API instead of directly to
for example Google Cloud Messaging from your backend. I'm not sure it's worth
introducing an abstraction layer just for this slim piece. Hopefully they'll
broaden scope later on.

WNS & MPNS support for Windows 8 / WP8 notifications also appears to be
missing.

~~~
zwily
This is just abstracting the process of sending a notification to the
different backends - which is fairly significant. Apple, for one, requires you
to hold open a TCP connection to them, they don't provide a REST-ish sort of
interface for sending notifications.

The client-side piece is still a bit messy, but that's not where AWS plays
anyway.

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aleem
Is there is good service that will let me send notifications via Amazon SNS to
simple SMS (outside the U.S)?

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Smrchy
I'm using [https://pushover.net/](https://pushover.net/)

Easy to integrate and all you really need to pay is the iPhone App.

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pranayairan
it is not a direct competition to urban airship or parse, we will still need
to use GCM or Apple Push notification, all amazon is solving is to make the
backend storing of the Unique push tokens simple and taking care of sending
push notifications with queue etc.

