
Show HN: Airgram - Send iOS/Android notifications, without building an app - navneetloiwal
http://www.airgramapp.com
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jwr
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).

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

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nchuhoai
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.

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joering2
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...

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nchuhoai
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

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DVassallo
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.

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joering2
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.

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nupark2
This approach is exactly the opposite of what users want on mobile devices.

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navneetloiwal
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>

"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>)

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there
Congrats on the app, it looks nice.

I launched Pushover (<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?

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jwr
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.

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jazzychad
It's still running, but I'm not working on it, so it's kind of in zombie mode.
There are some plans afoot, but I can't talk about them yet... however, you
should assume it will go away. I will try to give 30 days notice if/when the
plug is ultimately pulled.

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jwr
Thanks! It's refreshing to have such an open conversation and you deserve high
praise for it. I can now look for an alternative.

As to Airgram, I'm worried because I don't see where they charge money.
Pushover looks much more reasonable for me. I became wary of "free" — what
"free" usually means is that eventually I am either a) bombarded with ads, b)
the service disappears because there is no money or c) somebody acquires the
startup because of their stellar subscriber growth (remember "free"?). In all
cases I am left out and have to re-invest my time into looking for an
alternative.

I also noticed over the years that the most stable and trouble-free services
are those which I regularly pay for. I'm quite happy with SmugMug and
Squarespace for example, even though there are free alternatives in each case.

Funny how this perspective is different from what you hear if you are a
startup founder: as a founder, you are supposed to "build something people
want", and the rest is supposed to sort itself out. But if you do build
something people want, but never charge for it, you end up disappointing those
people sooner or later...

jazzychad, thanks again for the frank statements and giving us the time to
find another solution!

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

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navneetloiwal
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
> 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.

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marknutter
You're right, native apps will win out. Just like they did on the desktop..

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nupark2
How is ChromeOS doing?

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godfreykfc
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.

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Roedou
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.

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tommytsai1984
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.

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

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navneetloiwal
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.

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esharef
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.

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tommytsai1984
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.

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teyc
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.

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

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tommytsai1984
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

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

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

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joshu
Boxcar?

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jdg
thanks for the mention josh. it's pretty cool that you know we exist.

-jdg

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joshu
i think i learned about it on HN.

i was using it for home automaton notifications a while back.

