Here’s a quick update on what’s been accomplished since Boxcar’s acquisition by Kwaga in late July.  THE MOST IMPORTANT NEWS is that the service’s stability has improved significantly outside of two short outages in early August and early September. 

We apologize for the outages and have pinpointed the problems and have moved forward. 

What’s Changed?

We’re still pushing your messages every two minutes every day (with some delays during peak hours) and only 3 services had to be dropped from twitter:

• Twitter search
• Twitter lists
• Twitter Follow

Unfortunately, this is out of our hands as Twitter has stopped whitelisting IP addresses, so we’re limited to the number of requests we can make each day for polling services.  That being said, you can still benefit from push services for all of these twitter actions, except the first, timeline updates, for the same reason as above (Twitter’s limited 3rd party API server requests):

What’s Next?

Now that the platform has been laregly stabilized we’re looking to bring the best of Kwaga’s main product, WriteThatname to Boxcar as many WriteThatname users have expressed the need to confirm/modify their contacts’ info on their iPhone.  Likewise, we will investigate the possibility of notifying you of only “important emails” via Boxcar, as Kwaga specializes in semantic technology/

If you have any specific issues, please contact us here and to take advantage of an exclusive discount for Boxcar users of WriteThatname, go here.

It’s Fun Friday, and here at Boxcar, we’re highlighting our Quiet Time feature. :)

Some of our fans love us for the ability to pick specific sounds per service. Some like us for our fast push-notification. And some like us…for our quiet.

You might not have heard about it, but if you go into your general Boxcar settings (gear icon, upper-right-corner), you can pick a specific time range to daily have notifications go silent. It’s the top option in your settings list.

Want to sleep from 10 p.m. - 6 a.m. (8 hours? Who does that?!) and only be awakened by the buzz of your social world after that? Boxcar’s got you covered.

Choose your own times in increments of 15 min. and enjoy the convenience of Boxcar notifications available when you want them. We’ll stay quiet in meetings, classes, and sleep for you when you don’t. Enjoy your weekend!

Every once in a while, we like to mix things up around here a bit.

We’ve been busy with a lot of behind-the-scenes projects and some pretty neat third-party push work (check out the TechCrunch article if you hadn’t heard).

But we also get to talk to you, our awesome fans, quite a bit. You guys talk to us when you need help, you talk about us when you find a cool new service that integrates Boxcar, and you tell your friends about us too. And we heart that.

So we wanted to let you know. Personally.

Some of our followers on Twitter received snail mail (yep, it still exists - old-fashioned push notification) thank you’s last week.

For following us. For being Boxcar Brilliants. For being awesome.

And like the awesome fans they are (you too), they tweeted us back in reply and made our day.

Check it out:

Thanks for the awesome sticker @Boxcar! campl.us/iBUa

— Moses (@mosesdjr) April 5, 2012

                   

Ladies and gentlemen, THIS is how to do customer service. Thanks so much @boxcar team! Incredible! twitter.com/B_Puryear/stat…

— Blake Puryear (@B_Puryear) April 4, 2012

…and we’ve gotten more since. Thanks guys.

Love the pics, love your tweets, love the awesome. Enjoy your week!

We love the ingenuity our fans and providers display in their suggestions and the cool tools they build that incorporate Boxcar.

One very cool example of this is the work of Carl Brown (@CarlAllenBrown). His app, AppDropOTA, came out a couple months ago on the Apple Mac App Store.

Carl says his app allows developers to “drag-and-drop your .app bundle, and via Dropbox and the push notifications of Boxcar, you can have your App running on your device with just a couple of taps.”

Naturally, this is handy, since you can install your apps quickly without having to keep your phone plugged in to sync.

Check out the demo video below to see how Carl installs an app for testing on 9 devices in under two minutes using Boxcar push notifications and AppDropOTA.

Psst…we’ve got 5 Plug Spy promo codes to give away today!

To enter: Tweet us @boxcar with a comment and the #BoxcarBrilliant hashtag.

Deadline: 12 p.m. (noon) CST on Mar. 30th (tomorrow).

We’ll randomly pick five of the entries to win a code giving free access to Plug Spy, (available for $2.99 on the Apple Mac Store)!

If you want to learn more about Plug Spy and its integration with Boxcar, read our previous blog post about the app here.

Like we said then, this useful service is designed to give you instant warnings if someone tries to steal your MacBook or even enter a wrong password in the standard OS X login panel.

Good luck! Can’t wait to hear from you, our awesome #BoxcarBrilliant fans!

Update: Congratulations to @twbtwb, @Mo3Tah, @jack728, @mosesdjr, and @victorlgarcia - the winners of our recent Plug Spy giveaway!

Wanting a way to find out when anything on Apple’s Worldwide Developer Conference webpage changes? Check out the newest Boxcar provider, courtesy of @atomicbird over at www.atomicbird.com!

            

Rumors suggest that dates might be June 11-15 this year, but the best way to know definite specifics is to get updates straight from the official webpage. :)

Note: Push notifications will be sent for *any* changes on the site. Happy waiting!

The latest Boxcar provider is out, thanks to creator icj_. Here are the key features:

• Will notify users of official iOS firmware only.
• Notifies once per firmware release to avoid spam.
• All the firmware releases are available to download here.

Get this useful new service and add it to your Boxcar here!

       

Are you a Sparrow fan, looking for push notifications? Look no further.

Not only was Sparrow for Mail just released over in the App Store…<cheers!>…

…BUT we’ve also added Sparrow as a new option in our apps list to open for your Boxcar Mail notification service. That means it’s super-easy, super-handy for you to get the notifications you need, connected with a great mail service that’s super-popular.

There’s a great article over on App Advice from Christine Chan, talking about the Sparrow service and its unique features, including a whole lot of great screenshots, called “Sparrow is the Best Email App for Your iPhone Since Apple’s Own.”

In case you’re interested, you can chat with the Sparrow team on Twitter at @sparrow, or read their latest blog updates on Tumblr.

Here’s a Sparrow how-to about adding Boxcar notifications. Have any questions for us? Just ask.

We hope you find this new mail option useful, and we look forward to hearing your feedback. Have a fantastic day, and happy emailing!

It’s the news you’ve been waiting for. We figured it out.

Facebook is now requiring additional permissions from you, our awesome Boxcar fans, in order for us to be able to deliver the push notifications you know and love.

SO.

Run, don’t walk, to our Boxcar website* (here’s a link so it’s handy) and…

DELETE that FB service you’ve been having trouble getting messages and updates from.

There. 

Feel better? We thought you might.

Now…re-install it. That means add the service again (and don’t cheat and just log out and back in to your FB account - that won’t work). Got that?

And after all that work (what…5 clicks?)…voilá…the sun will start shining, birds will start tweeting (no wait, that’s Twitter), and life will once again turn ON.

You’re welcome. You’re the bestest. And we’ll see you around. :)

*Note: Currently you do need to go to the website to make the change. We’ll add the additional authentication to our next update of the iOS app down the road.

Hey y’all!

Heads up: We’ll be in Austin, TX from March 9th through the 11th for SXSWi (SXSW Interactive) and we’d be thrilled to see you there. 

Want to meet-up with our founder and CEO, Jonathan George, to discuss Boxcar awesomeness? Shoot him an email (jonathan@boxcar.io) and come say hey!