Attention, Craigslist shoppers!
Turns out there was a little bug that meant RSS feeds worked…except in the case of Craigslist.
The good news is, that’s now fixed, and you can get great updates for Craigslist feeds with Boxcar!
Thanks to our fabulous frugal Boxcar fans for your patience.
Happy holidays, and happy armchair shopping!
Psst…it’s the holiday season…did you know? Yep, sneaked up on us too.
But here we are, and with all the festivities, and the holiday cheer, and the good food, and the shopping, and seeing friends and family…we know you’re also kinda curious (if you’re not, your kids are!) where Santa might be in his travels.
For this important information, we’ve once again got you covered - our NORAD Santa service will keep you updated with Santa’s latest whereabouts. Add it here!
You won’t get an update right away, but rest assured, when there’s new reports, you’ll hear. And oh, by the way, the folks at NORAD have a great list of FAQ’s…check it out. :)
And don’t forget to tell your friends - they’ll want to know too.
- The Friendly Elves at Boxcar
Welcome aboard, Kevin! We’re going to need a bigger boat!
Dog-lovers, listen up.
This may be one of the coolest Boxcar providers we’ve featured yet. It’s just that awesome.
The Doggy provider was created by Bernhard Üllenberg, of Germany.
And just so we don’t get your hopes up too much, we’ll go ahead and let our English-speaking users know that, yes, this provider is currently specific to locations in Germany.
In other words, we’re telling you about a really cool *concept* that is applicable to anywhere, and may well show up as a provider you can use someday, even if you don’t speak German. Got it? Ja? Das is gut. So keep reading, already.
Short version: This location-based site for dog owners offers local information and some really cool services, such as allowing you to connect with other dog owners in the area, get notifications about threats like poisoned food, and even track your walks.
We’ll let Bernhard tell you more:
E. (to the left) Boxcar allows us to push the internal messages on time between users. As a website, we love having the ability to feature instant communication, which is typically a capability only or primarily of apps.
Want to spice up your web analytics and reporting? Mint is the service for you - simplicity and spice, in the form of a flexible dashboard that allows you to easily view visits, referrers, popular pages and searches, and more.
A single site license is just $30, so go check it out and browse some of the other cool features Mint has to offer!
And we bet you can guess what we’re going to say next…
Mint likes to call its plug-ins “Pepper,” and yep, you 
guessed it, there’s now a Boxcar-Pepper. In other words, not only can you have a cool and versatile dashboard…you can also get push notifications for those same stats, customizable to your preferences.
Unique visitors? Unique referrals? Page views? Learn when it happens.
A while back a guy named Russ Bradberry created a node module that implements a node client for Boxcar’s APIs. Per Ejeklint, from Sweden, recently decided to take that functionality one step further and wrap it into a working hook with hook.io.
As he put it, “During my spare time I keep an eye on emerging technologies and quite recently discovered node.js and its impressive ecosystem. One particular node framework of interest is hook.io, an endeavor to develop a small and effective event based framework for just about any kind of I/O. You can see it as an Enterprise Service Bus framework for node. With hook.io it becomes very easy to develop highly modularized applications with excellent decoupling and minimal dependencies between modules.”
Per also wrote an “introduction for dummies” that further explains the idea.
Per decided to write his own hook and make it available, so now it’s drop-dead-easy to incorporate Boxcar notifications to hook.io-based applications. Just get the API keys you need from Boxcar, install hook.io-boxcar, create your configuration file and start it up.
Voilá! You can then send notifications from any node process just by calling, for example:
hook.emit('boxcar::broadcast', 'Service XYZ up and running again!');
A real beauty of hook.io is that one doesn’t even have to stop any processes to deploy it. Just start the hook and it starts listening for the events that triggers it.
One of the things we love to do is tell you about cool providers that do awesome things AND integrate with Boxcar to give you real-time push notifications when they do!
Today’s topic of choice is Plug-Spy. 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. That way, you’ll get a notification on your phone right away, and can decide what next steps to take.
Plug-Spy integrates seamlessly with Mac OS X and Apple iCloud “Find my Mac,” and will work with the newest generation of MacBooks. No Kensington Lock or Sudden Motion Sensor is required and you don’t have to remember an additional password or shortcut. You can read Plug-Spy’s blog post on the update here.
Plug Spy auto-activates when your screen is locked and starts an annoying high volume alert sound and sends a Growl (and now, Boxcar!) notification when your MacBook gets unplugged from the MagSafe power adapter.
With access protection enabled, you will also get notified when someone enters a wrong password in the login panel, tries to access your MacBook with a different user account, or restarts your Mac in Safari Guest mode.
Purchase PlugSpy for just $2.99 from the Apple Mac store or download a free 3-day trial here. Then, while logged into your PlugSpy account, go to the “Access” tab to set up Boxcar notifications.
Type in the email address you use to log into Boxcar with, and click “Test.” Done!
Boxcar fans in New Zealand and Australia, or anyone interested in the stock exchanges for both countries (ASX & NZX), now have a new tool at their fingertips through InvestorPA’s integration with Boxcar. Read their blog post here.
It’s simple to sign up for the free service. You can have up to 50 stocks on your watchlist, receive push notifications and email updates, or access updates online.
Once you’re registered, go to your account settings and select “push notifications” to enter the email address associated with your Boxcar account, as shown below!
Envato is a group of online marketplaces that allows freelancers and other creatives to have a place to sell their digital goods (WordPress themes, background music, Flash templates and more).
And Envato fans will be glad to hear that through the hard work and efforts of Justin Scheetz, creator of LeafPing (currently in beta), they can now get notifications of their Envato sales, referrals, and comments through either SMS or Boxcar updates.
To get started, sign in at LeafPing with your Envato credentials. And spread the word!
Today we say goodbye to our friend Google Buzz. As of a few minutes ago, you will no longer be able to add the Google Buzz service to Boxcar, nor will you receive notifications for it.
We hope to add support for Google Plus soon and are patiently waiting on API access for it. As always, stay tuned here for updates.