Boxcar

Boxcar Improvements since July

brad2earth — Fri, 14 Sep 2012 07:56:00 -0500

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.

Thanks for your support!

It’s Fun Friday, and here at Boxcar, we’re...

journeyscript — Fri, 13 Apr 2012 12:52:26 -0500

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!

We <3 Our Awesome Fans!

journeyscript — Thu, 12 Apr 2012 11:02:13 -0500

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!

Devs: Port Your App Builds Wirelessly to Devices for Testing!

journeyscript — Tue, 10 Apr 2012 15:56:12 -0500

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.

Plug Spy Giveaway!

journeyscript — Thu, 29 Mar 2012 12:40:00 -0500

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!

WWDC Notifications!

journeyscript — Tue, 27 Mar 2012 14:17:19 -0500

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!

[New Provider] iOS Firmware Releases

journeyscript — Fri, 23 Mar 2012 11:10:00 -0500

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!

NEW: Sparrow Mail Notifications through Boxcar!

journeyscript — Thu, 15 Mar 2012 11:02:00 -0500

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!

Facebook FIX!

journeyscript — Tue, 13 Mar 2012 12:51:32 -0500

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.

SXSWi (SXSW Interactive) - Say Hey!

journeyscript — Tue, 21 Feb 2012 10:46:20 -0600

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!

Boxcar and Twitter Search

joshviney — Tue, 14 Feb 2012 11:50:00 -0600

We’ve been getting some questions in our help center about how to use Boxcar to send alerts for Twitter search results, so we put together this article to help.

First off, a quick warning about Twitter search results. Searching for generic terms can result in hundreds, if not thousands, of messages being sent to your phone. For those of you who love to watch your devices go berserk, it can be an exciting part of your day, but for the rest of you it’s probably more practical to focus on getting only the most actionable results. ;)

Here are some tips that should help you filter and find the search results you want.

** Comma-Separated & Boolean OR **

#hashtag == Results will match anything with just #hashtag in it.
Comma, separated, searches == results will match anything with “comma” or “separated” or “searches” in it.
Comma separated, searches == results will match anything with “comma separated” or “searches” in it.
Comma OR separated OR searches == results will match anything with Comma or Separated or Searches in it.

** Negations **

-racer == makes sure the search does NOT include the -racer word. If it does include it, we won’t push it.

Because Boxcar Racer is a post-hardcore music band, this one helps us find tweets relevant to tweets about the Boxcar App.

** From **

“from:jdg” == will only send tweets that are tweeted by “jdg”
from:jviney OR from:jdg OR from:conorh

This one will send tweets matching jviney, jdg or conorh.

** Phrases **

“hello jdg” == Will only send a tweet that has “hello jdg” in it (exactly that phrase). NOTE: This is broken in the current iPhone version. It messes up the quotes.

Don’t worry, if you start to get too many matches (60 search results sustained per minute) we’ll automatically disable the service. Turning it back on is as simple as re-saving it!

Oh, and by the way, we <3 you guys. Happy Valentine’s Day!

It’s Friday, and here at Boxcar that means it’s time...

journeyscript — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 11:30:06 -0600

It’s Friday, and here at Boxcar that means it’s time for some fun!

While we stay busy working behind the scenes on awesomizing Boxcar, how ‘bout you see if you can spare just four minutes for a smile and a laugh at this clip of Dick Van Dyke and his breakfast machine in “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.”

The obvious connection is the train and boxcars in general, but unlike this Rube Goldberg approach to dining, we try to keep things simple and straightforward for our terrific Boxcar fans and providers. We’re all about customization AND simplicity.

We always welcome your feedback and support requests at help.boxcar.io.

We have a small team and appreciate your patience, but rest assured that we read your input and value it.

Information Security Professional Uses Boxcar to Retrieve Stolen Phone

journeyscript — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 11:30:05 -0600

Just this weekend, an informational security professional named Steve Zenone used Boxcar as one of the tools in his arsenal to recover the stolen iPhone of a client.

He writes about the steps he took on his blog, Zen One:

…Setup the email account used as the Apple ID of the stolen iPhone to forward a copy of all mail from “noreply@me.com” to an account I setup at Boxcar. The reason for doing this was to have push notifications sent to my phone moments after the stolen iPhone would be powered on and receive the commands that I sent from the “Find iPhone” app…. here.

We love this story because it’s a perfect example of how Boxcar not only helps people in their everyday lives, but also is an ideal tool for specific industries and special purposes from monitoring computers and phones to delivering alerts to the employees of a company.

If you’re reading this blog, you probably have your own unique way you use Boxcar, and we’d love to hear about it. Send your stories to awesome@boxcar.io!

Read the picture (or rebus, if you prefer). And then tell us...

journeyscript — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 11:30:05 -0600

Read the picture (or rebus, if you prefer). And then tell us where yours is headed. :)

Devs: Open-Source Resource Page

journeyscript — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 12:00:05 -0600

We’d love to help you get started creating your own Boxcar provider.

So we decided to help you out.

Just for you, we’ve collated a great list of useful open-source tools & resources. :)

The link: http://boxcar.io/open-source

The list:

Explore, pass it on, let us know your favorites and feel free to suggest your own!

Wanna Be a Boxcar Provider?

journeyscript — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 15:07:00 -0600

Have some valuable updates and information you want to push out to a fan base or your client list or maybe your organization?

Even if you’re not a developer, you can now create providers and subscribe Boxcar users online without writing code. You’ll send out messages to your subscribers, sort of like setting up a mailing list, but with push instead of email.

Sound cool? You got that right!

With Boxcar, it’s simple - we’ve made the process SUPER easy. 3 steps. Seriously.

And now, we’ve also added a helpful feature - you can send an update to specific users individually via the web interface (read, again, EASY). Check it out:

Questions? Let us know - we’re here to help. Boxcar aims to be useful AND fun.

What kind of service could *you* share using Boxcar? We’re all ears.

Timely Timestamps

journeyscript — Tue, 03 Jan 2012 15:10:21 -0600

Your first bit of new Boxcar awesome for 2012 comes via the web and desktop versions.

Timely timestamps.

This means that now your timestamps will update dynamically, even as you view them, not just when you refresh.

Just another way we’re keeping you up to date while you’re on the go this new year.

Our 2011 Holiday Wish

journeyscript — Sat, 31 Dec 2011 14:00:05 -0600

You know, we’ve got some pretty awesome fans. Yeah, we’re talking about you.

We’ve got a lot of great things cooking behind-the-scenes here, and every day we make Boxcar even better.

We’ve changed our support system, and are working on responding more promptly to technical concerns.

We’re working on both fun and useful tweaks to the app itself.

And we keep getting awesome shout-outs and feedback from our fans that lets us know we’re on the right track.

So our holiday wish this year is simple. We want even more people to know about Boxcar.

Would you do us a favor? Right now, send a quick email, post a brief Facebook status, or maybe tweet (#boxcarbrilliant is a great hashtag) and let at least one friend know about what we do and what ya like about us. It’d mean a ton.

Happy holidays, and thanks so much for another terrific year - we can’t wait to roll out even more awesome in 2012.

In Case You Hadn't Heard - Facebook Fixed!

journeyscript — Sat, 31 Dec 2011 10:00:05 -0600

The good news just keeps rolling in…

We just recently found and implemented a fix for those of you who had been having Facebook issues. If that’s not you - good! If it is, we appreciate your patience.

Facebook recently updated its authentication process, so newer users were getting a different token that we weren’t recognizing.

We got back to affected users (who’d contacted us via Twitter or our help portal) yesterday after implementing the fix.

We started hearing all-clear reports come back in steadily even before we’d updated users.

So if you had troubles accessing your Facebook account via Boxcar lately - go check it out! It works! ;)

More great news from Boxcar to brighten your holiday season. Happy New Year!

Brief Maintenance Tonight @ 10 p.m. CST

journeyscript — Fri, 30 Dec 2011 16:30:16 -0600

Just an fyi. One hour. 10 p.m. CST. You can handle it. ;)

You’ll miss us, we know…

…but hey - it’s so we can add even more awesomeness to Boxcar over the next few weeks. It’s worth it.

We’ll be back shortly! See you then!