Boxcar 4.0 Update Improves Unified Push Notifications

Boxcar was one of the first apps to bring Push Notifications to iOS before Apple did. Once Cupertino and the gang implemented Push, Boxcar became a redundant service. However, Boxcar has remained popular among iPhone users and their 4.0 app update brings some new features such as: new icons, Retina display support, and a centralized inbox.

Here are the features of Boxcar:

– Central inbox for all of your notifications
– Facebook push notifications. Opens your Facebook application automatically!
– Email push notifications.
– Twitter notifications for mentions, direct messages, favorites, RTs, new followers, and whenever you’re added to a list.
– OAuth for authentication, so we never see your passwords.
– Choose from over 35 different clients to open automatically for Twitter!
– Choose from our custom push notification sounds, *per service*!
– Custom alert settings including full message, private message, and even no message at all!
– More services being added all the time!

Basically, like the description above says Boxcar unifies all your notifications. Not only does it bring them together but it adds some incredible options to customize each one.

You can set the sound of each notification and choose what app to open if you wish. If your iPhone twitter client doesn’t have Push (I use SimplyTweet which supports Push), Boxcar will essentially bring free notifications of @ replies, direct messages, and more. The same goes for email, RSS feeds, Facebook, and more. You can set the privacy of each alert to display a generic notification or message details. This brings email push to another level.

One of my favourite features is the option for Quiet Time. You can set a particular time where you won’t receive any Push notifications at all. Great when you’re sleeping or want some down time.

The unified inbox tracks all of your notifications to ensure you didn’t miss any. It makes it easy to see what you’ve missed. All in all, Boxcar is a phenomenal service and after trying it out, it’s not hard to see how they have delivered over 500 million messages. Some future improvements I’d like to see are better notification sounds; maybe more subtle ones.

Are you using Boxcar? What do you think of it?

Click here to download Boxcar. It’s free.