Customers
Tapulous
Who
With more than 25 million users, Tapulous is one of the most successful game companies on the iPhone. Tapulous has put out a suite of hit games, the most recent being "Tap Tap Revenge 3."
What
Both "Tap Tap Revenge 2" and "Tap Tap Revenge 3" are real-time mobile gaming experiences. The games let users challenge other players to beat their high score. Push notifications sent to those friends drives them back into the application to play the game.
In addition, Tapulous uses Urban Airship Push to deliver updates about new or updated in-game content.
Tapulous has very successfully integrated push notifications into its social strategy. By not only sending messages between friends, but also sending broadcast updates, its a great use case for the many uses of push notifications.
Urban Airship worked closely with Tapulous to ensure that "Tap Tap Revenge 2" was the first application in the App Store that supported push notifications.
Testimonial
“Implementing a Push provider, per Apple’s spec, seemed like it might be a little tricky, even with our existing server infrastructure. Plus, we needed to be sure that we’ll scale,” said Jessica Kahn, director of engineering at Tapulous. “Urban Airship was the right solution for us. On our own, it might have taken weeks to do a good job of implementing the provider portion of Push support. Instead, it took a few hours to integrate our product with theirs.”
Gowalla
Who
Gowalla is a beautiful social app for sharing and discovering eateries, coffeehouses, nightlife hotspots, hipster hangouts, retail meccas, famous landmarks and much more. There's also a game element: when you check in, you can pick up and leave virtual items at that location. Each virtual item keeps track of where it's been, so you can see its history.
What
When a user checks in, Gowalla uses Urban Airship to deliver messages to all of that user's friends. The notification includes where they've checked in and any message that the user wants to send along.
Push notifications like this are a great way to keep your application fresh and vibrant. It's a way to provide constant updates and egage the user, as well as drive them back into the application.
Testimonial
“Configuring push notifications with Urban Airship was a breeze. Thanks to the sample code, we were able to get push notifications working in Gowalla in under 30 minutes. I’d recommend Urban Airship to anyone who wants to focus on their own app, rather than the plumbing,” - Scott Raymond, CTO, Gowalla
iVerse
Who
iVerse Comics is a comic-book store in your pocket. With hundreds of titles from top publishers like IDW Publishing (“Star Trek”, “Ghost Whisperer”, and more), Archie Comics, Image Comics Creators, and some of the best indie talent in the comic book industry, iVerse Comics is a store and collector for all your digital comics – and all from your phone. Best of all, it’s free.
What
By using push notifications, iVerse informs users informed of the latest titles in the store.
iVerse also needed push notifications for other upcoming applications, and integrating Urban Airship into its framework was the easiest and fastest way to get going.
Testimonial
“Integrating Urban Airship into our application was incredibly simple and easy to use. We’ve been extremely satisfied with the experience and are incorporating into several upcoming application we’ll be releasing over the next few months,” said Michael Murphey, CEO of iVerse Media.
Yowza!!
Who
Yowza!! is an app that allows you to find coupons for local vendors and receive notifications when new coupons become available.
What
From August Trometer, co-founder of Yowza!!: “Because our app is a mobile coupon application, users, of course, want to know as soon as new deals ‘arrive’. With Push Notifications, we let users choose which store locations they want to track. Then, when any of those stores have a new offer, we fire off a notification to let them know.”
Testimonial
On integrating our services, August says, “Working with Urban Airship has been great. Though it sounds like it’s trivial to implement, Push Notifications are actually a very tricky technology. Urban Airship made it a snap for us to integrate Push Notifications into our app.”
AirCoaster 3D
Who
AirCoaster is a unique roller-coaster social game designed specifically for the iPhone/iPod touch (you may have heard of it on TechCrunch, Gizmodo, or The New York Times Economix Blog). Users can create and ride their own roller coaster tracks and share them online with other AirCoaster users.
What
What’s the use in creating a bunch of cool rides if you can’t share them with friends? Push notifications provide an easy and affordable way to make your app social.
Testimonial
Ziconic’s Kuan Yong had these kind words about Urban Airship: “Integrating with Urban Airship’s push notifications API was completely straightforward and painless. Offering push notifications goes a very long way toward increasing user engagement on any iPhone app, and Urban Airship’s simple-to-use API puts this powerful feature in the hands of any iPhone app developer, big or small.”
The Carrier
Who
The Carrier is a completely original graphic novel by Philadelphia creator Evan Young. The Carrier marked a watershed moment for the American comic-book industry: it was the first graphic novel to be published exclusively on the iPhone.
On one hand, Evan Young’s story is an action adventure about a man with a briefcase attached to his wrist. On the other hand, the app, developed by StopWatch’s Geoffrey Young, represents a groundbreaking shift for the comic book industry. The Young brothers have built the app to utilize the iPhone’s geo-location and Push capabilities, deliver emails, and tell the story of The Carrier in a real-time format. The entire package serves up a series of unique digital extras in what is, essentially, the first mobile comic book experience.
What
From the moment the user first starts reading the comic, a timer starts. Updates to the story happen in real-time. The user is alerted that something has happened in the story by push notification, bringing them back into the story when the next chapter is ready.
Testimonial
“Urban Airship provides what Apple should have given developers in the first place: a clean and simple Push interface, free from hoops, hurdles, and caveats. With any serious engineering effort, there is always the question of how to best utilize finite resources – should I spend my valuable and limited time reading Apple documentation and wrestling with APNS via low-level network and authentication protocols, or should I use the straightforward JSON API from Urban Airship and leave the interface complexities to them? Of course, the choice was an easy one, and one that I’m glad we made for our application. The Push Notification service from Urban Airship is a stable and well engineered product that has proven to be both time and cost effective for us. Urban Airship is top notch, both from a technical and support perspective, and I’d use them again in a second,” Geoffrey Young, lead developer of The Carrier.
Scout
Who
Craigslist is a fantastic site with an amazing amount of data to get through. Not only that, its first-come-first-serve. How can you get the upper-hand on finding that apartment or camera you’ve always wanted? Enter Scout from Octopia Labs.
What
With Scout you no longer need to check Craigslist 10 times a day looking for that hard-to-find item. Simply set up a search and Scout will notify you when it’s posted to Craigslist – - even when Scout’s not running. Set up a search, go on to other things, and Scout will watch Craigslist for you and report back. Scout’s notifications is powered by Urban Airship’s push notifications.
Testimonial
“When we first looked into Apple’s Push Notification, we read through Apple’s documentation and the developer forums. After a couple long days of trying sample code to no avail, we found Urban Airship. Within a few minutes we had sent a test push to one of our phones. After a few high fives we realized that this was the system we wished Apple had built” said Asa Miller the co-founder of Octopia Labs, the makers of Scout.
We couldn’t be happier to be working with the folk at Octopia Labs and Scout is just a beautifully developed app that all of the Urban Airship developers are now using on a regular basis.
Where
Who
WHERE is a location based application that delivers relevant local places, people and things to your mobile phone. WHERE contains several local feeds including, weather, traffic, a gas station locator and a social networking feature, WHERE Connect.
What
The WHERE Connect feature utilizes push technology to inform users of new messages. As private messages are left between buddies, users receive a push notification about unread messages waiting in their inboxes.
The engineering team at WHERE was able to get up and running with the Urban Airship push notification API very quickly. It allowed them to focus on other functionality instead of the details of integrating or scaling push.
Meter Maid
Who
Meter Maid watches your parking meter for you. Just set how much time is on your meter and receive a push notification before the meter expires — no need to keep checking your watch.
Meter maid also lets you save the GPS location of where you parked so you can always find your way back to your car. You can see the location on a map and even get directions to your car from your current location. The app was designed to be simple and as easy to use as possible. Featuring a beautiful and intuitive interface, you can set your parking meter with one hand in less than 10 seconds.
What
With Urban Airship's scheduled push notifications API, you can easily set notifications to be delivered at a later date. Many developers use this ability to remind their users of an upcoming event or action that the user should take. Meter Maid is the perfect example of this.
Testimonial
“When I started building Meter Maid, I just wanted to focus on building a great app with a great interface. I didn’t want to worry about the complexities of building and maintaining a whole backend infrastructure for push notifications. I found Urban Airship and it was a no brainer. I implemented the service in a few minutes, and saved myself months of work and headache. I couldn’t have built the app without them,” said Zach Waugh, lead developer for Meter Maid.