v0.5.4 SDK - Make Your Notifications Sexy!!

Ok.  I hope the title caught everyone's attention. :)

So we've launched v0.5.4 and I think everyone will want this.  With this release, you can send Stylized Notifications to the system!  Something you can add easily with the BuzzBox Notification SDK or do a lot of work on your own.

Stylized Notifications

- Colored Background - Notifications can have a color background and pop out compared to other apps.
- Flag Icons - Add flag icons in the upper right of the notifications to specify more information.  You can show priority, types or other details you want to show.

 

See how the notification stands out.  You'll get

1) More clicks - Your notifications will stand out and get more clicks.

2) More brand awareness - Your brand color will show up outside your app.

3) More happy users - The flag icon helps the users know more about the notification before they click.

Check out our website http://hub.buzzbox.com and get our SDK here http://hub.buzzbox.com/android-sdk/download

Let us know what you think, we'd like to hear from you. anu@buzzbox.com

Thanks,

Anu, Roberto & Walter

Future of Android Notifications with BuzzBox SDK

Hi Everyone,

I've just published slides about what we are working on in the BuzzBox SDK.  The 2 major additions are a Notification Feed in each app and a Smart Notification Engine.  http://www.slideshare.net/BuzzBoxSDK/buzzbox-sdk   Take a look at the later slides for our future direction.  We are looking for guidance from the developer community on what they think of it.  It's your chance to influence our direction.

Notification Feed
The Notification Feed is feed of all the notifications sent from the app to the system.  This allows users to come back to missed notifications.  It's a great way to get more engagement from users.

Smart Notification Engine
The Smart Notification Engine will optimize the notifications sent to the user.  We have a few ideas here but again wanted our community to give us feedback on what they'd like.  We know everyone wants notifications, but too many can overwhelm the user and be a reason to uninstall the app. 

We've made the slides public to encourage a conversation on the future of Notifications on Android. This is our view and we'd love feedback from people.

Thanks
Anu, Roberto & Walter

v0.5.3 SDK Launches with Language Support

Go get the new v0.5.3 SDK now!  We  have updated a lot of things and it should work better for you.

The biggest change is the support for foreign languages.  We had a developer in Spain want the Settings UI do be in Spanish, so the team worked hard the last few days to add that support.   Now you can add any language by setting the string.xml.  As you add other languages, please share it with us so the rest of the community can benefit too!

We also started documenting more in JavaDoc based on feedback from the community.  The APIs will be easier to implement but we'd love to get feedback on items you need more information on, so please feel free to email us on that.

Here are other changes we made too.
- change notification default
- rss task refactored
- broadcast START and END
- fix re-enable at the end of the task
- restartAll : removed the wait param

So go download the new SDK and take advantages of the SDK.

http://hub.buzzbox.com/android-sdk/download

If you have ideas or suggestions, please contact me too at anu@buzzbox.com.

Thanks,
Anu, Roberto & Walter

Free Android Open Source RSS Reader App

We are moving forward quickly at BuzzBox with our SDK.  There have had many downloads and we want to encourage this further, so we have open sourced a simple RSS Reader App.  So if you have a RSS feed, you can has a custom app in a snap that has notifications and even a task bar.

http://hub.buzzbox.com/android-sdk/demoapp

This is a very simple open source app that uses 3 parts of the BuzzBox SDK:

• Integrated RSS Parser
• Notifications Settings
• Notifications Log

So the app is a simple webview of a website, the current example uses Google News.  It has a background task that checks the RSS feed for a new entry and then gives a notifications when a new entry is posted so the users can come back and not miss anything.  The Notifications Settings provides ways for users to control the notifications and the Notifications Log lets them be sure their battery isn't wasted.  We recommend having both for your users.

This project is hosted on Google Code, so browse the source code there and start playing with it.

Please give us feedback and let us know what more is needed.

We have more things coming up soon.

Anu, Roberto & Walter

New BuzzBox Notification SDK

Hi Everyone!!

We launched the BuzzBox Notification SDK quietly 2 weeks ago and now we are going more public, so feel free to spread the word.  The BuzzBox SDK is a pivot from when we were doing the BuzzBox News app.  We realized that the value in the News App was the notifications, so that is why we pivoted to enable other developers.  Mobclix noted that notifications are a great way to get happier users (2.7x retention), more visits (+228% opened) and more engagement (+103% session times).

The new purpose of BuzzBox is to make the Notification System in Android better and to encourage all apps to have notifications.  We have a launched simple Android Notification SDK right now that makes it more comfortable for developers to add notifications.  It's free, so please try it out and give us feedback.  http://hub.buzzbox.com.   The advantages of the BuzzBox SDK include

· Fast Setup: In less than 10min, get notifications running

· Modular Architecture: Add or remove parts that work for you

· Actionable Analytics: Find problems or optimize your notifications based on real-time data


The SDK currently consists of a standardized Notification UI, advanced Scheduler API, easier Notification API and, most importantly, Notification Analytics.  The SDK enables app-side notifications so it doesn’t require any server side code so the implementation costs are less.  The developer needs to just write a Background Task that tests when a notification should be sent to the user or not.  The Settings UI gives the user control to disable notifications, the frequency of checking, etc, and is consistent across different apps therefore the user has full control and will be more comfortable with notifications.  The real-time analytics provide the developer metrics based on cohort curves to understand if there are problems and how to optimize the notifications.  Also, the SDK is flexible so the developer can remove modules as their app grows.



We are going to be adding more features and wanted to see what developers want next. We think the notifications in Android can be enhanced and made better so all apps can get opened more often & be more valuable to end users. Lets make Android better!

Please check it out and feel free to email me anu@buzzbox.com with comments and thoughts.
Thanks
Anu, Roberto & Walter