We’ve used SMS notifications for some time to notify me when something breaks on one of the servers we manage/look after. SMS is good, but here’s something better.
While I was wondering how many credits I have left with Kapow, Peter suggested we use Growl and iPhone push notifications instead. A quick investigation showed we can…. (Growl notifications are push and free… which appeals to me).
A quick read, found a command line Python library (http://github.com/jacobb/prowlpy/blob/master/example.py) and obviously the Prowl application on the iphone. A one off charge of £1.79, and free notifications for life.
As a further bonus, Growl notifications can have a classification (and associated sound/vibrate on the phone) so I can have e.g. ones from super-important-customer waking me up in the middle of the night with a siren noise, and others silent. Finally, the Prowl client supports the notion of ‘quiet hours’ when it can suppress noises.
Prowl Growl FTW!
Now I just have to avoid using DBus + Pidgin to get notifications all the time…
( http://developer.pidgin.im/wiki/DbusHowto )
Oh, and a Growl notification can contain up to 10,000 characters. Seems a bit excessive, but a viable means to distribute substantial content.