August 20th, 2012Top StoryMake a Smarter Notification System for Your Phone or Tablet with PushoverBy Adam Dachis No offense, but your phone's notification system sucks. With a clever app called Pushover, you can create your own custom notification system that's a heck of a lot smarter, so your phone only bothers you with notifications you want, when you want them. Pushover is a service on the web and app on your phone or tablet that acts as a gateway for the notifications that matter to you. It can alert you about practically anything, including job postings, if it's about to rain, emails from important people, or even if a motion sensor is activated in your home—and it can do it all on a schedule, so you don't receive notifications at times you'd rather not receive them. Below, we'll take a look at how Pushover works, walk through setting up sample notifications, then take a quick look at how you can do even more with Pushover using custom code. What's Wrong with Your Phone's Current Notification SystemIn this post, we're going to use Pushover to fix a few problems:
Now that you've got a sense for what Pushover can do, let's set it up. Step One: Install Pushover and Get Your Account Set UpIt's really easy to get started with Pushover, but you'll want to have a few things in order before you do. Here's what you'll need:
Once you've got everything together, there's a little more setup you need to do in order to get started. Just follow these steps: Consult the image above for an example of the sections mentioned below.
Step Two: Configure Your Custom NotificationsNow that Pushover can send notifications to your phone, let's set up what those notifications will be. Of all the services capable of sending notifications through Pushover, none is more powerful than IFTTT. IFTTT stands for if this then that and is a free service that connects with tons of other services on the web to find information and react to it. Working in conjunction with Pushover, IFTTT can send notifications to your phone based on a variety of events. Just follow these steps to set it up:
Set Up Pushover Notifications With IFTTTNow that you've set up the Pushover channel on IFTTT, let's set up some recipes. A recipe on IFTTT is just a task that watches for a certain condition and then carries out an action. For our purposes in this post, the action is always going to send a notification through Pushover. All you have to decide is the first part—what information you want IFTTT to acquire. Here's how you create a new recipe. Let's practice by making a recipe that notifies you every time it's going to rain:
You're done! Now you'll see your new recipe appear in the My Recipes section of your IFTTT account. That recipe is pretty cool, but there are a ton more you can use. You'll want to explore your options and create notifications that work well for you, but here are a few that we like to get you started. Leave Yourself Voice NotesActivate the phone channel on IFTT and you can send voice notes to yourself. Just call from your mobile number, record a message, and an MP3 of that message will be pushed to any mobile devices you want via Pushover. Get Notified of Urgent Gmail MessagesPerhaps you don't want to get notified of every email you receive, but rather only hear about the ones you consider urgent. Create a filter in Gmail that labels messages with certain subjects or senders with "urgent" and use this recipe. IFTTT will catch all of those messages and notify you on your phone with no need to hear about the other messages you don't care about. Get Notified of New Jobs on CraigslistLooking for a new job? Don't want to miss the chance to apply? You can get a notification every time a job in a specific category is posted to Craigslist in your area. You'll need to edit this recipe a bit to include your local Craigslist listings and the job search terms that apply to you, but that's as simple as searching Craigslist and copying the URL into IFTTT when setting up this recipe. If you're a Flash developer in Los Angeles looking for work, however, you can leave this recipe unedited. Get Notified When a WeMo Motion Sensor Is TriggeredIf you've got a Belkin WeMo Motion Sensor you can receive a notification every time it's triggered. This is useful for rolling your own silent security system in your house, or even just detecting when the dog jumps up on the kitchen counter to grab a bagel when you're not looking. The WeMo will detect the motion, tell IFTTT, IFTTT will tell Pushover, and Pushover will tell you. Find Out When Someone Adds a File to Your DropboxIf you have people contributing files to your Dropbox public folder now and again, you might want to know when it happens. You can set up IFTTT to use Pushover to notify you with this simple recipe. Know When You're Tagged in a Facebook PhotoLike knowing when you get tagged in a Facebook photo, or worried about your friends tagging you in something stupid? This recipe will notify you as soon as it happens so you can check it out. Push YouTube Videos to Your MobileSometimes you're on your computer and find a YouTube video you want to watch, but you're on your way out the door and don't have time. With this recipe, just mark that video as a favorite and its URL will be pushed to your phone as a notification. These are just a few examples of what you can do with IFTTT and Pushover. Be sure to explore IFTTT for several more possibilities. Set Up Pushover Notifications With Third-Party AppsCreating custom notifications with IFTT provides you with tons of options, but there's even more you can do with other third-party desktop and webapps. Pushover already works with a handful of options like Adium (OS X instant messaging client), Sick Beard (Usenet and BitTorrent download software), the FitBit (fitness/health monitor), and any email app. The setup process is a little different for each app, so we're not going to go over every single one, but let's take a look at a few to get you acquainted. Email GatewayPushover has an email gateway that converts emails you send to your specific user key email address (that you noted in step one) to notifications for your devices. Using it is very simple. All you have to do is send an email to Your-User-Key@api.pushover.net. If you want to send to a specific device, just append that device's name to the end of your API key with the + sign (e.g. You-User-Key+DeviceName@api.pushover.net). The email gateway may seem a little limited at first glance, but there's actually a ton of things you can do with it if you're up for a little programming. We'll discuss those a little more in the next step. AdiumAdium is a popular instant messaging application for the Mac, and it can forward instant messages you receive to your mobile. You probably don't want every message sent along, but if you have an IM account that exists solely to alert you or you just want to be notified whenever someone tries to send you a file you have that option. Here's how to connect Adium to Pushover:
That's it! Now Adium will work with Pushover. You can repeat these steps to setup as many types of notifications as you want. Sick BeardSick Beard is a wonderful application that searches for and downloads media via BitTorrent and Usenet automatically. You can read more about what it does and how to set it up here, but if you're already using Sick Beard you'll be happy to know it has native Pushover support. Here's how to set it up:
With that small configuration, you'll always know what Sickbeard is up to. This is just a small selection of apps you can set up with Pushover. Be sure to check out the full list for more options. Step Three (Optional): Extend Pushover Even Further With Custom CodePushover can do a lot without the need to get your hands dirty writing code, but if you want to take it further if you have a few basic coding skills (or care to acquire them). While the API is full-featured and provides you with multiple ways to create your own Pushover-enabled apps, we're going to look at a much simpler method: your user key email address. In case you missed it in steps one and two, your user key email address is your-user-key followed by@api.pushover.net (e.g. hSkgVIBIUP9TjIxp9TnUQZXelf066Z@api.pushover.net). You can also notify a specific device by appending +DeviceName to your user key (hSkgVIBIUP9TjIxp9TnUQZXelf066Z+AwesomePad@api.pushover.net). To make good use of this email gateway that Pushover provides, you need a scripting language that can send emails. While there are plenty of options and you can choose whichever you prefer, we're going to use PHP as an example because of its simplicity. PHP contains a very simple mail function that will send an email whenever it runs. We're going to create a simple script that sends a static notification every time the script is accessed. To get started, open up a programming text editor of your choice and follow these steps, then create a PHP document by adding the following code: All the code we write is going to go in the empty middle space inside of the PHP tag we just created. In that middle space, add the following If you don't want to type this all up yourself, you can download a template here. Once the code is done you just need to change a few things. You'll see three variables in the code called $to, $subject, and $message. Each of them are set equal to a value, and those values should look familiar. For starters, $to is set to Your-User-Key@api.pushover.net. You'll want to change that to your actual user key email address. With $subject and $message, just change their values (Notification Subject and Notification Message, respectively) to the subject and message you want pushed to your mobile device. When you're done, save the script and upload it to a web host that supports PHP (here are some options). Now whenever you visit that script on the web server by entering its URL in your web browser, you'll receive the notification you created. You can use this exact script to allow people to ping you when you're needed. This is, of course, a pretty limited script, but it's the basis for doing a lot more with Pushover. If you explore PHP further, you can create applications that send custom messages or call a version of that mailing script under certain circumstances. There are many, many possibilities to explore, but this should be enough to get you started. When you exhaust the possibilities of your user key email address, there's plenty you can do with the Pushover API. Enjoy your new custom notifications! |
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Monday, August 20, 2012
Make a Smarter Notification System for Your Phone or Tablet with Pushover
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