Release 1.5.0: Kindle Support

I'm very glad to announce that uniqush supports ADM since version 1.5.0, which means users can use it to push notifications to Amazon Kindle Tablets.

This is the only change in this version and since it changed the user interface, it is considered as a big change. (That's why we are no longer in version 1.4.x). As always, here's the release note.

I would like to share more details and plans in this post.

Kindle was a pain

When I first released uniqush, supporting Android and iOS is a very natural choice. They are popular and share the major market. I considered to support Windows phone soon, but because of lacking of device and environment (I use GNU/Linux only and do not have a copy of Visual Studio), this issue is now marked as "HelpWanted". It is wonderful if we support windows. But lack of windows phone support won't hurt us much.

Kindle, on the other hand, is an exception. It is an android device but Amazon chooses not to add GCM support. Moreover, it has a relatively large user group making it hard to be ignored. Amazon introduced ADM in Dec 2012 making yet another cloud service for developers to push notifications.

The release of ADM makes the idea behind uniqush-push more useful: Big companies create clouds with little mind of compatibility with others. For developers, a unified interface for push notification would be a very useful component. Interestingly, Amazon seems have same idea in mind. Just several weeks ago, Amazon released another service named SNS. What they are doing is quite similar to what uniqush-push is providing (and they charge users for it.)

Supporting ADM fixed the very piece of uniqush-push: Now, we can say that we supports major Android platforms with more confidence.

Chrome apps support is on the way.

Another issue on github asks for support of Chrome apps. I think it would be a very good step for the next release. (This means, we will quickly move to version 1.6.0 if we want to keep the same versioning convention.) I don't need to buy another device to support it (Buying a Kindle Fire HD cost me $159 even if it was on sale.)

Hey, do you remember uniqush-conn?

Yes, I do! And I would like to share some exciting news here: iOS client library is almost done. If you follow the uniqush organization, you may notice that we have a new member: nevo. I know him personally for years and he is a very competitive developer and a real expert in iOS development. Our iOS client library is developed by nevo and is working right now.

So what I'm waiting for? Why not release all the stuff? Well. First, you can always find the code on the uniqush organization. We never hind anything to the public. Secondly, releasing a software means taking responsibility. uniqush-conn would be an important component for our users' system. I have to make sure it works and works well.

Before releasing it, I would like to first write some app and actually eat my own dog food. An IM app will be developed to test the uniqush system as a whole. I will invite my family and friends to use the app. Once it was fully tested, I will release it along with detailed documentation.