by Dan Gesser
Congratulations to Rohi Zacharia, the winner of Xtify’s Motorola Xoom giveaway contest! Rohi’s use of Xtify’s free push notification platform for his Android app, TDU 2 Stats, is an incredibly interesting example of how developers can use Xtify’s services to meet the specific needs of their applications - Rohi’s app is a social tool for players of an XBOX game, not a mobile game.
Rohi describes TDU 2 Stats as a social media platform for players of the popular XBOX game “Test Drive Unlimited 2.” Initially, Rohi’s TDU 2 Stats app was designed to supply game maps for the driving courses in the game (modeled after Hawaiian island Oahu and Spanish island Ibiza) and to offer insights into the different cars that players can race in the game. Aware of the growing community of game players, Rohi wanted to connect players via mobile device. Enter Xtify.
Rohi realized that he could use Xtify’s push notifications to connect members of the community playing the game in real time. He describes his solution as a “twitter-like” application, where drivers discover and find other drivers they want to follow, and get notified via push notification when those players come online to play. Followers can jump onto their XBOX’s together when they know that a specific driver they want to play against is online. Additionally, Rohi uses Xtify push notifications to alert app users when players send direct messages to one another, strengthening an existing community. Upon implementing Xtify in his application, Rohi received enthusiastic feedback from his application users - TDU 2 Stats app users continue to love being instantly notified when other players come online and alerts about messages waiting to be read in the app.
“One of the things I really liked about Xtify,” Rohi said, “was that it is straight-forward, there’s lots of support, and it was up-and-running pretty quick.” For Rohi, the decision to integrate Xtify was rooted in the platform’s ability to enable push notifications “without having to manage a lot of the messaging system.” Once Rohi made the decision to integrate Xtify, all he needed to focus on was where and how to best use push notifications to support his app users.
Looking to the future, Rohi plans to develop many more applications for Android with Xtify integrations. He plans to implement Xtify’s location triggered push notifications into some of his up-and-coming applications, and will continue to add new features for his TDU 2 users. Be sure to check out Rohi’s applications in the Android market at https://market.android.com/developer?pub=GoRohi, which, thanks to Xtify, he can now test using a new Motorola Xoom tablet!
