Prowl manages your iPhone push notifications, but it's a Catch…

In a recent post I described how the Lockinfo app recent push notifications on the lock screen of my jailbroken iPhone lists. Lockinfo fixes one of the major weaknesses in the iPhone operating system: the absence of a notification handling system. In the default iOS OS if you get a push notification popup after the other, the new notification will delete the previous one. And there is no way to view notifications recently received. I plan on the to be notified must handling systems on the iPhone, written something like page on Facebook lets you view all your current alerts.

Well, I learned recently to receive another way and manage alerts on iPhone without jailbreak. With a $3-app called prowl you can get notifications similar to iPhone's default push notifications, and you can view and manage within the prowl app. But there is a caveat…

Prowl depends on Growl

The prowl app only works if you have Growl, a free software (Mac / Windows), which receives push notifications from online services like Gmail, Facebook, Twitter and others.

What is prowl is to push your Growl notifications on your computer to your iPhone. Prowl handles notifications well but there's a problem: your computer must be constantly online. So you can receive notifications for a bunch of things but when your computer is sleeping or your ISP will miss the notifications you down because you will not receive growl. This is prowl's Achilles' heel, in my opinion. Despite which will strengthen its prowl app by its dependence on your home or impeded in the Office Internet connection.

I bought prowl in the hope, use it for my alerts and simply turn off iPhone's default push notifications, but apparently the computer will not send notifications to my iPhone when it sleeps (because the WiFi adapter goes to sleep, and therefore no Internet signal).

Prowl may be useful if you home to your work or computer when leaving, but in general I do my computer would like to sleep whenever I use it am. Energy-conscious or budget-minded people who may not like to let you find your computer on all day prowl are somewhat outdated.

If your computer on when you are away from your desk could prowl be useful. But if you carry your laptop in a backpack or is you on standby, then on most of the warnings, at least until your computer are missing is back online, but until then it might be too late.

Prowl notification

Prowl notifies you about events on your computer as a completed download updates for Firefox or its Add-ons and Web services like Twitter, Facebook and foursquare updated. As mentioned above, most require that notifications be your computer online for you sent by Growl to prowl.

Prowl supports certain Web Services, which will send you notifications when your computer is offline, but the list seems however limited to Twitter, Google voice, and USPS updates.

Prowl notifications look like iPhones standard notifications with the only difference that you can see your current notifications listed in the app. The prowl app shows a brief summary of your alerts. This may be sufficient, except that I want to be able to touch my alerts and go directly to the relevant app can't do.

However, you can set certain notifications to certain apps redirect if you get a popup. So, if you receive a notification from Twitter, you can set Echofon app, for example to open it.

Conclusion

If you search a notification handling solution prowl can be useful in certain circumstances, if you're a break at work and want to stay informed of events on your computer such as completed downloads, incoming calls from Skype or Google voice or warnings that your site is down.

Otherwise, it is generally unreliable as a notification to treat the solution because it your computer requires be switched on, send important notifications. Although some Web services notifications will send without the need for an Internet connection to prowl, prowl supports only a limited set of Web services. Also can not push notifications from iPhone apps are not supported by Growl or prowl are sent to prowl and listed in the app.

There is always the option to get the default iPhone push notifications in conjunction with prowl, but unfortunately there is little you can do, to unify all your alerts in a consistent location unless you have a jailbroken iPhone. Prowl is a step in the right direction, but not quite iPhones notification handling it solves.