I know there’s somebody reading this that obsessively refreshes Twitter, waiting either to abate that sense of lonliness they feel deep inside, or to find out if the Web 2.0 hipster celebrity they love @replied them back. I mean, I’d never do that…

Luckily with OS 3.0′s Push Notification feature, you can now be updated as to when you actually have someone who cares enough about you to respond to your, “I can’t believe Marvel ruined another one of my favorite character” posts. I’ve tested three options you might be interested in. The good news: they work as advertised. They will ping your iPhone when you have a mention or DM. What I’m gonna focus on is their quirks and caveats, of which there are a few.

Pushing Tweets

First up, Polar Bear Farm’s newest entry in the “Overly Generic iPhone App Name” contest, Tweet Push. The huge catch with Tweet Push is how much it costs. When I first saw it in the app store, I was shocked to see it only going for a buck. Then I read the description and found that it’s subscription based. They’re taking advantage of in-app purchasing, and requiring that you buy credits to keep your push notifications coming. A dollar only gets you 30 days of use. You can have notifications for any number of accounts, but they each require their own set of credits. I can see that they need a constant flow of income to support the servers they’re using, but how many people are going to pay that much for Twitter notifications. The upswing is that you MIGHT get better support and feature updates, but there’s no way to know. Other Polar Bear Farm apps haven’t seem that much in the way of feature updates however. Your continued support will get you timeline updates every two minutes if you’re that lonely. If it weren’t for the price, I’d be completely satisfied with Tweet Push.

Pushing Outside The Box

Second in the lineup is Boxcar. It’s essentially the same thing as Tweet Push, only that it will only cost you a one-time fee of $1.99. I do wonder if they’ll be able to sustain their servers without constant income. Although, I have a feeling Twitter will start doing its own push stuff before that happens. Another “selling point” of Boxcar is their DM viewer. Instead of opening pushed DMs in your own Twitter app like they do with mentions (Tweetie or Twitterrific), they open inside Boxcar, and you can view/reply in an iChat-like interface. I don’t like it though, and would like the option to open in my preferred Twitter app.

Update: (July 15th: The Boxcar developer has just informed me that an update has been submitted to Apple that allows you to open DMs in your favorite Twitter app, not just in Boxcar.)

Prowling and Pushing

Last app I looked at is Prowl. Prowl doesn’t track your Twitter account. It instead takes Growl notifications and spits them out to your phone. This opens up all sorts of possibilities. I’ve got Adium, Tweetie Mac, Mail, and Transmission all sending their Growl messages to Prowl’s servers, which hit my phone. You can tell Growl to only send stuff to the Prowl servers after a certain lenght of idle time. If I haven’t touched my Mac in 15 minutes, Growl dings my iPhone. Another nice touch is that the Prowl app will display recent notifications even after clicking past them, in the iPhone app. Prowl is not geared for Twitter specifically however, and won’t open your Twitter app for you. As for price, Prowl is a one time cost of $3. If you’re not going to have a Mac at home running all the time though, you’re not gonna get any updates. So you need to keep that in mind.

Brandon Knows Best

My advice, if you’ve got a Mac at home that you leave on all the time, Prowl gives you a lot of flexibility and won’t cost you much. If you don’t have that option, I’m gonna have to say that Boxcar is probably your best bet. It’s cheaper than Tweet Push and pretty much has the same feature set. Just wish they had the option to open your own Twitter app for DMs. I really like Tweet Push, and if it was five dollars for a year of credits, I’d stick with it, but Polar Bear Farms refuses to compete on price, and aren’t giving you anything for your extra cash.