Hello HN,<p>We just recently launched our product, Beacon.
Beacon is a hosted service for real-time browser messaging using WebSockets (with optional long-poll fallback for older browsers).
It removes the troubles of hosting, developing, debugging your own Comet solution. We sort out the browser compatibility issues, so developers don't have to.<p>Features:
* Hosted Comet service with WebSocket support
* Cross-browser compatible clients for all major browsers (including iPhone and Android)
* Easy to embed, plain HTML/JS
* Uses a plain REST+JSON API
* Scalable and hosted on Amazon EC2
* No monthly fees, only pay for what you use<p>As everything on the web becomes "real-time", we think a service like this is really helpful.
Perfect complement to PaaS-services like Google App Engine and Heroku.<p>Feedback from you HN readers would be very much appreciated. What are your thoughts and what could be made better?
As Beacon still is in beta, you can sign-up for free and try it out.<p>http://beaconpush.com<p>Thanks,
Carl over at beaconpush.com
Looks like a pretty cool product, especially for those who want to add on small real-time features to their application but don't want to have to deal with evented servers/browser support/etc. I started looking into doing something very similar about a year ago based on having those exact needs actually (the project was eventually scrapped).<p>- The cost is listed as per million messages - what happens if I deliver 900,000 messages, what am I charged (if anything)?<p>- Care to share any details about your infrastructure?<p>- Have you thought about writing (and open-sourcing) a simple demo app, such as a chat room, to give people an idea of how everything works together?
There are a number of similar services available and this is certainly something that should become commonly used over the next few months and years.<p>Other services are PusherApp, PubNub, Kwwika, Hookbox and WebSync on demand. I'm sure that more services will also pop-up over the next few years.<p>If you don't want to use a service you can always download, install and maintain your own comet server - but the whole point in a service such as this is that it removes the pain of doing it.<p>I've also heard rumours that Google App Engine will be adding native support for this. I believe Google already use the technology for things like the real-time news JavaScript API.