We've been informed by the developer behind Unification that Nuget support is now available for developers. Nuget is a tool present in Microsoft Visual Studio for developers to easily manage SDKs, libraries and other elements. Liquid Daffodil has also opened up identity management across all supported platforms - Windows Phone 7 & 8, Windows 8 and the web. Developers can now access authentication and identity elements of Unification to get a "universal, user-specific" Microsoft Id across all platforms. So, why is this a big deal?
This essentially means any developer can now install Unification from Visual Studio and authenticate all versions of their apps across all Microsoft platforms. Pretty neat and user-friendly. It's still required to contact Liquid Daffodil requesting access to send notifications and use the service, but not for the identity features. Nuget support enables developers to simply add the elements in and get cracking with updates and documentation readily available.
The service has gone through testing and is now out in the wild, but there's still room for more support from the Windows Phone developer community. With consumers still calling for a unified notification service for the Windows ecosystem from Microsoft, Unification continues to fill the gap before Redmond comes out with a native solution. It's not a perfect centre (everyone would prefer a native hub), but it's definitely worth checking out.
If you've got an app or few published on the Windows Phone and Windows stores and are (or have been) interested in the notification centre, we strongly urge you to look into implementing support, which is now easier than before. Be sure to get in touch with Liquid Daffodil should you require further details.
As a closing note, the Unification service itself is growing steadily with over 2 million notifications being processed each and every week. If we see more support from developers with apps taking advantage of what's on offer, we can definitely see usage increase in the future.
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