12. Using Push Notifications

The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place.

—George Bernard Shaw

This chapter provides you with an introduction to push notifications and their implementation on Windows Phone 7 devices. Push notifications are a facility that allow servers hosted publicly on the Internet (or “in the cloud” as people like to call it these days) to send messages directly to applications installed on mobile devices, oftentimes even when those applications are not currently running or active.