I was crossing wires – talking about full Gmail push in terms of mail syncing / fetching method. Thus far Google have enabled this for Contacts and Calendar, but not email.

All the dialogs / popups I've seen so far offer 'Close' or 'View' – but I would imagine you're right that this may be accessible for devs and there may be other choices as appropriate for other apps once we finally start seeing a few more come out with push enabled.

I am fine with the alerts not taking you straight to the alerting app, but rather giving you a quick choice to go to them or just close the alert.

I haven't looked that deeply into push yet but doesn't the dialog notification option provide some choice of what to do in response to the notification (which should be programmatically accessible for customization)? Other than that, I think they would have to add a new notification type that actually wakes up the application explicitly and pass the notification to the app for it to handle it. Maybe we'll see it in Push 2.0.

Though, I would imagine it would still ask you before doing so (which would just bring us back to the dialog notification type). Besides Skype, I don't think people would appreciate being forcefully taken out of the application they were running because they received a notification that needs to be handled.

Doesn't gmail already support the push protocol in IMAP? Or are you specifically referring to seeing the other types of notifications rather than the standard Mail App badge?

I have been using a pre-release beta, and helping beta test the push-enabled upcoming version.

Push Gmail – oh yes, you and me and many, many others I think. 🙂

Facebook already updates the badge when you have a new message but it's not real time. If I get a badge update I would love for it to go away when I check the message on the computer.

I want a news apps with push rules. I can choose categories and enter keywords.

I always forget about new movies. I want to know when a new trailer is released or it's in the theater.

Fedex package delivery notifications for the small business owner.

ATT lets me set rules for my bill. i.e. I reach my text message limit.

A google/yahoo-type questions apps and i get notified with responses

When a stock reaches a certain point.

a careerbuilder-type of notification instead of just email. I may be watching for postings at a certain company and want instant notification.

paypal receipt of payment

Joe – I hope your impression proves to be the case, but not sure it will …

My only issue is — these could all be done NOW with text messages from online services that do NOT require apps. I was under the impression that push could activate an app that could then do something — i.e. a notification comes from Skype that a call is coming in, so the app wakes up and starts ringing. Or an IM program gets a notification of an incoming message, wakes up, and takes action (maybe a "I'm not at the phone right now" message if so configured).

"What's on TV" should notify me of shows I like coming on soon.