title: Push notifications for desktop apps?
body: <p>Push notifications for mobile apps allow for some cool possibilities in terms of user experience. Are similar services available for desktop apps, such as those written in Java or C#?</p>
  
  <p>My goal is to let the program take actions based on notifications from a server. If push notifications aren't available, what are some workarounds I could do? Have the program schedule itself as a task (either a cron job, or scheduled task, or w/e), then check the server for updates? Keeping the program running in the background at all times wouldn't be an option, because updates would be too infrequent. </p>