PureMVC: SendNotification vs. NotifyObservers
PureMVC has two ways to dispatch a Notification. A "note" for short, is like a Flex Event but that's another story. So what's the difference? The main difference is that sendNotifiaction builds the note and sends it at the same time. It's arguments are the same as Notification. notifyObservers is perfect for when you already have a notification constructed or you have a custom implementation of notification.
sendNotification can be called from a proxy or mediator.I may have this wrong, but I don't think you can do sendNotification from a command, and I'm not sure exactly why. So if you need to dispatch an event from Command, I guess that's another use for facade.notifyObservers. You can send notifications from command, mediator, or proxy.
notifyObservers(new Notification("SomeNotificationName"));
VS
sendNotification("SomeNotificationName")
NotifyObservers can be called from the facade and other than the constructor argument, pretty much works the same way. 