A notification system Gaea would be proud of

By on Oct 26, 2010 at 6:13 AM
Software October 26, 2010

If you are an iPhone user, you definitely know how annoying iOS notifications can get. Android and BlackBerry users have the luxury of a more refined notification system. Software developers at the University of Glasgow, in the UK, have what they think is the next best thing, AudioFeeds. AudioFeeds is a new software that notifies smartphone users through earthly sounds such as water droplets, bubbles, bird-calls and so on. Users listening to music will be spatially aware of the sounds. The ’3D’ sound effect is achieved by phasing the sounds and delivering them to your left and right ear. The developers are convinced that their software can be built into apps relatively easily, providing a relaxing, non-intrusive notification system. The developers are due to showcase their software at a multimedia conference next week. Couple this notification system with some futuristic haptics, and consider us sold!

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  • Brian

    very curious to see how this works

  • bringit

    Me too – but still kind of lame that iPhone still needs apps to help make their notifications managable.

    • bringit

      …or manageable.

      • Apple Fanboy

        Have no fear. IOS 5.0 will have a notification system that stomps the colons out of Apple’s competition. This is how Apple rolls.

        - Sent from my Apple TV Device.

      • blkrabb1t

        Lame comment is lame.

  • sirpaul

    It sounds pretty lame for the most part. I don’t listen to music 24/7, and to get random bird tweets and rain storms coming from my phone would certainly get me a few odd stares. We need better visual notification system (for example…an LED at the top of the phone – genius!!!), not audio-based systems. And a better vibrate, I can barely feel my phone go off when wearing jeans.

  • Paul

    My phone never leaves vibrate, so this is useless (for me).

  • Mj

    This is useless. It’s not the sounds that make iPhone notifications a hassle but how well it it’s delivered. How does this help in any way?

  • Obj_me

    Led is a nice way to go, I especially like the Nexus 1′s trackball and that little SAMOLED strip samsung has added to one of their phones. The Nexus 1 in particular has a really non-intrusive notification system. iOS’ notifications can be a bit annoying at times, which is why I have most of them turned off and really rely on my status bar. It’s unfortunate that you’ll probably never see a LED notification system of some sort on the iPhone as it would be too compromising to their simplistic design principles. Maybe they could bury it under the glass like the proximity sensor though that still might seem out of place.

  • lurch

    “A notification system Gaea would be proud of”

    … if Gaea wasn’t a bunch of made up bologna.

  • sam

    can’t believe that Palm WebOS was not mentioned among better notifications system in a mobile OS. Because it’s the best.

  • dave

    I’m deaf in one ear–so much for “spatial” notifications!!

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