Notifier
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Martian Notifier watch uses custom vibration patterns to signal what app's bugging you
Martian Watches is back at CES this year, bringing with it a new semi-smartwatch in the company's traditional timepiece style. The Martian Notifier, as it's known, is a slight departure from previous efforts given it drops voice control -- the feature that's previously been the company's "hook" (although you can still remotely trigger Siri or Google Now with the press of a button). The watch keeps all other good stuff common to Martian's range, though, like the small OLED screen for displaying contact names or text messages, and the ability to engage a device's camera shutter remotely, among other things. The Notifier pairs with iOS and Android devices via Bluetooth, and as the name suggests, it's focus is on alerting you to notifications. Rather than just vibrating every time something happens on your phone, though, you can select exactly what will trigger a buzz on your wrist. Furthermore, using the companion app, you can set up vibration patterns, so you know one long buzz and two short buzzes means someone's calling you out on Twitter, for example. Any software that uses the iOS or Android notification back-end will feed into the watch app's settings, so you aren't reliant on this or that app specifically including support. While simple, we think it's actually pretty clever, and doesn't look half bad, which is a bonus. Anyone that's intrigued by the Notifier and its semi-smarts will have to wait until Q2 2014 to pick one up, when Martian will start selling them for around 130 bones. Edgar Alvarez contributed to this report.
Nokia applies for skin-friendly haptic material patent, hints at notification system
If US patent application 20120062371 is to be correctly understood, Nokia has at least thought about a topical haptic notification system. The first claim covers "An apparatus comprising: a material attachable to skin, the material capable of detecting a magnetic field and transferring a perceivable stimulus to the skin, wherein the perceivable stimulus relates to the magnetic field." It then goes on to clarify its relation to telecommunications messages and communications indications. Based on ferromagnetic powder, the material would respond to magnetic fields and vibrate in response. Our guess is that this could be used as a notifier that could be "painted" onto the skin, and although there is mention of the word tattoo, we're hoping that's just part of the required legalese. But alas, until it's granted, it's just a subject of our curious imaginations. Those curious, can read more at the source.[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]
Google adds HTML5 Gmail and Gtalk notifications for the desktop, makes you envy Chrome users
Oh, come on, Google! If you're going to give us desktop notifiers for our favorite email and chat clients, you've got to play nice and let us have them on more than your own browser, right? To be fair to the Chrome maker, it's standardizing the code it's used in its new HTML5 alerts so that other browsers can soon use it too, but as of today, you'll need to use the Google-sanctioned webscape navigator if you want its sweet new pop-ups on your desktop. We gave them a quick try and they're delightfully quick, with Gtalk message alerts updating themselves to the latest one received instead of stacking up and threatening your sanity. Hit the source link to learn how to enable the new notifications.
Google Reader Notifier for Mac OS X
I posted earlier this month of my love for the recently refreshed Google Reader, though for many users it's still missing one key feature: a notification utility for new headlines. Some newsreader apps and services have all sorts of widgets and menubar apps that can notify users of new content in their favorite feeds, and now the new Google Reader has one as well, the Google Reader Notifier (unofficial, not provided by Google). Based on GROSX (which worked on the previous version of Google Reader), this notifier can check your entire Google Reader account for new headlines, or you can give it a specific label to watch. While the Google Reader Notifier it doesn't provide popup notifications like Google's official notifiers, it can display an unread count. One downside to those who aren't quite as RSS obsessed as others is that it can only be set to check at intervals of 5, 10 or 30 minutes - there are no lengthier options like 1 hour, 3 hours, etc. Still, this is a nice utility that shakes hands well with a Google Labs service.Google Reader Notifier is free and available from the developer's site.
Google Notifier for Mac released (formerly Gmail Notifier)
The Gmail Notifier is no more - long live Google Notifier! The search giant has updated their official notifier application for Gmail to include alerts for Google Calendar events - hence the name change. I don't know if this has any effect on whether the Gmail + Growl utility still works, but this is a nice evolution to a handy little app.Thanks Maxim Blinder!
Gmail Notifier does message tooltips
This is certainly a minor tip at best, but I thought it was handy enough for a mention: the official Gmail Notifier does message tooltips, as you can see in my screencap. Hold your mouse over a new message in the list and you'll receive a little tooltip containing the first line or two of the message. Nice.
Gmail Notifier updated, offers opening of Gmail messages
Growl is a utility that, like the drunkenbatman, has become a necessity in my daily work. As far as email is concerned, even though I can't bring myself to ditch Mail.app and Address Book completely due to device synchronization issues, Gmail has certainly found its place in my daily tool-belt as well. To my delight, the email notification utility by the name of Gmail Growl (which we've covered before) has been updated with a slick feature: the ability to click on a Growl message notification to be taken to that specific Gmail message in your favorite browser. The nice part about this is that you can specify which browser to use; you aren't simply limited to the system's default browser - handy, when you consider the fact that Firefox supports all the rich text editing options Gmail has to offer, while Safari is still lagging behind (disclaimer: I don't know if that's a WebKit or a Gmail issue, so don't flame me). Gmail Growl can be had, for free, at the author's site. As usual with great freeware like this, I encourage you to make a donation to help keep great utilities like this alive.[via Hawk Wings]
