[joshhepworth]

Ben does a great job of simplifying a host of issues down to just two, but in the end, he seems to end up blaming the user rather than the system for the problems in notification systems (though he does say that the systems aren't as good as people at notifications, which is true to an extent).

The biggest issue I had with the article (besides omitting the "come back to old notifications" problem plaguing some systems) was its overlooking of improvements. Innovation doesn't have to come overnight, and in the mean time, I'd love to have a better system than currently implemented. Even still, there are systems out there that get pretty close to his nirvana. Mobile Notifier for iOS (http://www.flickr.com/photos/piair/5492412910/in/photostream...) still covers up some of the screen (forcing you to take action to access that area of the screen), but it also lets you dismiss a notification with a quick swipe and quickly access all pending notifications.

The biggest praise I can give for the article is it's identification of people as a problem. It's true, we likely want to know more details about more events than in the past. It seems pretty needless all things considered, but why should a system be terrible at meeting our needs? We create the systems to change with our wants, after all.