Love feeds? Read this
 

How to get an amazing feed reader for Maemo 5?

The official and 100% open source RSS Feed Reader will be ported. Anybody interested joining the development? Or building an exciting alternative?

http://wiki.maemo.org/Task:RSS_Feed_reader

If there is someone willing to push this we might consider to support the project as a Fremantle Star (((the selection of projects is still ongoing. Some candidates have been contacted already and others will be contacted soon))).

Very personal opinions:

There seems to be something still unsolved in the way local apps are offering and managing feeds nowadays. Probably we need a very creative approach? For instance what about an app + desktop plugin offering covering the features of RSS Feed Reader + Mauku + GPodder?

We are interested in hearing disruptive proposals (Firefox extensions, Qt based...) as much as pure evolutive getting involved in the development of the official RSS Feed Reader.

Re: RSS Feed Reader for Maemo 5
 

Is it possible to change the title of the thread visible in the index? Clever me, I didn't realize how easy is to confuse it with spam. I have edited the title of the first post but apparently it's not enough.

Re: Love feeds? Read this
 

A mod/admin/Reggie will have to do it. It's one of my biggest vBulletin hates :).

Re: Love feeds? Read this
 

nearest thing to something new RSS wise I've seen in maemo was done by crashanddie, http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=FuDFqr1_i3M

shame hes gone quiet, i'll give him a buzz and see if he wants to build from it.

Re: Love feeds? Read this
 

And don't forget the search. Rebuild index...

Re: RSS Feed Reader for Maemo 5
 

I really like the idea of Mauku as a feed reader. In fact I already tried to bend it into one by using the feed aggregation feature of Jaiku. But of course all the feeds in your Jaiku account show up with your own photo and name next to it, so it's a bit confusing and not really practical as a feed reader.

But combining Mauku with a web based aggregator would be a really interesting option. You wouldn't have to put a lot of feed handling logic into the app itself, and putting all the fetching and checking on a server that with high and reliable banwith makes sense, too.

The problem with Mauku as a feed reader might be that it doesn't handle HTML and embedded media very well - or at all. This is where a browser based reader comes in. My feeling is that the browsing experience needs to improve significantly from what we now have in Diablo in order to be able to compete with native apps such as Mauku. For example, I think that this is an area where kinetic scolling actually makes a lot of sense.

The other option to a pure-browser based solution, or a firefox-addon as you suggested, is to embed the browser into a native app. PenguinTV does that, and I've tried it too with a little app I wrote. Unfortunately, embedding the mozilla engine in a python app is not very easy on maemo, as using gtkmozembed gives you an non-hildonized browser component without on-screen keyboard support or drag-to-scroll. Providing better support for embedding a fully hildonized browser component into apps written in high level languages such as python would be really valuable, too.

Re: Love feeds? Read this
 

As a user I wouldn't mind having a desktop plugin showing n entries of 140 characters max from social media (Twitter, Jaiku, FB, etc), traditional rss/atom feeds and pod/videocasts. All mixed, whatever are the latest.

The info shown for each entry is Source - 140 chars - type of media - thumbnail if any.

Clicking the entry shows/plays the full content (offline if a wlan was available)

There is an OK button next to each entry. Clicking it makes the entry disappear and the next most recent pops up immediately.

There is a Reply button for those entries giving a chance to comment in the source.

something like that.

Re: Love feeds? Read this
 

Following with that desktop plugin, each entry would show the number of comments ifnapplicable. A 'hot' background in the entry would tell me that such piece of blogosphere is bursting in digg / delicious / technorati... as we speak.

Re: Love feeds? Read this
 

I have way too many feeds to be practical for Mauku ... I would like a way to sync / work with Google Reader effectively though and a homescreen applet that let me look into the latest would be quite nice. Too bad Google really does not seem to have an API for Reader

Re: Love feeds? Read this
 

Inezha lets you "import" Google Reader into the default chat app.

Result: a "real-time" river of Google Reader via SMS + all of the native chat alerts.

Re: Love feeds? Read this
 

That's exactly what I don't want. I have over 1000 feeds in google reader and I would want to be able to choose what alerts I get rather than see everything in real time. As if I don't already have an issue with ADD! ;) Ideally we need an IMAP like solution for feed reading (newsgator offers something close, but is closed) and GR still only works with itself.

The main feed reader applet would be great if it picked up and was synced (read status) of my feeds from Google. That way you'd get a relatively non-invasive way to see the current stuff and an easy way to click through and read what mattered in realtime.

Re: Love feeds? Read this
 

Syncing is indeed important.

Managing properly thousands of feeds is a complex exercise that is probably out of scope for a desktop plugin and perhaps even to a whole mobile device. I would be happy if our preferred feed reader would handle efficiently the newbie case (discovering the potential of feeds) and the vast majority of users handling no more than 50 feeds (although some of them can be really noisy).

Still, imagine I could use tags to filter/promote entries to the desktop plugins e.g don't push entries with "Paris Hilton" or make sticky entries with "Maemo".

I also like Jaiku's principle of making easy to subscribe to a whole bunch of stuff and then be selective when unsubscribing (for instance unsubscribe to last.fm feed from my dearest colleagues).

Re: Love feeds? Read this
 

quim,

jaiku is a special case for the feeds, they are on the site itself, we would need interaction with a web browser for arbitrary feeds, which whilst not a major deal would require coordination.

As for handling multiple feeds concurrently, maybe find/create a webservice the kind of subscription/easy interaction model you desire and then simply point the tablet widget/app and desktop app towards your account (much like mauku does).

Isn't all this the kind of thing mauku itself has highlighted for future though?
I have seen Henrik mention building an expanded engine for alternative services.
http://hhedberg.jaiku.com/presence/50028539

Re: Love feeds? Read this
 

What's the relationship between local/online in a device that can be always online?You want video and audio downloaded only when wifi is around so you can enjoy them even if you are offline. Almost the same with pictures.

Microblogging is not a problem, although it would be nice to have a Save Links option when microblogs point to full pagess and/with media.

The advantage of a desktop plugin is the possibility to push the feeds and put the latest automatically in front of me. This is what Mauku does well. My device is almost never in my pocket. When I'm not doing anything with I leave it on the table and look at it when Mauku wakes up the screen.

Re: Love feeds? Read this
 

I want:
A "Preview button" that allows you to view actual article in a frame. Clicking again on that button goes back to RSS view.

Here are some advantages:

- You can see and post comments right from app.
- You can read truncated rss feeds entirely.
- You don't lose time opening a new window or tab in order to go on the website and see the article in its original context.

Preview can be opened by clicking on article's title, preview button, or typing Shift-V

for more details...

Re: Love feeds? Read this
 

Syncing is very important. Most people have at least a computer, a NIT, and some kind of phone (sometimes also with this function).

I have RSS feeds in screen on a server. I have RSS feeds in Opera on my laptop. I could get RSS feeds on my tablet and phone, but I bet this would make me lunatic. Because some already overlap.

If you have IMAP, it is synced. PIM (or equiv), sync is important. Bookmarks? OK, point there, but back in the days Netscape had LDAP support for this purpose. IMO this is important for RSS as well. You can have the same RSS feed on several devices, but what kind of use is it to know that some are unread when this isn't synchronized between devices? This is not a NIT problem, just a generic problem.

Another problem of RSS is signal-to-noise. Some websites solve this by using categories and allowing the user to sign up on specific categories. Or, they allow the user to specify the categories they're interested in in their profile hence they have a personalized start page. But then there is this issue of too many RSS feeds. So it has to be intelligently sorted. This isn't easy. And that is why RSS is not something to use without serious hacking on the data. I subscribe to a newsletter of a website instead of their RSS feed and get daily the news on a specific time in a nice HTML-free (chosen by me) e-mail.

A simple example of hacking the data: ignoring based on keywords in title or body. In an IM client, e-mail client, or IRC client you can do this. In an RSS reader you can't.

Re: Love feeds? Read this
 

Personally, it would be nice if the RSS reader were a browser-based app, that used locally run AJAX to sync and manage feed reading right from the device. You'd get fewer additional apps to need to be used, instant browser integration, and no need to sync because you'd already be in a browser (and one of those settings would be to sync with 'x' RSS account or RSS site(s)).

Of course, do so such things would mean that the JS performance of microB (or whatever the next browser for the IT would be) would have to be much improved.

After that, I would assume that developing a widget would be just a matter of some Python play, since the data would already be there to be gleaned from the browser.

Re: Love feeds? Read this
 

dkwatts and ARJWright go in the direction of a browser add-on. There are some candidates in the Firefox arena. This would be an interesting path since we have a Mozilla based browser and the Mozilla guys seem to be targeting most mobile platforms (including S60). Perhaps that code running on Maemo 5 could be quite cross-platform?

allameswereout, syncing with an online service of your choice might be the easiest path? You could have all your devices syncing there, instead of trying to make them sync between them without Internet.

Re: Love feeds? Read this
 

The obvious solution: you have a server get all the RSS feeds, perform any filtering required, and redistribute them to clients with some protocol. And there's no standard for that protocol yet...

My suggestion: AFAICS, IMAP is quite suitable as the redistribution protocol. Obviously, a good email program is not necessarily a good feed-reader, but the protocol can be the same, and mail-centric clients will still work in a pinch. Thoughts? (Am I missing something this protocol needs that IMAP doesn't support?)

Re: Love feeds? Read this
 

1) Grab RSS from various selected feeds every X minutes
2) Apply blacklist or whitelist filters on feeds (which?)
3a) Export the filtered RSS (or combine them) and host them (for example on Ovi) as RSS (or, instead of RSS, possibly as HTML + e.g. JS on say Ovi)
3b) Keep track of previous send and e-mail each item seperate (seperate account from main account in case of POP3, or e-mail client & server supports IMAP). Or even SMS them for a small fee (some services for this already exist).
3c) Same as 3a, with or without blacklist but with high priority whitelist. If whitelist matches, e-mail (or SMS) the item instead of RSS because we're positive the user is very interested in this item.

Re: Love feeds? Read this
 

Maybe this is a stupid question but, why the dependency to a browser? I see the advantages but it also adds complexity.

With a feed reader the most important is to read the feeds. :)

1. Gimme the headline and link to source.
2. Perhaps some excerpt too.
3. Probably the picture(s) as well.
4. Download the downloadable media as long as there is wlan available.
5. Full content? Well, yes although I can perhaps wait or just download via data connection if it's really urgent.
6. Real HTML formatting while offline? Well, If I really want the real page I can visit it with the real browser.

Re: Love feeds? Read this
 

I understand the direction things are going for the Maemo 5 device. But I hope that the 'being online' tagline does not manifest itself into every nook and cranny of the services that the Maemo 5 device provides.

The offline experience is a big usage case for me at least. It will also weigh in heavily for any purchase I make in the tablet arena in the future. Not everyone is lucky enough to have ultra-cheap data rates via 3G. In Canada, the duopoly that is our telecom market (Bell Canada and Rogers) make data plans very expensive.

OK back on topic now - Aren't we talking about a customized iGoogle or something like that? I would add calendar appointments, to do lists, new mail notifications, and forum posts that meet certain criteria (e.g. keywords, author, threads I started) into the mix as well. If you are thinking out of the box, then I would want to know everything that could possibly affect me to be displayed in one location. Currently, I have to look at my RSS reader, gPodder, mnotify, calendar, to do, the forums, etc to get a snapshot of the things that interest me or that I have to act upon. There must be some way to efficiently present all this information to a user?!

Re: Love feeds? Read this
 

On a sidenote, on S60 there is a nice program which allows one to prioritize connections when multiple are available and decide to disconnect either one if one with higher priority is available. This is useful for corporate networks, but also when roaming and able to access WiFi hotspots. I have not tried this with something like Devicescape yet though.

Maybe you want the feader to decide what you (probably) like, or allow the user to create such filters. If the user has multiple feeds the need for this increases. Its a power user feature so to speak.

The dependancy on the browser woud exist because Web 2.0/AJAX is the current hype, but also the most used platform. Such platforms integrate well and add tons of services. Which device doesn't have a browser? That is what Yahoo/Live/Google/Ovi is all about. (Although the possibility to jump off the platform doesn't seem to be important to users yet. I'd say, if you have guts and believe in your platform, you allow the user this easily because you know they won't leave anyway. It is a bit like believing in quality of your open source code.) That first. Second, you can easily make this in PHP without some kind of new protocol. You just allow the user to manage their RSS feeds with advanced filtering. I would say allow them to provide feedback or suggestions for filters as well.

One could allow the user to grab the output on browser or RSS. But then this isn't synced either. Once you're leaving the browser paradigm (geeks...) it isn't a good abstraction layer.

I know this issue from other protocols as well. SIP, for example. You can phone from any account with which you logged in, but the last one who logged in will receive the phone call. In the console IRC client Irssi one can run a module called Irssi-proxy. A user can connect with any IRC client (from any platform) to this proxy, and once connected, the user can read/write to the connection with the server from both ways. I like this model. However, it still doesn't actually by definition provide offline synchronisation because often these models lack proper history support.

Works like this: Server <-> Daemon <-> Clients. The server or content provider is what we have now, they speak a protocol and standard (e.g. RSS over HTTP). The daemon understands these protocols and abstracts it, does some things with it e.g. blacklist, whitelist, greylist (tagging/marking) filtering/prioritising. Think of it as a firewall. It also knows what is read and not read and allows to map (this is part of the filtering; could be more advanced). Then the clients connect and are always synced. End result? Something like IMAP. The provider (e.g. IMAP service provider) can run this daemon, even as part of the protocol or service, but also customer/user can run their own. Corporate users or users who care about privacy might prefer the latter. If you take something like voicemail, which is inherently expensive and inefficient while synchronisation isn't important, you might not want to give the customer this power for financial reasons but that is a different story.

Re: Love feeds? Read this
 

OK - thinking about this further. What about a "OMWeather-style" tabbed display? You can have tabs for news, mail, podcasts, forums, calendar, todo,etc. I'll also throw IM's, VoIP Voicemails into the mix. Something like this would make viewing your life a heck of a lot easier, at least for me.

Re: Love feeds? Read this
 

I have some ideas for presenting feeds from numerous sources.
the graffiti wall works nicely for some things, but theres more required.

Re: Love feeds? Read this
 

I'm with Gary, guys... I don't care about filtering and what not, just let me browse and read smoothly, simply, and stylishly ;)

Re: Love feeds? Read this
 

(Applets? Status Bar/Panels?)

That is what the NIT (or a smartphone) is for and about for some users :) hence importance of WWAN like HS*PA. Problem is now the UI. Difficult really. On S60 it is easy to switch back and forth, and even make home screen informative. That is w/o touch (soon with, learn from them as they learn from you). While one can learn from iPhone as well they do not have multi tasking there. And, multi tasking on S60 is cumbersome because user doesn't see what is running (no taskbar).

How to take note of new events? Provide different options (including vibrate IMO). Ambient light is powerful too though.

When are they important enough to alert the user and when not What do you want to allow the user to always take note of? And how do you want to present it to the user? The latter is very important. You don't want 200 different style of interfaces, you don't want 200 different ways of using touch screen, you don't want 200 toolkits, you want to give the user some kind of consistency so they don't have to relearn and are familiar with an unexplored program.

Now the other 2 questions. Maybe you'd want to sort this information on a calendar, and go back one day, and see the IMs, todo, podcasts, etc. of that particular day. Maybe you want the user to specify what mode he is in applying filters because the user is working, travelling, at home with partner, at a party, etc. Different situations, different needs, different priorities. Harry is at a party, but is on call for his work. Harry puts off any new information he receives; its on hold. Except his work phone number and colleagues (these are tagged as group). If those phone he is notified with high importance. Sandy is waiting for the bus. The bus is late. Sandy is bored. She sets the profile to bored and watches the news and reads the weather, but not the international news because this would take her too much time. John is drinking a coffee at Starbucks. He wants to finish some eBay transactions, but not see his IM messages on his NIT. He's also like to check the stock market because he got earlier an alert which is always on, notifying him about important changes of one of his important stocks. And so on. This way of interacting is very advanced and complex, but also very intuitive. It takes away the noise the user doesn't want at particular moments. As long as the interface is intuitive to the user while the power user (important customer base of NIT) is not neglected. So it goes further than merely RSS.

Re: Love feeds? Read this
 

Mmm two thoughts:

1. I still want to differentiate between things I can miss (feeds + podcasts + microblogs) from things I better don't miss (email + appointments + ToDo)

2. Presentation in one place doesn't mean that the tool to handle those sources of information should be the same. There are apps and services specializing in email, calendar and tasks. I think it's already complex enough to try to handle the incoming feeds + podcasts + microblogs in one app.

But there is plenty of good ideas in this thread already. Now... who wants to pick this up and work on something? :)

Re: Love feeds? Read this
 

I think there does indeed need to be an "uber-feed reader"--one that can process RSS feeds for text, audio, and video (or combinations thereof). One of my current problems with Canola is that its concept of "podcast" is limited to only audio feeds; I have to switch to Video Center to download a video podcast. (Gpodder seems to try to accommodate both, but the current version still appears horribly slow, and the UI is an assault on the senses).

Having said all that, I think it is a mistake to incorporate Twitter, Jaiku, etc. into such an app. The founders of Identi.ca (and others) are on record as saying treating microblogging sites as blogs was a mistake; people appear to want to use such sites as a new variant of IM. The success of apps like Twirl and users' persistent desire to link Jaiku and Twitter with their IM apps seem to confirm this. While an uberfeed reader should be able to consume microblogging feeds just like any other RSS or Atom feed, not providing a facility to treat microblogs as IM streams would overlook how heavy users of such services (the tech-savvy target market for Maemo devices) actually prefer to work with them.

Re: Love feeds? Read this
 

My thinking is that the browser should already be stout enough to view (parse) XML so that it would just need a new chrome in order to differentiate the RSS "app" from normal browsing.

Developing new chrome takes the idea of separating content/presentation/function a bit further.
- Content being the XML
- Presentation layer being the specific browser chrome
- Function being those actions the chrome does which you numbered above

If you will, taking the "internet" of the Internet Tablet and making the browser stand as a development platform. And then the IT would have that as something to extend even more the community involvement.

I'm not so much in favor of RSS being a separate app because RSS really isn't different from web browsing - speaking funcitonally. The difference is the speed at which one gets information, and then its presentation. All of the actual tech that goes into an RSS reader is already built into a browser, its just a matter of chaning the UI so that its respected as such (IMO).

Re: Love feeds? Read this
 

... which is an interesting idea.

Alright, so what about this first shot:

- Handle efficiently feeds of text, images, audio, video...
- Connect regularly for updates and small transfers.
- Download volumes of data when wlan is available.
- Good integration with browser (and media player?)

All the rest could be considered later or in addition to, as plugins, etc.

About technology selections, one reasonable candidate would be a Mozilla add-on - taking also into account the cross-platform possibilites specially now that the Mozilla Foundation is targetting Maemo, S60, Windows Mobile (and all the desktops, as usual).

In the current Maemo RSS Feed Reader there is at least one showstopper that should be handled in order to bring multimedia feeds: multithread fetching. I wasn't aware of this enhancement request, hidden under a previous vague summary.

Re: Love feeds? Read this
 

Oh god no. Thats how it works on S60Browser. It seems it is assumed that I want to run a web browser, use the bookmarks, and then see my feeds. No. Backwards. I first check RSS and then decide to open the browser. I want my RSS feeds like e-mail (IMAP). Quickly wade through the subject lines. Perhaps click a few. And then maybe save a one, maybe send it to my e-mail for later, or maybe open it in a browser -- if the situations allow it. I can only speak for myself but I assume people want to be able check the news in a glance. If you wanted to check in the way you describe, might as well simply surf to the sites instead of using RSS.

Also, while RSS is distributed over HTTP usually but because its a defined standard the content can be parsed and used for other purposes. Much like a shell or a shell script. Doing this with HTML and JS is possible but is inefficient because 1) requires to download more data 2) bloat / requires heavier application 3) contains noise (banners etc) and potential UI inconsistensies. One can argue the parsing won't be used much on a tablet. Could very well be true. The other arguments still stand though.

Perhaps its better to allow the RSS feeder to be embedded in the browser, but also allow it to run seperate. I saw a demo of Java FX and Google Gears with such function. Very interesting.

Re: Love feeds? Read this
 

Hear, Hear! 3G is great (not in my city), and even EVDO/EDGE isn't available when I'm on a subway underground .... My primary usage is underground, so "live" things (e.g. RSS feeds without content) are pretty useless....

I much prefer the "cache everything locally when you can" model (which is how I use the NIT primarily).

Re: Love feeds? Read this
 

Sure. I just thought that in terms of the interface, it would be useful to have things in one place, leaving the tools that handle them up to the best for that particular task. I also thought a tabbed approach would work well for the various information souces.

Perhaps I'm confusing the presentation (which I care about) with the implementation (which I do not so much). Any improvements in the RSS reader are more than welcome. Thanks for polling the community for thir input!

Re: Love feeds? Read this
 

No!

The user would see first a desktop plugin with the feeds, and could access all his feeds from there. The browser engine would be reused to present the information and process the downloads. The add-on would provide the UI and additional features. At least this is how I understood the benefits to be close to the browser as explained by other people in this thread.

This is the desktop plugin and, as someone said, it could be done with Python or anything.

But I'm here only stirring the waters to see whether someone comes willing to pick this up. The implementation is up to the ones working on it.

Re: Love feeds? Read this
 

Hmm, I misunderstood that part, but I don't have the RSS feeder applet in high regard because it tries to be finger friendly leading to a lot of usage of the home screen. It cannot hold much information while remaining touch friendly, and there is no such thing as going easily back and forth between other forms of I/O such as e-mail.

What I like in S60v3 is that I have all kind of archives of various protocols and can conveniently swap to a different one (say inbox SMS, or e-mail) using the left and right button on dpad. I don't know how to add or remove one of these lists but browsing in this way is convenient. If RSS feeds would be included there, would be great.

My point here is that there is abstraction of the various protocols / information (like Pidgin), _and_ its convenient to quickly browse through the information and allowing the user to use the protocol as close to its full potential without sacrificing the abstraction.

Sacrifices are made. Like you put in example of 3G connection versus WLAN. Taking into account amount of 3G data used allowing user to monitor this is useful.

The way I see it there are 2 modus operandi. One is basic, for quick usage. The user has overview here. It is easy to quickly scan this. The other one is advanced for extended usage, giving a more (or 'the') full experience. As far as I'm concerned the latter is already the web browser visiting the web page with the RSS. OTOH, I'm not taking audio/video much into account.

BTW, we don't know when exactly Fennec will be production quality. From what I read on septembre 19 that'd be 2010.

Re: Love feeds? Read this
 

gPodder makes a nice podcast app. And we're now really getting a fully finger-friendly UI and fast processing in the latest development version. Two things:

* I'd like to keep things separate (Micro-blogging, RSS-News and podcasts) - have many apps that do one thing but do it well
* Have a home screen "new stuff" type of applet that is provided on the tablet by Nokia and that we (the app developers) can "plug in to" and provide items that need the users attention (new podcast episode available, unread text, reply on Twitter, new mail, download finished, new chat messages, changed websites, etc..)

For example, I can imagine having different "severity" levels (rss news might be less urgent than a (personal) reply on twitter) and providing types such as an image/icon, a title and a short description. Maybe have different display styles for different content types. Research a bit, then come up with a nice "new stuff" applet and provide a unified API for it that can then also be used in GNOME on the Linux Desktop.

Re: Love feeds? Read this
 

Indeed, the critical point seems to be more in the home screen than in the actual app(s). The 'What's Up' desktop plugin makes a lot of sense, I need to ask whether someone is working on something like this in the Maemo team.

Ared podcasts the same as feeds? Are Jaiku/Twitter part of the deal or not? Surely different users have different opinions and all of them could be happy with such configurable Whassup desktop plugin.

I imagine it as a tool to Get Things Done in my info-social context. I would probably be happy with 1-10 entries (configurable) like this:

(delete) - MediaTypeIcon - TITLE - SOURCE - (save) - (ok)

delete = Don't see it again, downloads included.
MediaTypeIcon = text, image, audio, video...
save = file all the content in a placed where it won't go easily away.
ok = take this entry out and replace it instantly with a new one.

Edited: of course clicking the title would open the content either cached or online, according to preferences. Clicking the source could send to the prefedrences for managing such source.

Re: Love feeds? Read this
 

+1. I would use that kind of service in Mauku if it were available. We should not try to solve all our problems with only one application but make things better with tighter integration.

Interesting discussion, by the way. Keep going, I am listening... ;)

Re: Love feeds? Read this
 

Exactly. That is why I tried to define modes. These modes could also be defined as 'roaming' besides 'home' or 'work' and could even change something like the theme. Basically, a mode changes the configuration of the OS to something which the user has defined. You can even think about stuff like e-mail settings.

KDE has something like this, and for GNOME there is an unofficial add-on called Mumbles (OSX has Growl). Ubuntu's Mark Shuttleworth wants to define a standard for this in the Freedesktop.org framework but beware of the following: notifications require no action. There are events which require an action and events which don't require action. This what I'm referring to does not require action, and events which do require action (e.g. user input) are excluded.