The Spot Blog

Michael Heilemann of K2 fame recently released a jQuery script called Humanized Messages that implements an idea by Humanized Software. It is a notification system that displays notices in the middle of the screen for a short time until the mouse is moved, at which point they fade away. Demo here.

Upon seeing it, my first thought was "I don't see how this is any less obtrusive than any notification other than a javascript alert box", and my second thought was "this would make a really cool visualization!" Set up a machine just to show off to visitors and every time a new user registers or a member creates a new post, flash a message up on the screen for a few seconds before fading away. If we're going to be a Web 2.0 startup, we at least need some bling, right?

Update: Here's a Script.aculo.us version.