Sometimes these are helpful, such as weather updates or chat notifications, but other times they're a pain in the neck, such as software updates or intrusive games urging you to buy upgrades.
With chat, notifications and friend requests in the menu bar and Mac OS X Notification Center, you can stay in touch without having to constantly check in on Facebook.
On Friday night, engineers revised Chromium, the open-source project behind Google's Chrome browser, to include "a skeleton" for a Google Now Chrome implementation that would pop up relevant Google Now information in the browser about traffic, sports scores or the weather, in the same way that email and chat notifications currently appear.
To be clear, this new feature, which Skype is referring to as "active endpoints," is only focused on chat notifications, not phone calls, as you may wish to answer a call on another gadget – like your phone – rather than the device where you were previously Skype chatting, like your computer or tablet, for example.
It also means you get chat notifications that are more tightly integrated into the OS, the ability to jump between multiple Slack teams in one window (as opposed to a separate tab for each team), and neat tricks like the ability to tuck Slack into the task tray until you actually need it.
They do not have every meeting at work disturbed with some inane chat notifications.
Of course, this isn't always the case: "It's when I get lots of group chat notifications that I want to freak out," said 26-year-old events manager, Sara.
Chat notifications off - Will prevent desktop notifications from IM messages within Gmail or Google Talk.
HipChat co-founder Pete Curley told me all about the changes made to both apps, which include a lot of behind-the-scenes improvements focusing on stability and performance, as well as totally new user interfaces that offer things like vertical tab navigation on the Mac for active chats, Notification Center support and more.
The client lets you persistently chat, receive notifications, and read your news feed from your desktop.
