notifications

SAN FRANCISCO -- Apple announced the next version of Mac OS X today at the keynote for WWDC 2013. Named Mavericks, Mac OS X 10.9 brings more iOS features into the fold along with other tweaks including iBooks, Apple Maps, Finder Tabs, and a number of other time-saving enhancements.

Finder Tabs The new Finder Tabs work much in the same way they do in Safari. A plus sign button on the right lets you open a new tab, and you can drag and drop tabs just like in a Web browser. You could have one tab for AirDrop and … Read more

The new Gmail features a tabbed interface that sorts e-mail into Primary, Social, Promotions, Updates, and Forums. While this does make your in-box look a bit tidier, it can make the transition to the new style frustrating when it comes e-mail alerts.

Thankfully, you can set alerts for each category, and even disable them for others. When you get an alert on your Android device, you'll know what kind of e-mail you're receiving, and whether you need to read it right now.

Before you set the individual alerts, you need to make sure that notifications for your Gmail … Read more

Google continues to slowly build Google Now into its services. It made the data-rich Now-styled notifications available through an advanced option setting in Chrome for Mac on Thursday, following basic implementation in Chrome for Windows and Chrome OS earlier this year.

You can activate Google Now notifications in Chrome for Mac by typing chrome://flags into your address bar, scrolling down to the Enable Rich Notifications, and changing the setting to Enable. The setting is limited to the most unstable of the browser's builds, Chrome Canary. Canary will only work on OS X 10.6 and newer.

Google Now … Read more

The notification panel in the Samsung Galaxy Note 2 is a convenient feature that allows you to quickly toggle key settings, like Bluetooth, GPS, Airplane mode, and so on. If your Galaxy Note 2 has been updated to 4.1.2 Jelly Bean, you can now customize the notification panel, except on the AT&T variant. If you have an AT&T Galaxy Note 2, we have third party app suggestions for you at the end of this post.

To customize the notification panel, go to Settings > Display > Notification panel. You'll see one check box … Read more

Apple released on Tuesday a small update to its Apple Store app for the iPhone. The update added the ability to add your wireless account to the app and receive an alert once your line is eligible for an upgrade.

Adding your account to receive upgrade alerts only takes a few seconds. Before you add your account, you'll need to know the last four digits of the account holder's Social Security number, the billing ZIP code, and the account password. At least this was the information I needed for a Verizon account; your experience may vary.

Need to talk with a friend but don't want to waste precious time on Facebook? This nifty app can alert you when they sign on. Facebook Online Notifications works well overall, but you may find it to be a drain on your battery.

In our tests, it seemed like the app was only able to tell if someone was online if they had their chat on. While most Facebook users leave it on by default, you'll still have some who have it turned off, so you could miss some of your circle when they get on the site. … Read more

When you receive a notification in Apple's Notification Center for Mountain Lion, the system will use the built-in "Basso" sound. If you do not want this sound to play whenever you receive a notification, then you have a couple of options.

The first is to disable the sound completely, which can be done on a per-application basis in the Notifications system preferences. Simply select an application and then uncheck the "Play sound when receiving notifications" option, which should silence it.

Unfortunately this is a relatively limited option and one that requires you to change it … Read more

Even if you take away the little red alert icons, flashing title bars, or beeping chat boxes, Facebook can be a huge distraction. This may not always matter, but disabling some of these notifications can help keep you on track later if you don't want to close the tab.

Disabling sound notifications can be done in just a few steps:

Step 1: Open the Settings menu in the top-right-hand corner of your Facebook page.

Step 2: Click on the Notifications option in the menu on the left-hand side. In the subsection "How You Get Notifications," click the … Read more

You can now control which Foursquare check-ins will trigger an alert on your iPhone. Previously, you were able only to turn alerts on or off for a particular Foursquare friend, and that's still the case for Android and BB10 users. With the latest update to the Foursquare app, version 5.4.3, you'll be able to assign a contact to one of three different notifications categories: Off, Nearby, Always.

When set to Off you'll never receive an alert for that contact. Nearby will work similarly to the way check-in notifications have in the past, and Always will … Read more