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Introducing msgctrl

I've begun working on a new project to solve two problems with notifications:

• Notifications are distributed across devices
• The person is rarely in control of which notifications are received, which are important, and when they are seen (interuptions)

The project's aim is to build a specification, a server and an example client to receive, process and act on notifications from various sources.

The specification details a standardised format for a notification, which is sent to the server (for now) only as JSON. The server exposes an API allowing for registration of accounts, plus the retrieval of notifications.

Important areas covered in the spec include:

• Notifications declare suggested importance levels, which can be trusted (or not) by clients
• Notifications can provide URIs / details of any response that is required
• Notifications can be sent uninvited (just like email) but rules in the server and/or client can accept, reject or quarantine as preferred

Clients can then interact with the API and provide functionality such as automated rules, hiding or prioritising different notifications, etc.

I aim to release more details of the specification and a very early release of the server by the end of this week, when I'll begin work on an example console client to process notifications.

The long-term plan is to build a platform to easily integrate existing services (translating proprietary notifications to msgctrl notifications) but initially I may rely on something like Zapier (have a better idea? Please do let me know! lrb@envs.net)

Stay tuned!