It's almost here. A unified notification center for the entire Windows ecosystem. Unfortunately, this isn't a native feature from Microsoft, but the good news is developer Liquid Daffodil has submitted the Unification apps for approval. What's Unification exactly? It's a notification center for Windows Phone (both 7 and 8) and Windows 8, offering consumers the missing piece of the puzzle for a centralised location displaying missed notifications.
Live Tiles are great, toast notifications are awesome, but there's nowhere for missed notifications to be displayed. Should a Windows Phone owner miss an app notification, it's lost forever. That's until now with Unification. We've looked at the app and service from Liquid Daffodil, following the development progress and boy are we excited for its release. So much so, that our own Windows Phone Central app will be supporting the Unification service.
The general idea is to create a service with an app for each of the supported platforms:
- Windows Phone 7.x
- Windows Phone 8
- Windows 8
These apps act as a notification center, where apps that support the Unification service will be listed alongside all the missed notifications from each one. For apps to work with the service it does require developers to include some code and make everything tick along nicely, but should enough momentum develop once everything goes live by next week, we could well see the birth of something special indeed.
As one can see from the above screenshots, it's a simple, yet efficient way of managing content that requires attention. Yes, a Live Tile is available for the apps. Ever wanted to have all your Twitter notifications in one place with third-party apps and content? This is now possible. A number of apps are already planned to be adding unification support in the future. Here's a list of what's to come:
- Feed Me
- giffgaff
- MeTweets
- Ovivo
- Pepper
- Picit
- Pinsation
- WPCentral (woohoo!)
Check out our quick look at Unification app for Windows Phone 8 in the video below:
We won't build up the hype too much, but from what we've played around with so far, Unification is looking to have the potential to be pretty big. Liquid Daffodil is taking a huge move with this service and if it takes off, we could be looking at a possible insight into how Microsoft could effectively implement its own native feature.
Consumers: We're told Unification will be available for both Windows Phone and Windows 8 in the coming days (currently being certified), so be sure to keep an eye on our feed for the announcement when the app is available. We're almost there, folks. A few more days and everyone will be able to take advantage of the Unification service.
Developers: Do you wish to get involved and participate in the Unification service with your app(s)? Be sure to contact the team at unifyus@liquiddaffodil.com. Liquid Daffodil are after all developers who support Windows and / or Windows Phone. Unification is a free project to participate in (and will continue to be free once the service hits gold and goes live), so we urge you to at least contact them about your app(s).
