This seems to be more of the "distraction culture" of recent times. Everything seems to want to let you know. I'd rather be able to easily ask it to let me know. The majority of time, I don't need to know more than I knew when I set processes in motion in the first place.

That said, I like Mark's approach. But I'd like them to go one better in that direction. Instead of just ephemeral, I'd rather that they not be there at all, unless I ask something to "let me know when it happens."

Want the same sort of effect on a Web page? Check out jGrowl: http://stanlemon.net/projects/jgrowl.html - it's a jQuery plugin I saw recently that seems pretty slick.