I'm surprised at all the absolutes here. I agree with people on blogs and news sites and things like that. Notifications are an awful thing. I immediately think

I'm surprised at all the absolutes here. I agree with people on blogs and news sites and things like that. Notifications are an awful thing. I immediately think less of ablog if it tries to get me to enable them. However, for web apps like calendars and project management and chat they are indispensable. I'm not going to go and check (polling style) my project management software 80 times a day. Which means that if one of my team needs my eye on something the notification makes sue it gets looked at much sooner. My notification popup from Google Calendar has saved my ass many times because it alerted me to an appointment I forgot I had. My personal UI pattern that I like is to put a notification option in the settings area and only turn it on (show the prompt to turn it on) when they specifically ask.