New notification system

[Ryan Peters <sloshy45 sbcglobal net>]

I have just installed the latest version of gnome-shell from ricotz's 
PPA, and I found a few rather pleasant surprises along with it:

1) When changing the volume with my volume keys on my keyboard, instead 
of Notify-OSD popping up telling me what it was changed to, I got a 
transparent round-ish square in the slightly-below-the-middle of the 
screen with a volume icon and a bar telling me how high the volume is. 
Very stylish, and I assume that with the rest of Gnome Shell this is 
theme-able with CSS?

2) Now, when I get a libnotify/Notify-OSD popup, it appears at the very 
bottom of the screen along with an icon from the program it comes from 
(in this case, Rhythmbox). It's an interesting change, but since this 
mailing list is here for discussion and feedback, I thought I'd give my 
two cents on how it works so far (yes, I am aware that this is brand new 
and not even close to the final version).

First, having notifications at the bottom of the screen seems a little 
less noticeable than them being on the side or popping down from the top 
bar (and a little less convenient as they cover up the bottom of 
maximized applications, which is not a good idea for someone that uses 
the bottom bar of Firefox a lot). Second, I noticed that if I move my 
mouse to the very bottom of the screen, there's a black-to-transparent 
gradient of sorts where the notifications appear. I assume that's 
planned to be a click-able list of past notifications?

I like how they're displayed compared to Notify-OSD, but their location 
and execution could use a little more brainstorming if you ask me. 
Instead of a hot corner or a hot side as it seems to be now, maybe a 
button on the top bar or under the User Menu in the corner would 
suffice? Well, maybe a hot corner in the top right wouldn't be so bad if 
they appeared right under your user-name.

Anyone else try the new notifications as of yet? What are your thoughts?