App Notifications Whack-a-mole!! It’s a game that has to be played for a quiet life…

You'll be familiar with 'Whack-a-mole', a fairground game where you have to bash moles that 'pop up' with a mallet. As the game progresses, more and more moles appear, adding difficulty. All of which is brought to mind by app notifications on the modern smartphone. It's a real issue. Especially when starting out with a new phone (as opposed to cloning your old one, Apple-style, which often restores your settings, helpfully), every single application you install has its own ideas of what it wants to 'push' at you multiple times of day. Install 50 apps (a common average) and you are almost literally drowning in notifications, banners, toasts, and so on. The average phone user tends to roll with all this and simply accept the deluge of notifications as a fact of life, watching "Scar213 has liked your reply" or "eBay thinks you'll like this new plastic widget, 5% off" or "Bargain Promotions has emailed you with an ultra-exclusive...