Notification Center Tips

If you just got a new iPhone, iPod touch, or iPad then you've also got Notification Center. It's Apple's attempt to bring order and sanity to the myriad alarms, alerts, messages, calls, announcements, and game challenges that flood our daily lives. But first you may need to bring order and sanity to Notification Center.

While its main purpose is to organize and provide you with alerts, Notification Center also contains widgets to provide additional, glance-able information. Currently, that includes the Weather and Stocks widgets. If the default content isn't what you want, you can easily change the weather and stock information shown in the widgets. If you don't need them, you can remove one or both, add them back later, or simply change their positions within Notification Center,

Notification Center alerts you to everything that's happening on your iPhone, iPod touch, or iPad using a combination of banners, popups, badges, and sounds/vibrations. That's great if it's something really important like an alarm, appointment, or message. But when every app and game on your iPhone starts blinking, beeping, and buzzing at you, and lighting up your Lock screen, notification quickly turns into interruption. When everything is urgent, nothing is. Luckily, Notification Center also lets you turn off those banners, popups, badges, and sounds on an app-by-app basis, so you get to decide what's important enough to get your attention. That's right, serenity -- and sanity! -- can be yours again in just a few simple steps.

New to iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch and iOS 5 and wondering how to configure Notification Center so you get the alerts you need but not the interruptions you don't? Luckily, you can choose between 3 different alert styles, from in-your-face popups to subtle banners to none at all. Follow along and we'll show you how!