Feedair Friend streamlines your mobile notifications

Feedair is launching its Feedair Friend today, which streamlines and personalizes various notifications you get on your smartphone.

Available as either a small light-emitting diode (LED) display device or a smartphone app, Feedair Friend keeps you in touch with all of the messages that you get from social networks, news outlets, financial institutions, retailers, healthcare providers and more. Feedair Friend takes those streams and lets you customize how you receive them by time, sender, content, and device.

The San Jose, Calif.-based company unveiled the product at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.

“The Feedair Friend meets a real need for today’s media-swamped consumers,” said Simon Milner, Feedair chief executive and founder. “Digital distractions and overload are common among CE enthusiasts, so we set out to simplify and organize media updates in an at-a-glance, cohesive manner.”

The hardware device has a digital ticker display and WiFi connectivity. You can sit it in front of your desk, powered via an AC adapter or universal serial bus plug. Updates are streamed to the small display in ticker style.

The software product works with iOS (iPhone, iPad) or Android phones. You can manage information flow via Vidgets (visual widgets) from the deck of your smartphone. The Feedair Vidget bar sorts messages into 20 different categories such as productivity, social networking, retail loyalty, healthcare, financial services, personal interests and hobbies. You can also view the ticker updates on the smartphone app.

The Feedair Friend and Feedair Vidget Bar will be available on the company’s web site in March 2012 for $50 or so. The company was formed in 2009 and has 12 employees. It is privately funded. Milner, the inventor of the Plug Computer, started the company with a vision to simplify consumer electronics.

For more news out of this week’s Consumer Electronics Show, be sure to check out VentureBeat’s live coverage from CES 2012.