Ubuntu Touch to include "libITCH"

You're in an important meeting, your phone is in your bag, so you have it on silent, and you'd hate to have it vibrating all over the table. How will you ever know that you have incoming notifications?

Enter libITCH. libitch

This revolutionary library for human-interaction allows your phone to use you, the user as a notification centre. No more vibrating phone in your bag, or noisy bells just to tell you that John and Susie cancelled dinner at your house.

How does it work?

libITCH allows your phone to connect with wearable devices, such as smart watches, which in turn are outfitted with electrical or chemical "triggers". These triggers cause an itching sensation, either at the point of contact, or on various points of the body, depending on the urgency and type of the notification. Users can customize their ITCH settings, so that one particular kind of itch is not forced on everyone. This says a lot for the direction Canonical has been taking in recent months.

elementary OS may also include libITCH

Speaking in an Ekiga call this afternoon, Cassidy James of the elementary OS team, confirmed that they are currently considering including libITCH or a fork, called libmultiITCH in the next version of elementary OS, code named Isis. As to why, he says:

"While I won't confirm or deny the rumours that we are going mobile in Isis, I can confirm that we want to bring the user and the operating system a lot closer together, and libITCH seems like a great way to begin moving in this direction. I think we could also go on to include libold-factory if the developers of the old factory scents get the odours tweaked enough to fit our Human Interaction Guidelines. We want a system that doesn't need to be tweaked. You should be able to get just the right itch and smell in the OTB [sic] experience."

What do you think?

Is libITCH just a little too much, too soon? Should we maybe wait a few years? If you ask me, with Facebook taking over Occulus Rift and Google beginning work on Google Glass for pets, there couldn't be a better time than now.

Let us know what you think in the comments.

And before you forget... it's that time of year ;)