Dot is a very interesting take on notifications and smart actions. It is literally a physical notification light, but it can do much more than tell you when there’s a new Facebook comment or Twitter retweet. Its main focus is creating location-aware smart system. The Dot system comes complete with a companion application allowing you to control applications, create digital Post-its and more.

A Dot is essentially a Bluetooth beacon that you stick on any surface. As your smartphone gets closer, it can detect the exact distance based upon signal strength, and send a push notification when you get within a certain distance. What’s cool about Dot is that you can program that notification to contain anything, through an app inspired by popular internet recipe-making platform IFTTT.

Outside of contextual notifications, and the ability to open apps and control objects in your smart home based on proximity, each Dot also comes with an embedded color-changing LED, which can provide useful information. Each Dot has a battery life of about 6 months. When it dies, simply replace the coin cell battery with a new one.

The makers have announced that they will add a small button to the Dot if the campaign crosses $50K in backing, when we published this article, it was at $45K, so that too doesn’t seem far away!

Now available for preorder on Kickstarter, an individual Dot is quite reasonably priced at around $20 each, and you get a discount when you order three or more. If push notifications are driving you insane, this seems like a cheap way to give them genuine smarts.