Two great tastes that got great together. Growl has been around forever and supports numerous third-party app notifications. Mountain Lion Notification Center is new yet it delivers OS-level integration and elegance. With Growl 2, you can now seamlessly have the best of both worlds.

Growl 2 ($3.99) has been the go-to notification system on the Mac for years. Rather than fold in the face of direct competition from Apple’s Notification Center, the developers have stepped up their game and made their product compatible:

• General
– Adds support for OS X notification center in 10.8
– Adds in support for Prowl and Boxcar services as action displays
– Rollup has better idle detection
– Growl is now sandboxed

• Preferences
– The ON/OFF switch throughout Growl should be easier to understand now

• Displays
– Speech now introduces greater control
– Separates Action displays from Visual displays
– Music Video can now left and right justify text
– Fixes height problems for multi line notifications in Music Video
– Nano can now display in multiple locations, left, center and right
– Added an SoundAction display
– Added a way to not have any visual notifications

• Bug fixes: High CPU issue, crashing issues, shortcuts can be reset

Now, when Transmission, Handbrake and YouTube to MP3 finish a task, for example, Growl tells me through Mountain Lion Notification Center. It all ties neatly and nicely into what Apple’s doing.

Awesome, really awesome.

Related posts:
— What’s new OS X 10.8.2
— iTunes Visualizers: SoundSpectrum updates G-Force, Aeon
— Dozens of Free HD Wallpapers for OS X Mountain Lion
— How to: Disable Notification Center in OS X Mountain Lion
— YouTube to MP3: How to download and convert music from YouTube