K700i UK Orange desktop feature

I proudly took my recently purchased unbranded and unlocked K700i to a
friend's house to pour scorn on his branded UK Orange unit. This backfired
badly when I saw that not only was the branding relatively unobtrusive but
it had an extremely useful desktop feature not present on my unbranded
version.

There are three icons sitting atop the desktop (in whichever theme you
select; one for SMS messages, one for calls and I don't recall the other
one. When an SMS (or call) is received a line appears adjacent to the icon
giving brief details of the event and an opportunity to use the right
joystick to access the message inbox or wherever.

I searched his phone but couldn't see any user settings for this feature.
Has anyone else seen this, do they know if this is an Orange UK only feature
and if not can I implement it myself?

Many thanks

Ted