As @TuDo's comment indicates (and he can change it to an answer if he likes, in which case I'll remove this answer), you can at least use a standalone minibuffer frame, and you can position it where you like.

One advantage over the default setup is that you have only a single place to look, always, for output messages (echo area) and for input editing (minibuffer).

You could even cause its position to change dynamically - for example, to be close to where the current input focus is.

Library [**One On One**](http://www.emacswiki.org/OneOnOne) can help. Out of the box, it lets you decide where to put the minibuffer frame, but to reposition it dynamically you will need to do a little extra.

(EmacsWiki is currently down, but you can download `oneonone.el` from [MELPA](www.melpa.org) also.)