In an information rich environment, people access a multitude of content such as news, weather, stock reports, and data from a variety of information sources.
People increasingly communicate via services such as email, fax, and telephony.
A partial solution to information overload is to give people timely and filtered information, most relevant to the context of their current tasks. Seamless access to personal information and communication services should be made available to users in a passive and unobtrusive manner, based on their level of attention and interruptability. Simple devices such as pagers provide a convenient form of alerting users to remote information. Such devices offer an extremely low-bandwidth for communication and the interface does not afford rich delivery of information content. Telephones are ubiquitous and cellular services offer mobility.