Patent ID: 8117304

Claim:
A computer-implemented method of processing event notifications, comprising: receiving, at a client device by an executing application that registered interest in receiving at least one event notification, the event notification, wherein the event notification pertains to a message or a status of a different application operable on the client device or of an operating system of the client device, the event notification produced by the different application or the operating system responsive to the message or the status and sent by the producer to an event sink with which the receiving application registered the interest and from which the event notification is received by the receiving application; and rendering the received event notification by the receiving application instead of, or in addition to, rendering the message or the status by a rendering mechanism of the producer of the received event notification, wherein: the receiving application is an instant messaging application; the different application is an email application; the notification indicates that the different application received an inbound email message; and the rendering comprises visually displaying the received event notification in a currently-active chat window of the instant messaging application to indicate that the different application received the inbound email message.