Patent ID: 7523397

Claim:
A method for centrally coordinating and presenting notifications and alerts to a user of a computing device in a uniform and consistent format, where said notifications and alerts can originate from any of a plurality of different sources, said method comprising acts of: (a) receiving a notification or alert from one of the plurality of different sources; (b) as a result of receiving the notification or alert, detecting that a central notification manager is installed but not running, and as a result of detecting that a central notification manager is installed but not running, starting the central notification manager; (c) determining that the received notification or alert has a long temporal value and as a result of determining that received notification or alert has a long temporal value, storing the notification or alert with a long temporal value in a database accessible by a central notification manager, wherein the notification or alert with a long temporal value is generated by at least one of a personal information management program or a business productivity software application, and is not generated or received by a messenger service program, and not storing received notifications or alerts that have a limited temporal value, received by a messenger service program in the database accessible by the central notification manager; (d) displaying an indication of the notification or alert at the central notification manager; and (e) displaying, at the central notification manager, an indication of subsequent notifications or alerts received from the plurality of different sources.