Patent ID: 7089497

Claim:
A method in a portable computer for providing information about a context that is modeled with multiple context attributes, the method comprising: receiving from each of multiple sources an indication of an ability to supply values for at least one of the context attributes of the modeled context; and for each of multiple clients, receiving an indication of a desire to receive information of interest; when at least one source is determined to have the ability to supply the indicated information of interest, retrieving information from at least one of those sources and sending the retrieved information to the client, the sent information including a value of a context attribute corresponding to the indicated information of interest and additional information specific to that context attribute value that describes that context attribute value; and when none of the sources have the ability to supply the indicated information of interest, determining one or more resources of other accessible computers with which the indicated information of interest can be obtained; obtaining the indicated information of interest with the determined resources; and sending the obtained information to the client.