Patent ID: 7571228

Claim:
A method for managing contact information for use in a peer-to-peer system, the method comprising: storing contact information in a contact store on one or more peer computing systems associated with a user entity, the contact store including a plurality of data structures wherein each data structure of the plurality of data structures corresponds to a different other entity of a plurality of other entities, and wherein the content information in the each data structure includes: a secure unique identifier for the different other entity, a human readable alias for the different other entity, and an indication of at least one property of the different other entity, including at least one of an indication of an authorization of the user entity to monitor the at least one property of the different other entity or an indication of an authorization of the different other entity to monitor at least one property of the user entity, wherein: the at least one property of a given entity includes presence information and at least one of capability information or objects information; the presence information of the given entity includes a presence state of the given entity corresponding to an ability of the given entity to communicate with another given entity; the capability information of the given entity includes at least one of: an indication of a capability of a configuration of a computing system of the given entity to execute a particular software application, an indication of a presence of a particular hardware component on the computing system of the given entity, or a real-time capability of the given entity with respect to a currently executing software application; and the objects information of the given entity includes at least one of: a data object, a file, a structure, a picture, a sound, a description, a meta-data, a name-value pair, information specific to the currently executing software application, or real-time information; modifying the content information in the contact store to indicate a first set of the plurality of other entities to which presence information of the user entity is to be transmitted by the one or more peer computing systems associated with the user entity to peer computing systems associated with the first set of the plurality of other entities; and modifying the content information in the contact store to indicate a second set of the plurality of other entities to which presence information of the second set of the plurality of other entities is to be received by the one or more peer computing systems associated with the user entity from peer computing systems associated with the second set of the plurality of other entities; wherein the first set of the plurality of other entities is capable of being different than the second set of the plurality of other entities.