Patent ID: 7634780

Claim:
In a computing environment, a system comprising: a main computer system comprising a principal electronic display device for displaying text and images received to a user, and comprising a program; an auxiliary electronic display device which is secondary to the principal electronic display device and which has reduced display capabilities with respect to the principal electronic display device, and which is configured to display at least one of text or images received from the main computer system to the user, and wherein the auxiliary electronic display device is further configured to cache scheduled notification data for display to the user even when the program is not running; and an auxiliary platform on the main computer system, the auxiliary platform including, a) an application interface that receives calls from the program running on the main computer system, including a call having a set of at least one parameter corresponding to information to communicate to the secondary, auxiliary electronic display device, the information including content for display on the secondary, auxiliary electronic display device, the set of at least one parameter being independent of any particular auxiliary device hardware; and b) a device driver interface that couples the auxiliary platform to a device driver associated with the auxiliary electronic display device, the device driver associated with the auxiliary electronic display device being capable of removing at least some of the content to communicate to the auxiliary electronic display device so as to produce a filtered set of content less than that produced by the computer program for display on the auxiliary electronic display device, wherein the filtered set of content is scheduled notification data; and wherein the auxiliary platform converts the content into a format understood by the device driver.