Patent ID: 8219677

Claim:
A process, comprising the steps of: providing a processor and a user interface module at a consumer terminal having an associated user, wherein the processor is programmed to maintain a plurality of watcher applications; receiving a plurality of assertions at the consumer terminal; maintaining a database of the received assertions at the consumer terminal for each of the watcher applications, wherein each entry in the database names a file or directory, a list of specified attributes of an object, a specified watching frequency, and a pointer to a message and action associated with failure of the assertion; evaluating each of the received assertions with a corresponding watcher application by checking that each entry has an asserted status, wherein the evaluation step comprises a comparison of each of the received assertions with the actual state of the environment, by inspecting the internal properties of the consumer terminal and by checking if the received assertions point towards or away from relevance; passing information about any assertion that does not have the asserted status to the user interface module, along with the message and actions associated with the assertion; and presenting information to the user through the user interface module, wherein the information comprises information about the failure of the asserted condition, the relayed associated message, and the recommended response.