Abstract: A service broker system is presented for mediating events or messages to be sent to or received from a plurality of applications to control service interaction and to provide service blending in a communications system. The service broker system includes steplet functional components that determine a desired mediation for feature interaction or service blending associated with an event or message, along with a message manager component with a dispatcher for the steplet functional components, where the message manager creates and maintains a unique message object for a received request message. A user and end point data manager component is provided to obtain user data and endpoint data and to bind attribute data to a user ID associated with a current service session, and a session context component for binding attribute data to session ID associated with the current service session.

Abstract: A personal information manager computer program for storing names, addresses, telephone numbers and the like for personal and business contacts includes a capability for delivering geographic information in response to user requests. The personal information manager provides a display which includes one or more fields for entering or selecting contact information. The display also includes a number of buttons for requesting different types of geographic information, such as maps, directions, weather and yellow pages information. When the user clicks on one of the buttons, the personal information manager utilizes an address or other location identifier associated with the contact name to format a request to a geographic information server. The server uses the location identifier to retrieve the appropriate geographic information for that location, and sends the information to the personal information manager for display.

Abstract: Using a server system in accordance with the invention, a user and his/her companions can share information on the World Wide Web (WWW). The server system allocates a memory space for storing information particular to the user. This user memory space is associated with the user's login identification (ID) provided to the server system during the user login. Web information obtained by the user from the server system, or a representation of such information, is stored in the user memory space. In sharing the web information, the user's companions need to log onto the server system separately using the user's login ID. The server system then provides the companions with the web information based on the information currently stored in the memory space associated with the user's login ID provided by the companions.