1. In a computer network, a method comprising, receiving a notification directed to a client from an information source, the notification regularized according to a notification schema representing properties of a subscription to the information source including message handling preferences, and determining whether the user should receive the notification based on user preference data and context data, the user preference data regularized according to a preferences schema, and if so, determining a selected device to receive the notification and sending the notification to the selected device, wherein the notification is received at an information agent of the client and the notification schema and the preferences schema are used by the information agent to provide normalized handling of the notification received from the information source by processing or modifying initial values for properties represented by the notification schema based on the user preference data represented by the preferences schema.