is there a way to pass the dashboard location info as parameters to an external content provider?

when I open the dashboard, I want content from one of our other corp applications, and the project 'name' is one of the keys I cna use to get the remote app to generate the portlet content.

and time of day, language of the dashboard, maybe a sub project area, picked from a list..

trying to make it THE place to go.. vs A place to go. (we have too many of those)