A method of operating a computer system comprising: providing the computer system with documents from diverse applications in respective formats unique to the respective applications; causing the computer system to automatically, without user interaction and without requiring a user to designate directory structures or other pre-imposed document categorizations structures, store the provided documents as a time-ordered main stream of documents associated with respective automatically generated time indicators; said time-ordered main stream being unbounded to thereby accommodate documents associated with time indicators related to past, present and future times; said time-ordered main stream requiring no fixed beginning or end and being maintained and being selectively retrievable and searchable by the computer system; said computer system maintaining the main stream live and responsive to subsequent events by automatically incorporating therein new documents as provided to the computer system while maintaining the thus expanded main stream time-ordered; providing selected search criteria; causing said computer system to search said time-ordered main stream according to said search criteria and use search results to create a time-ordered substream of documents from the main time-ordered stream; further causing said computer system to maintain said substream live and responsive to subsequent events by automatically incorporating therein new document provided to the computer system that meet the search criteria while maintaining the thus expanded substream time-ordered; displaying at least selected portion of the live main stream or substream on computer display means as a display reflecting the time-ordered nature thereof; automatically showing on the display means a display of a glance view of a displayed document in response to touching with a cursor a screen area associated with the document; said glance view being an abbreviated version of the document and indicative of content thereof; and said showing of the glance view occurring essentially instantaneously in response to said touching with the cursor of the screen area associated with the document. view more

A method which organizes each data unit received by or generated by a computer system, comprising the steps of: generating a main stream of data units and at least one substream, the main stream for receiving each data unit received by or generated by the computer system, and each substream for containing data units only from the main stream; receiving data units from other computer systems; generating data units in the computer system; selecting a timestamp to identify each data unit; associating each data unit with at least one chronological indicator having the respective timestamp; including each data unit according to the timestamp in the respective chronological indicator in at least the main stream; and maintaining at least the main stream and the substreams as persistent streams. view more

The method of claim 13, wherein each timestamp is selected from the group consisting of: past, present, and future times.

The method of claim 13, wherein each data unit includes textual data, video data, audio data and/or multimedia data.

A method of operating a computer system comprising: providing the computer system with documents in respective formats according to respective different applications through which the provided documents are generated or modified, which formats differ from one of the document to another for at least some of said provided documents, said provided documents being delivered to the computer system or generated by the computer system; storing at least some of the documents provided to the computer system in computer storage; said computer system being configured to automatically generate and store in computer storage respective representations related to the documents provided thereto, thereby forming a main collection of document representations; said computer automatically generating and storing said main collection of document representations without requiring a user to designate a directory structure, a physical location for storage of document representations or corresponding documents, or another pre-imposed document categorization structure for each of said document representations or documents; said automatically generated and stored document representations being in a consistent format despite differences in format from one to another of the documents corresponding thereto; said automatically generated and stored representations of said documents including respective automatically generated time indicators associated with the documents corresponding to said representations; said automatically generated and stored representations of said documents further including respective automatically generated information relating the document representation to the respective documents provided to and stored in said computer system; said automatically generated and stored main collection of document representations being unbounded in time and size and being configured to include documents associated with time indicators related to future times as well as to past and present times; said automatically generated and stored main collection of document representations requiring no fixed beginning or end and being non-transitory and selectively searchable by the computer system; providing selected search criteria; causing said computer system to perform a first search of at least said main collection of document representations according to selected first search criteria, to provide first search results, and to utilize said first search results to generate a first sub-collection of document representations related to a respective sub-collection of the documents provided to the computer system; selectively causing the computer system to display on a computer screen graphical depictions of only a first portion of said first sub-collection of document representations generated by utilizing said first search results, said first portion corresponding to only a portion of the documents provided to and stored in the computer system; said first portion of said first document sub-collection of document representations corresponding to a multi-document portion of the documents provided to and stored in said computer system; said computer system being configured to maintain at least one of said the main collection of document representations and said first sub-collection of document automatically responsive to events subsequent to the providing of said first search results such that additional document representations corresponding to additional documents provided to the computer system subsequent to an initial display of said first portion of the first sub-collection of document representations and meeting said selected search criteria are automatically included in a subsequent display of graphical depictions of one or more portions of said first sub-collection of document representations; said additional document representations also including automatically generated respective time indicators associated with the documents subsequently provided to the computer system; automatically showing on the computer screen a display of a glance view of a displayed document depiction while continuing to show on the screen plural displayed graphical depictions of respective plural document representations; said glance view being an abbreviated version of the document corresponding to the graphical depiction and being indicative of content thereof; and said showing of the glance view occurring in response to a user designating a displayed document representation by interacting with a screen area currently associated with the graphical depiction, without requiring the user to click on the designated screen area in order to enable such showing of the glance view. view more