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

The computer system of claim 1, wherein said means for receiving further comprises means for receiving data units from a client computer.

The computer system according to claim 1, further comprising: means for displaying alternative versions of the content of the data units.

A computer system according to claim 1 further comprising: means for archiving a data unit associated with a timestamp older than a specified time point while retaining the respective chronological indicator and/or a data unit having a respective alternative version of the content of the archived data unit. view more

The computer system of claim 1, wherein the computer program further comprises: means for operating on any of the streams using a set of operations selected by a user.

The computer system of claim 1 further comprising: means to generate substreams from existing substreams.

A computer system as in claim 1, further comprising: means for generating a data unit comprising an alternative version of the content of another data unit; and means for associating the alternative version data unit with the chronological indicator of the another data unit. view more

A computer system for organizing each data unit received by or generated by the computer system, comprising: means for 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; means for associating each data unit with at least one chronological indicator having a respective timestamp which identifies the data unit; means for including each data unit according to the timestamp in a respective chronological indicator in the main stream; means for maintaining the main stream and the substreams as a persistent streams; means for representing one or more data units of a selected stream on a display device as document representations, each document representation including the timestamp of the respective data unit and the order of appearance of each data representation on the display device determined by the timestamp of the respective data unit; means for selecting which data units are represented on the display device by selecting one of the document representations and displaying document representations corresponding to data units having timestamps within a range of a timepoint; and means for selecting one or more of the document representations with a pointing device so that the data units represented by the selected document representations are further displayed with a second document representation comprising an alternative version of the content of the respective data unit. view more

A computer system as in claim 25, wherein the document representations form a visual stream having a three-dimensional effect.

A computer system as in claim 26, wherein the three-dimensional effect further comprises a perspective view.

A computer system as in claim 25, wherein the alternative version is an abbreviated version.

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