New documents are simply identified by date and time. In a prototype, documents are displayed as pages stacked like an infinite hand of playing cards, with the top left portion of each page exposed. Selecting a document brings it into view for reading or editing. Users can also rely on a powerful search tool to sort through the stream. Documents identified in searches, or substreams, also appear in chronological order.
People remember when something happened.
Dr. Freeman has put most of the 22,000 documents he's created in the past few years on the Lifestreams system. This has helped him quickly locate such information as a newspaper article about Lifestreams requested by a reporter. Now he wants to bring a commercial version of Lifestreams to a software store near you. He's helped set up Lifestreams Inc., and expects the company to offer a retail version of the software within two years. To some people, of course, a lengthy time line seems far more cumbersome than the familiar desktop.