Patent ID: 8510305

Claim:
A file management machine to perform file management operations associated with a plurality of unsorted files through a user action utilizing an icon palette, the file management machine comprising: a first computer configured as a file management server adapted to communicate through an electronic communications network with a plurality of remotely located user computers associated with a plurality of users and configured as user computers, each user computer having a first display device associated therewith and being remote from the file management server, the file management server having at least a processor and a tangible memory; and a computer program operable on the file management server and stored in the memory, the computer program comprising a set of instructions that, when executed by the file management server, cause the file management server to perform operations comprising: displaying the icon palette to one or more users on one or more of the remotely located user computers, the icon palette having a palette boundary and including icons representing the plurality of predetermined categories representing notable events in a life of the user, assigning one of the plurality of unsorted files to at least one of the plurality of predetermined categories responsive to user action whereby dragging and dropping one of the plurality of unsorted files across a boundary of a selected one of the icons and onto the selected icon on the icon palette causes the file management server to execute the operations of: extracting a copy of the file from a memory element associated with the one or more of the remotely located user computers to a memory element associated with the file management server through the electronic communications network, and establishing a relation between the file and the respective predetermined category represented by the selected icon; prompting the user to fill out one or more questionnaires associated with the file responsive to the user action of dragging and dropping the file; specifying through the one or more questionnaires the file for inclusion in a slide show of randomized files; and displaying the slide show of randomized files comprising a subset of files randomly selected from a category of files specified for inclusion on a second display device located remote from the first display device responsive to user criteria; and wherein the user criteria for the slide show of randomized files includes a list of categories from which to draw files, a number of files to display, a start date of the files, an end date for the files, a duration to display the files, and a number of repetitions before selecting new files so that the user can tailor the randomized slide show for an audience.