Patent ID: 8156121

Claim:
A file management machine to perform a process of assigning one of a plurality of unsorted files to at least one of a plurality of predetermined categories through a user action utilizing an icon palette and a process of prompting a user to fill out one or more questionnaires associated with the file responsive to the user action, 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 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 the operations of: 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, the one or more questionnaires including album data, a journal entry, event information, and display information, and displaying one or more albums of files according to pre-selected formats on a display device to one or more users for the respective predetermined category, the one or more albums of files being organized on the display device based upon questionnaire data associated with the respective files.