Patent ID: 8000457

Claim:
An answering machine tool comprising: a communications engine arranged to receive and store a plurality of messages from one or more callers; and a file management engine arranged to: access caller identification data associated with each of the plurality of messages, link a graphical image to the caller identification data associated with each of the plurality of messages, combine the graphical image with a graphical representation of each message of the plurality of messages, and output data to cause rendering of said graphical image and the graphical representation of each message of the plurality of messages on a display concurrently, for each of the one or more callers, the graphical representation of each message having a user-configurable shape, wherein graphical representations of messages received from a single caller, and wherein the graphical representation of a message is automatically deleted when the graphical representation of the message is displayed at a predetermined portion of the display and after a preset time since the message is received, unless the message has been saved are rendered on the display joined to a graphical image representing the single caller.