Techniques for electronic aggregation of information

A method, comprising:

• providing a presentation surface having multiple presentation tiles;
• receiving a control directive to associate a content file with a presentation tile;
• identifying a content file type for the content file;
• retrieving a portion of content from the content file based on the content file type using a content selection algorithm having a set of defined rules pertaining to types of information to retrieve from the content file;
• generating multiple versions of a tile object based on the set of defined rules, the multiple versions of the tile object pertaining to different combinations of sub-portions of the same content portion;
• receiving a control directive to select one of the versions of the tile object as a selected tile object;
• and
• storing the presentation surface and selected tile object as a montage in which the selected tile object is presented in the presentation tile, the montage capable of navigation using a gesture interface that allows manipulation of the tile object through a gesture to present a second tile object in the presentation tile while other tile objects of the montage remain unchanged.