Welcome to An Unquiet Mind, a fountainhead of explorations at the intersection of reason and emotion.

Mahendra Palsule

Web Graveyard Update

April 9, 2009

blogging, culture, marketing, society, technology

4 comments

I had recently mooted the concept of WebGraveyard.com, where your presence in the online world will forever be preserved, including your social networking profiles, blogs, etc.

If anyone is yet not convinced this is a great idea, check out Online-Funeral.

Online Funeral allows mourners to participate in the funeral ceremony via the Internet, and if their appointment book doesn’t have a free slot at that time, allows them to see the videos later, or even order CDs.

‘Virtual Tributes’ are nothing but a simple signing of a Guest Book. In contrast, our plan is to offer virtual memorials – full 3D replicas of what’s offered on Memorials.com.

Compared to our WebGraveyard.com, this is peanuts! There is no integration of the deceased person’s online life. In fact, Online Funeral just looks like a simple widget that we can add to WebGraveyard, no?

Web Graveyard

March 24, 2009

Personal, blogging, culture, marketing, society, technology

18 comments

Very few people I know blog about death. It is not a pleasant subject, and essentially, one reads blogs to be happy. But let’s face it, death is very real. Though cyberspace was once known as the virtual world, it is becoming increasingly real, and the overlap between online and offline is getting increasingly complex.

As bloggers, gamers, sellers, artists, online community participants – we are increasingly living very real online roles. We have our own avatars. Our own bookshelves. Our Facebook personae. Our LinkedIn profiles.

So what happens when we die? Death is sudden and unexpected for most people. What happens to their blogger friends? How do their Facebook or Orkut friends know? What about items they have put up on sale on eBay? What if they’re part of an open-source development community and are actively contributing to projects?

Don’t take this lightly. Sudden disappearance in the virtual world can cause a great deal of concern and have a wider impact than one may suspect. Our social world and legal systems take care of the eventualities in our offline life, but what about our online life when we really go offline? Who are the legal heirs of the copyrights to our creative digital content that we so meticulously safeguard?

CNET’s Technically Incorrect blog post inspired this post. It describes two website services that send out emails you’ve composed after you die. Deathswitch has a free account option with one recipient and no attachments. With a tagline of “Bridging Mortality”, it encourages you not to take your secrets to the grave. SlightlyMorbid does not have a free account, but has a “Free Trial”. :-)

Startup Concept – WebGraveyard

How about WebGraveyard.com? When fully functional and out of beta, Web Graveyard can offer:

  • My GraveSpace – automatically imported social networking profiles like Facebook and MySpace Cemetery
  • My Memoirs – a diary of your blogs on Blogger/Wordpress
  • My Graveiti – comments on your blog and by visitors to your eGrave
  • My YouTomb – the videos you’ve uploaded to YouTube
  • My Gallery – automatically imports your Picasa web albums, Flickr photos, etc.
  • My GraveRoll – links to eGraves of your friends
  • My Graveatar – automatically imported Gravatar
  • GrMail – automated email reminders of significant events in your lifetime like anniversaries

Premium Services

  • Users can import your birthdays and anniversaries into their Google Calendar or Outlook
  • High-resolution gallery of Tombstones
  • Templates for great Epitaphs
  • Users can drag and drop flowers on your eGrave from an abundant gallery of beautiful arrangements
  • GPod – automatically import and create a replica of your iPod
  • Your favorite last.fm playlist plays in the background when visiting your eGrave

Any takers for funding this startup? Any more ideas how it can be made more ‘user-friendly and productive’?