Funeral Memorial Technology Services Options

MemorialTechnology.com Offers Families and Funeral Industry New Ways to Memorialize Loved Ones

Woodstock, VA – The beginning of a New Year is always special for those who have lost loved ones, as well as the funeral and cemetery industries. However, 2012 is going to be particularly special because families can now take advantage of some of today’s new and innovative memorial technology and memorial services options.

Christopher P. Hill, Founder of FuneralResources.com, recalls “When my family and I lost my mother on Thanksgiving Day, we never knew these new memorial options existed. I can assure you we would have used at least three of these memorial tools.”

Hill’s personal loss inspired him to create www.memorialtechnology.com, a new educational website which simply makes it easier for families and Funeral Directors to raise awareness, education, and access to these new ways to better heal and remember.

MemorialTechnology.com particularly helps the funeral and cemetery industry by offering Funeral and Cemetery Directors a quick and easy way to educate every family on excellent additions to their funeral and memorial services planning.

Top Six New Funeral and Memorial Technology Options

MemorialTechnology.com contains six options that studies show most families are choosing to add to their funeral, memorial, or cremation planning:

1. New Gravestone Technology – Amazing way to see much more than a name and date
2. Video Tribute – A very powerful combination of video, pictures, and funeral music
3. Funeral Webcasting – Allows families to “attend” a memorial service “live” online
4. Memorial Diamond – Customized Genuine Diamonds for family heirlooms
5. Memorial Reefs – Green Burials at sea offer an underwater living legacy
6. Memorial Website – Personalized websites so families can share together anywhere

View This Brief Video Which Explains Today’s New Memorial Technology Options:

As we approach the New Year, Hill stated; “You will see that MemorialTechnology.com provides a true win-win situation. For the Funeral and Cemetery Directors, they can now offer even more valuable services. For the families, the can learn and maybe take advantage of ways to enhance and improved a loved one’s life tribute. I hope my mother is proud to know she inspired such a wonderful opportunity.”

FuneralResources.com is the funeral industry’s leading online Resource Center for both families and Funeral Directors. This comprehensive website offers easy access to help regarding how to plan a funeral, memorial services, and end of life plan services.

CLICK HERE to Learn More About New Memorial Technology Options

For more information or media contact, you can reach Chris Hill at (540) 459-7676, or by email at info@memorialtechnology.com.

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Custom Crafted Funeral Music

Custom Funeral Music

The Powerful Combination of Custom Crafted Funeral Music, Pictures, and Professional Video…

Creating a Healing Thanksgiving Family Keepsake

With the rapid growth in the Internet and new funeral technology, families today have access to many new and innovative tools that can help significantly increase their funeral and memorial planning experience. At the top of this list are DVD Video Tributes, which most families are choosing as a common addition to their loved ones memorial service.

In addition, I am happy tell everyone there is also the ability to work with a professional singer/songwriter/producer who can help families create “custom crafted” funeral music, which is a song that is personalized for either a special loved one and/or a special event.

Listen to this BEAUTIFUL Custom Crafted Song – Personalized For a One-Of-A-Kind Mother:

“Since my family never knew this powerful funeral technology existed, I strongly encourage every family to learn more about this option as a great addition to a Memorial Service. These professionally designed Video Tributes allow you to combine the personalized music, photos, and message of your choice. Watching this together with loved ones, this provides a great opportunity for everyone to celebrate, remember, and heal…and ultimately becomes a treasured family heirloom to keep forever.”
Christopher P. Hill, Founder, FuneralResources.com

Consider Using Custom Crafted Songs to Help Heal and Remember

If you are interested in selecting funeral songs with meaningful lyrics it may be easy to use the internet to search and read lyrics of popular songs. However, I believe a much better and more personal solution is to opt for a more customized music selection and have a song written and recorded to play at the funeral service or memorial service.

This DVD Video Tribute below contains a customized song that was created for me by Anna Huckabee of Custom Crafted Songs. By taking advantage of creating a custom crafted song, this helped me to express how I truly felt about my mother, but in a very special and meaningful way.

By combining these personalized lyrics that Anna helped me create with a DVD Video Tribute, this helped me in so many ways. First, it helped me to better see what a wonderful and amazing person she really was. Second, since Anna needed to ask many questions to know as much as possible about her, this helped me to express my thoughts and discuss some things that significantly helped in my healing process. But most importantly, this custom crafted song allowed me to express some feelings and emotions that I was not able to say to her before she passed. These words are things that I regret every day not telling her before she was taken above.

My mother passed on Thanksgiving Day of 2008, which clearly means that Thanksgiving will never be the same. But since everyone who knew her would tell you she was one of the most giving people on the planet, I truly thank Anna for creating this personal song and tribute for my mother, and fittingly calling this beautiful song “Thanks For Giving“.

Thanks for your giving ways too Anna!

New Funeral Technologies Help Families Heal and Remember

New Funeral Technologies

Top Six Funeral Technologies That Help Share, Remember, Grieve, Celebrate, and Heal…and More!

Today, many new and innovative funeral technologies are widely recognized in the funeral industry as common services that help make a difficult situation a little easier. New funeral technology is helping families and friends who have lost a one heal, remember, and celebrate. Here are the most common new funeral technologies that most families are choosing:

Memorial Websites

A Memorial Website is a personalized website that is created to celebrate a person’s life. Friends and family can grieve and celebrate the memories of a loved one by sharing stories, kind thoughts, condolences, photos, and videos online. These online Memorial Tributes can be kept online for life so that friends and family can view the wonderful memories year after year and additional content can be added at any time.

DVD Video Tribute

See a Sample DVD Video Here:

In its simplest definition, a DVD Video Tribute is a professionally crafted video production which consists of digital images, video, and/or photos of your loved one, which are then combined and played simultaneously with the music or your choice. They can serve as an excellent presentation to complement your special funeral memorial service, and are a great way to help in the grief and healing process. A DVD Video Tribute helps tell the story of your loved ones life, and also creates a family heirloom that can be treasured and kept for years to come.

Memorial Diamonds

Created from a lock of hair or small amount of cremated ashes, memorial diamonds are an unique, heirloom memorial that will forever contain the essence of your loved one. These genuine, certified diamonds are created in a laboratory using your loved ones personal carbon and a diamond seed. By mimicking the earth’s natural high pressure, high temperatures necessary to create a diamond, in 70 days or less a personal diamond will emerge in one of the five brilliant colors you have selected. These memorial diamonds can be a stunning reminder of a loved ones life and unique spirit. Set into a beautiful piece of cremation jewelry, a memorial diamond can be worn close to the heart in a pendant, or into a memorial ring, bracelet or even earrings.

Gravestone Technology

Due to advances in microchip technology, your family can now include detailed text and a photo within a headstone to create a high tech, high end memorial. RFID-enabled data tags are an addition to a loved one’s tomb stone – you can enter the person’s name and choose some representative symbols, perhaps a small epitaph via the web – then you embed the tag into a larger traditional tombstone.

This new technology will allow future generations, visitors and historians to access both a story and genealogical information about the deceased from an internet enabled cell phone while at the markers physical location.

Funeral Webcasting

See the Many Features and Benefits of Funeral Webcasting Here:

For a wide variety of reasons, family members and friends are often unable to travel or attend the actual funeral service of a loved one. Using this innovative funeral technology, families and loved ones can now view the actual LIVE Memorial Service from the comfort of their own home, or whatever location is most convenient. Funeral Webcasting can be viewed on a private and secure website page by using password protection. This ensures that ONLY the people you wish to join in this Memorial Service can participate LIVE.

Memorial Reefs

A memorial reef is an environmentally-friendly burial option that is being used to replace the more traditional green burials and cremation ideas, such as cremation urns or ash scattering. The process includes mixing a loved ones remains into an environmentally safe concrete mixture and create a personalized memorial reef. These memorial reefs are then placed into the ocean. This combination of new funeral technologies, cremation, memorial reefs, and green burials can now offer families to provide their loved ones with a living legacy at sea.

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New Preferred Provider for Digital Estate Planning

Online Estate Plan

FuneralResources.com Selects Entrustet.com as a
Preferred Provider for Digital Estate Planning

FuneralResources.com, the nation’s leading family-focused online Resource Center for funeral planning and preplanning, announced today they will be selecting Entrustet as a Preferred Provider for their Digital Estate Planning services.

Entrustet’s Account Guardian is a free service that allows consumers to securely list all of their digital assets. Digital assets include any accounts which are currently being accessed through the Internet, as well as computer files. By storing this digital information in a safe and secure place such as what Entrustet offers, this provides people and families with the option of transferring or deleting this information in the event someone passes.

To find our more information about this partnership, simply visit FuneralResources.com and click on their “Funeral Technology” tab, and then click on the drop-down link entitled “Digital Estate Planning Services”.

Hill points out that; “Today, when a family or Funeral Director visits FuneralResources.com, our Resource Center is filled with helpful articles, brief educational videos, grief counseling and support, common funeral planning merchandise and services, as well as just about every new and innovative funeral technology tool, such as Entrustet.”

Hill’s goal with FuneralResources.com is to help raise awareness about any helpful tools that can help make such a difficult situation a little easier. Another goal is to provide quick and easy access to resources such as articles, free How-To Guides, and the constantly evolving and growing number of useful tools and technologies that most families and Funeral Directors are commonly searching for. Given the growth of the Internet, Social Networking, and more, having a place to store your Digital Estate Planning Assets will inevitably continue to grow, becoming a larger part of Wills, Trusts, and Estate Planning process in the years ahead.

About Entrustet: Entrustet is a free online service that allows you to securely list all of your digital assets, which are online accounts and files on your computer, and decide if you’d like them transferred to heirs or deleted when you pass away. Through its free Account Guardian service, individuals protect their digital assets by deleting them or designating heirs to oversee their personal information after their death. Users can also choose to delete private files and accounts by using the Account Incinerator. Other services include the Lawyer Directory for lawyer referrals and the Corporate Partner Program in which companies can protect their users’ last wishes.

For additional information, please contact Christopher P. Hill at (703) 917-8501, or info@funeralresources.com.

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Cremation Memorial Reef Site – Texas

Green Funeral

Eternal Reefs Adds New Memorial Reef Site

New cremation memorial reef to be located in Galveston, Texas.

The new Texas location makes the twentieth approved site for the company to offer an eco-friendly alternative to spreading the ashes of a loved one: participation in the preparation and placement of an individually-designed memorial reef ball that contributes to a new ecosystem.

An Eternal Reefs “memorial reef” looks like a huge, hollow concrete ball with Swiss cheese holes specially designed to entice fish and other forms of sea life into the reef, building new habitats in and around the uneven structure. Eternal Reefs takes cremated remains and incorporates them into an environmentally safe cast cement mixture weighing between 600 pounds (2’ high x 4’ wide) and 4500 pounds (4’ high x 6’ wide).

Eternal Reefs encourages family members and friends to become involved in creating their loved one’s memorial reef. If they wish, family members can mix the concrete and remains and have the opportunity to personalize the Eternal Reef with handprints, written messages and other memorabilia in the damp concrete. The entire Eternal Reefs process is designed to be a positive and healing experience for the families and the sea.

“While many people who participate in our programs have been vitally connected to the ocean their entire life, we get to memorialize people who just like the idea of making a meaningful contribution to the health of the planet and to benefit future generations,” George Frankel, Eternal Reefs CEO, said. “We find it provides great joy for everyone involved to know their loved one will be surrounded by marine life and to know they leave behind an environmentally-sustainable, living legacy.”

Memorial reefs have become a solution for the “shelf people” crisis across the country. An astonishing 45 percent of families that have chosen cremation still have their loved ones remains sitting on a shelf or in a closet. Thousands of individuals pass away unexpectedly and don’t leave a will, leaving the next generation to handle their remains. Eternal Reefs offers a final resting place for these individuals.

With every Memorial Reef, the executor of the estate receives two memorial certificates that identify the longitude and latitude of the memorials, which are marked with bronze plaques. Loved ones can participate in every step of the Memorial Reef process and gather for the reef casting, viewing and placement ceremonies. Throughout the year, families and friends often return to the memorial reef site to dive, fish or visit by boat.

The new reef site off Galveston, Texas will have its first memorial service and placement November 12, 2010 at Barr’s Reef, 11 miles off the water break in Galveston Bay. It is anticipated the families of about 15 people will participate in the activities.

About Eternal Reefs Inc.
Eternal Reefs, Inc is an Atlanta-based company that provides creative environmentally enhancing means to memorialize the cremated remains of a loved one. The company incorporates cremated remains into a concrete mixture used to cast artificial reef formations. The artificial reefs are dedicated as permanent memorials while also bolstering natural coastal reef formations. Since 1998, the company has placed more than 300 Memorial Reefs in 20 locations off the coasts of Florida, South Carolina, North Carolina, Maryland, New Jersey, Texas and Virginia, substantially increasing the ocean’s diminishing reef systems. Memorial reefs can only go in properly permitted locations by the US Government. Contact Eternal Reefs Inc.

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Video Tribute With Custom Funeral Music

Funeral Technology

Sharing a Personal Story

The Powerful Combination of a DVD Video Tribute

and Custom Funeral Music

Talking About Losing a Loved One is NEVER Easy:

My name is Chris Hill, and many of you know I am the Founder of FuneralResources.com.

First of all, I must admit that is not easy for me to publicly talk about the fact that I lost my mother a few years ago, or to say how much I love her and miss her.

And quite frankly, it is even hard to admit that looking back, I wish I could have done things diffrerently.

Live Every Day Like There’s No Tomorrow:

The truth is I wish I was with her more. I wish I could have told her how much she meant to me. I wish I had told her how special and amazing she really was. I wish I told her how much I appreciated everything she did for me. I wish she knew how lucky I was that she was my mother and friend. Most of all, I wish I would have been there with her…and shared more time with her…particularly in her final stages. But as much as it haunts me, I can’t turn back the clock.

Truthfully, I will always believe she needed to hear these things from me, and I will always regret the fact that I never had the chance to tell her how much she meant to me, and how much I loved her.

However, knowing how special she was…how selfless she was..and how unconditional her love was for her family and friends…I truly believe she knows, and that she forgives me for not being there as much as I think I should have…and letting her know the things I wished I had told her.

See the Powerful Combination of New Funeral Technology and Custom Crafted Songs:

Today I feel very blessed to share with you this great opportunity I was recently given. I was able to create a special memorial tribute for my mother, which is comprised of three all-important pieces:

1. Creating a personalized DVD Video Tribute for my mother

2. Choosing the best photos of my mother thoughout her life…the ones that help me see her as I remember her…and also help me remember all of the great times and memories we shared together.

3. Creating personalized funeral music which was specially written, produced, and sung by a very special and talented singer and songwriter, Anna Huckabee. Anna creates custom funeral music which is solely created to tell an individual’s story of their special and unique life. You can hear Anna’s song she created exclusively for me and my mother in this video.

Learn About the New Funeral Technology Options Available:

I feel so lucky to have the opportunity to have this professionally crafted and personalized video tribute as a memorial, since someone like her truly deserves nothing but the best. This video says so much, and helps me tell the story and message I hope she hears every day…and knows and believes in her heart.

Best of all, creating this video helped me in coping with grief and loss, but also provided me with something truly special that I can always remember her by…as that amazing and beautiful person you can see.

It is never easy to talk about someone you love who has passed, but I share this with you because I truly hope anyone who has lost a loved also considers taking advantage of this great opportunity!

Also, there are many other great new funeral technology tools that you should learn more about that, like me, might help you make these tough times a little easier.

Chris Hill, Founder

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Custom Funeral Music

Funeral Music

Custom Crafted Songs Announced as

Preferred Provider for Custom Funeral Music

Reston, VA., June 22, 2010 – FuneralResources.com, the nation’s leading educational online resource for all aspects of planning a funeral, has announced that Custom Crafted Songs will be a Preferred Provider for Funeral Directors and families who are searching for custom funeral music.

Chris Hill, Founder of FuneralResources.com, shares his first-hand experience about how meaningful this process can be for individuals and families; “When Anna offered the opportunity to create a custom crafted song for my mother, I was quick to accept this unique opportunity. Not only was I amazed at how truly talented Anna was, and the beautiful song she created, but also with her choice of the song’s name, words, and the personal message that seemed to say exactly what I felt in my heart.”

Hill goes on to point out that creating custom funeral music can also help in coping with grief and loss; “As I look back, this was an extremely helpful and healing experience for me. When someone spends the time to learn about your deepest feelings for someone you love so much, this serves as a form of grief counseling by allowing you to express your true feelings and emotions. And the best part is that the ultimate outcome is your own personalized message and tribute to someone who means so much.”

Each custom crafted song contains unique melodies, words and expresses the essence of the life of a loved one. These funeral songs are individually crafted funeral music which, when combined with a DVD Video Tribute, can create a very powerful memorial tribute that celebrates the wonderful life’s story and special memories of a loved one.

About FuneralResources.com

FuneralResources.com provides information and education resources to help families and Funeral Directors make the funeral planning a little easier. This is accomplished by providing easy access to the most helpful information, free guides, educational videos on many of key funeral-related subjects including planning a memorial service, finding a funeral home, writing a eulogy, funeral etiquette, new funeral technology, grief counseling and end-of-life planning.

FuneralResources.com also provides a National Directory of Pre-Screened Funeral and Financial Professionals to help families find local key support they are searching for regarding topics such as selecting a funeral home or cemetery, estate or tax planning, as well as help with nearly all types of insurance or financial planning needs.

To learn more, visit FuneralResources.com

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Top Ten Reasons – Use Social Networking

Funeral and Financial Professionals

10 Ways To Market and Grow

Your Business Using Social Networking

(Particularly Using LinkedIn, the Most Credible Business Network)

One thing we should all know by now is that people are searching on the Internet for most of their information, merchandise, services, networking, and more. It should also come as no surprise that lately the most explosive growth on the Internet has been through the surge in the social networking industry.

Therefore, given the tremendous opportunity this growth has created, it only makes sense that we should all be focusing a portion of our business’ marketing plan in this area.

To Access Our Free Webinar Replay, “LinkedIn 101“:

Simply Visit: www.learnlinkedin.com

(Note: There is no cost and this is available 24/7)

Top 10 Reasons Why Social Networking Will Grow Your Business

Research published by analyst firm Access Markets International Partners showed that almost 70 percent of small and medium businesses actively use social networking sites such as Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn to promote their companies. But simply posting what your CEO had for lunch isn’t going to do much to help move your business forward. Smart companies are tactically using social media tools to increase their exposure to potential customers.

1. Brand Recognition:

Using social media allows your company to reach the highest number of potential customers possible. Getting your name out there is incredibly important – studies have suggested that customers need to hear a company’s name at least seven times before they will gain the trust and respect needed to become a customer.

2. Brand Monitoring:

Having a social media presence allows you to better understand what current and potential customers are saying about your product or services. Through active monitoring, you have the opportunity to address negative comments and correct false or inaccurate information about your brand.

3. Be Forward-Thinking:

Your target audience is becoming savvier when it comes to the using social media sites in their daily lives. If you want to appear relevant and in-step with the latest advances in technology, your potential customers will want to see you on these sites as well.

4. Find New Customers Through Friends:

You shouldn’t neglect your personal social networking accounts as potential avenues to promote the activities of your business. Posting regular updates relating to your business and activities can remind your friends of what your company does and either to use your services or refer one of their friends.

5. Find New Customers Through a Company Profile:

Your company profile is a great opportunity for you to post regular updates on your activities, but also about important news and trends in your industry. This will catch the attention of new customers interested in your industry and increase your reputation as an expert in the field. It’s critical to post regularly if you want to increase your followers or fans and convert them to potential leads.

6. Generate Site Traffic:

By updating regularly on sites such as Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn with posts that link back to your site, you can create additional traffic to your site. Social media bookmarking tools like Digg, Stumbleupon and Slashdot can also generate additional traffic to your site if you create frequent articles and blog posts.

7. Links for SEO:

Many social media bookmarking sites use NOFOLLOW tags that limit the outbound link value of posts made on their sites. There are still many leading social sites that allow DOFOLLOW tags including Slashdot, Digg, Furl, Mixx and FriendFeed. However, you can see benefits from posting through bookmarking sites that use NOFOLLOW tags if people read your posts and link back to your Website.

8. Increased Search Engine Rankings:

Social media profiles frequently rank highly with major search engines. Using brand names and keywords in your profiles can help you to generate traffic for your social networking sites and company homepage.

9. Integrated Social Media Results in Search Engines:

Search engines like Google and Microsoft Bing are increasingly interested in indexing and ranking posts and other information from social networking sites. Videos from popular Internet sites like YouTube can also be optimized for indexing by the major search engines.

10. Niche Marketing:

Social networking allows you to reach very specific subsets of individuals based on their personal preferences and interests. You can create social strategies based on reaching individual interests or even create unique social profiles to target these audiences.

Why Not?

When you take a look at just some of the major benefits of using social media to grow your business, and you also consider the fact that there is little or no cost to use these marketing tools, the key question you should be asking yourself is:

Why Would You NOT Use Social Networking?

* Courtesy of Smart E-Commerce

Christopher P. Hill, Founder
http://www.learnlinkedin.com

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Funeral Technology for Father’s Day

Grief and Loss

Father’s Day Memorial Tributes & Funeral Technology

For those special Dad’s and Grandfathers who have passed and are dearly missed, Father’s Day can actually provide some excellent opportunities.

Below is a list of some of the most popular Father’s Day gifts that many families are choosing for a personalized and special memorial, tribute, keepsake, or family heirloom:

About New Funeral Technology:

“Technology is changing the face of the funeral industry and baby boomers, those ages 43 to 62 are at the root of it“, says John Reed, president of the National Funeral Directors Association based in Brookfield, Wis.

Today many new and innovative technologies are widely recognized in the funeral industry as common services that help make a difficult situation a little easier. Boomers are memorializing their parents and loved ones in nontraditional ways and using new funeral technology to do it.

Technology is opening the doors to unique memorial ideas and expanding funeral planning and memorial service options. With these tech-savvy Boomers wanting to take the negativity out of funerals and find ways to celebrate a person’s life, using new funeral technology such as some of these listed below are among the most popular, common, and rapidly growing.

Top 5 Father’s Day Memorial Gifts:

1. Father’s Day Video Tribute and Funeral Music

2. Father’s Day Gravestone Technology

3. Father’s Day Memorial Website

4. Father’s Day Memorial Diamonds

5. Father’s Day Cremation Urns

New Funeral Technology Offers Many Benefits:

Keep in mind that these gifts can serve as an excellent family tribute, keespsake, or family heirloom. The main benefit from these gifts is that, although in different way, each of them offers a wonderful opportunity to honor and celebrate your Dad, as well as share many of the great stories and memories you shared together.

Christopher P. Hill
FuneralResources.com

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Funeral Technology News

As seen on Obit.com

A Few Words Before I Go

The original Rosetta Stone helped translate the pictorial language of the ancient Egyptians, providing definitions of the imagery and bringing to life a long-gone culture. Now one company is offering personal versions of the stones to tell stories about an individual long after we’re gone.

Objecs LLC’s RosettaStone is an oblong — think full-sized iPod – piece of granite or travertine stone inscribed with pictorial images that stand for different aspects of an individual’s life. Seemlessly incorporated into a tombstone, the stones invite cemetery visitors to plug into a website – or in some cases simply wave your phone in front of the stone – and see the meaning of each symbol.

“Walk around a cemetery today and gravestones doesn’t tell you anything. Date of birth. Date of death. They’re cold and impersonal,” said Chris Hill, a financial advisor in northern Virginia, who owns two RosettaStones. “This will tell my story for thousands of years.”

Purchasers can choose up to six tablet symbols, reminiscent of hieroglyphics, from more than 300 options, including a striped pole for a barber, a caliper for an engineer, and a man behind bars for ne’er-do-wells who want to be remembered as such.

When selecting the symbols for his stone, Hill thought of his wife and two children, his passions for music and writing, his belief that life doesn’t end with death.

For his six symbols, he chose an “I” for general information, a U.S. map, stick figures representing a family, a music note, a hand holding a pen, and a telescope looking into space.

“It’s just as important to document your life,” said Hill, “as it is to remember it.”

John Bottorff, founder of Objecs LLC, said the tablet symbols spur interest and conversation.

“When I see someone using a symbol I can relate to, I can’t help but be curious as to their life experience around it. We are seeing mini-meaning of life stuff here from common people, not a Dalai Lama,” Bottorff said. “I will never look at a barber pole symbol the same – I’m still awestruck at how a barber has learned the deepest values of life from his profession.

“Not all of the messages are positive, but I think they are all gifts to future generations from today’s cooks, lawyers, fishermen and, yes, even career criminals.”

But it’s the technological element that makes the RosettaStone special, Bottorff said. If the cell phone is NFC-enabled — something still rare in North America but common overseas – simply touching the phone to the tablet allows direct access to the story behind each symbol. The internal microchip uses the phone’s own magnetic field to work and transfer the data, then returns to a dormant state.

For a regular cell phone with Internet access, users can type in the web information on the tablet and have the same information appear. Each symbol can be accompanied by about 200 words of text.

So how is this better than including a memorial website’s address on a tombstone? The answer is permanence, Bottorff said.

“Compare us to them and we look a bit primitive, he said. “The traditional memorial website is a much richer multimedia experience, but not necessarily pursuing the long-term data survival model we are. If you’re interested in a long genealogical surviving record, ours is a pretty good approach.”

RosettaStone boasts that the tablets’ information will remain accessible for the next 3,000 years. Even if the company folds, the tablets’ associated information will remain. In part, that’s because information is both hard-coded to the stones’ internal microchip and archived externally on the web. (Of course, without a time machine, it’s impossible to verify the 3,000-year claim, but the concept seems to sell nonetheless.)

Introduced a little over a month ago, Objecs has sold fewer than 100 of the products, which cost about $200. Among the buyers, Bottorff said, are a well-known American musician and a BBC Television personality.

Although Objecs initially offered the product as a way to honor the newly deceased, but pretty quickly the living wanted it for themselves. (In fact, the living are the product’s primarily buyers thus far.) On its website, Objecs notes that RosettaStones are also intended for “mature adults who have reached a stage in life with identifiable milestones and associations. Such milestones may include a profession, discipline, paternal capacity, love of music or skill….”

“When people started buying it for themselves, it was an awakening that it was something people wanted to hold onto as a family heirloom, so we adjusted our message,” Bottorff said.

Hill has been updating and frequently rewriting the text he wants to accompany his RosettaStone entries frequently.

“If a truck hits me tomorrow, I’ve got some words that will last forever and that’s real,” he said. “It’s hard to write at first. You’re thinking, ‘Wow. These are my last words.’”

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