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Archiving Facebook, Twitter and Other Social Media Sites

By on March 21, 2011 in Archival

In our advice about planning your digital legacy, we talk at length about usernames, passwords and wishes. Leaving behind detailed instructions for accessing your online accounts can save your heirs a good deal of frustration. But this approach assumes that the service is still available when your heirs go looking. Moreover, it assumes that you’re [...]

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You’re Dead. Your Data Isn’t. What Happens Now?

By on March 15, 2011 in Archival, Cultural, Legal

Greetings from Austin, TX and the Samsung SXSW Blogger Lounge. Our team from The Digital Beyond along with Dazza Greenwood (CIVICS.com), Adele McAlear (DeathAndDigitalLegacy.com) and Jesse Davis (Entrustet.com) presented a successful panel yesterday morning, You’re Dead. Your Data Isn’t. What Happens Now? There were several recordings made of the presentation, but most of them aren’t [...]

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Why startups and researchers should talk

By on February 27, 2011 in Archival

I’m fresh back from San Francisco and the Internet Archive where I spent two days with many of the leaders in digital archives and preservation. Lots of great presentations and hallway conversations. I also presented my own take on design principles that should be considered when building archives to be used as memorials to the [...]

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Personal Archives

By on February 20, 2011 in Archival

Over then last several months our exploration of the digital afterlife has pulled me back to my roots as an information scientist. Information what? Information scientist—people who study information, people and technology. Kind of like a librarian of the digital age. This week I’ll present a talk at the Internet Archive during Personal Digital Archiving [...]

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So what *does* happen to your digital assets after you die?

By on December 21, 2010 in Archival, Featured, Legal

Take a look into the terms of service for various sites like Facebook, Twitter and Gmail.

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Virtual Immortality: now available at virtualeternity.com

By on November 7, 2010 in Archival, Cultural, Featured, Technical

A new service has launched called Virtual Eternity that promises to create an “intelligent” avatar that can live on after you die. The avatar would look like you, sound like you, and respond to questions just like you do. And it could live on indefinitely after you are gone. The site, virtualeternity.com, allows you to [...]

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Data MYning

By on October 11, 2010 in Archival, Featured, Technical

In January I made a few predictions about digital afterlife trends for 2010. In that post I cited a prediction by TrendWatching.com that “profile myning” would be a crucial trend to watch in 2010. “Profile myning” is an intentional word play on profile mining, the process of extracting patterns and thus business intelligence from social [...]

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Twitter adopts policy for deceased users

By on August 9, 2010 in Archival, Cultural, News

Twitter recently announced its policy for handling the accounts of deceased users. Before I get into my thoughts about the policy, Kudos to them. They’re ahead of the many social websites that do not have any stated policy. It’s also worth stating that there’s a pattern here. Facebook created the memorialized profile around the same [...]

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Digital Locksmiths Can Help Access a Loved One’s Important Assets

By on July 2, 2010 in Archival, Industry, Legal, Technical

It happens. Computers left behind by a loved one become locked boxes. Accounts become frozen. Treasured digital assets are lost. Now a new service is available that helps survivors unlock digital content. Digital Estate Services (http://www.digitalestateservices.com) is here to help. Their service can help unlock local files, recover user names and passwords for online accounts, [...]

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Cemeteries Going Digital

By on June 21, 2010 in Archival, Cultural, Featured

We are beginning to see the digitization of cemeteries. Learn about the first company to sell a enhanced memorial product (a digital headstone).

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