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Google Announces Inactive Account Manager

By on April 11, 2013 in Technical

Today Google released its new Inactive Account Manger allowing users to now specify what should happen to their account data once they stop using Google. This is the first offering from a major service provider to proactively ask users to specify their wishes before death. The new feature works like this: You specify a waiting [...]

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SXSW Wrap Up: Robot Panelists, AI and the Future of Identity

By on March 15, 2012 in Cultural, Featured, Technical

I sat with 65 other homo sapiens in a room, waiting to have an interview with a robot. Little did I know that in the end, it would be an interview with our own humanity.

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iPhone App Releases Family Photos From Shoebox Purgatory

By on November 13, 2011 in Archival, Technical

New iPhone application enables individuals to quickly digitize and archive photographs. It’s time to find the shoebox of photos in your closet. A new iPhone application from a San Francisco-based start-up takes photo scanning mobile. 1000memories released Shoebox on October 27 with the promise of helping users tackle the often-massive task of scanning family photographs. [...]

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A Low-Effort Approach to Digital Estate Planning

By on August 28, 2011 in Technical

If you’ve heard us talk about digital estate planning before, we always end the talk with an easy way out. It goes something like this. “If you do nothing else, make sure you inventory your most important digital accounts, record your user names and passwords, and then have a conversation with a trusted friend of [...]

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Digital Immortals: Preserving Life Beyond Death – SXSW 2012

By on August 7, 2011 in Archival, Technical

Digital Immortals: Preserving Life Beyond Death is the panel I’ve proposed for SXSW 2012. In short we’ll talk about how we can archive our digital content so that it can be preserved and experienced in the future. I’ve asked a great set of panelists to join me: John Romano, The Digital Beyond Bill LeFurgy, Library [...]

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Robot panelists, AI, and the Future of Identity – SXSW 2012

By on August 7, 2011 in Archival, Cultural, Technical

In the future, we aren’t going to fight the robots, we’re going to become the robots. In fact, it may be even sooner — like, now. We’ll have two AI-powered panelists taking questions from the audience. Oh, we’ll have some great biological panelists, too. They’ll discuss artificial intelligence, digital avatars, and the future of identity. [...]

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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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Value now, value later from DataInherit

By on July 18, 2010 in Industry, Technical

One of the things I struggle with most is describing the value of planing for your digital afterlife. I often get the response “but won’t I be gone?” It’s salient that a big opportunity in this space is a solution that provides both immediate and long-term (after death) value. It’s been out for a few months [...]

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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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