The Wordulator

When international banking exec, Jacques Mechelany would strap himself into a plane seat, he’d wonder about his three kids…what if this was to be his last flight?  Did he say what he wanted to say?  Were his affairs in order?  Would his kids really know who he is?

That’s when he decided to give up the globetrotting financial world and start I-POSTMORTEM, a company dedicated to making death better.  Hey, we’re all going to get there someday and the company’s two sites, I-Memorial.com and I-Tomb.net are designed to, as he says, “change the way people deal with death.”  We saw the sites – one for the the living to create virtual tombs for the dead and the other for the living to tell their own life  story for generations to come, leave posthumous messages, park their insurance policies and other documents securely, handle their social media passwords after their departure, and make sure the subscribers get the send-off they wanted.

Did I say subscribers?  Yes, that’s the model that Mechelany chose, and we think it’s a good one.  Like the insurance biz, subscriptions let a company like I-POSTMORTEM focus on their core sites and invest in the latest technology without debasing its sites to selling advertising.  I mean who wants casket sales ads and bereavement counseling ads dotting what should be an elegant tribute to a loved one or to yourself?

I-POSTMORTEM launched tonight at DEMO, one of Silicon Valley’s longest running tech darling events where VCs and media rub elbows with hopeful entrepreneurs aiming to wow the audience and get traction in the market, not to mention some bucks from interested investors.

I-Tomb.net is exactly that – a virtual tomb built for one’s ancestors or even more recently departed.  The tomb can contain pictures, videos, text and is placed online alongside other (some amusing and amazing historical tombs) online in the World Virtual Cemetery at www.i-tomb.net, where anyone can visit it from anywhere they can connect to the Internet.  (The company was showing Michael Jackson’s tomb, already adorned with virtual candles.)  Cost?  $50 per year.  That’s a heckuva lot less than traditional cemeteries and more convenient for families and friends than flying cross country to visit someone’s grave.

Then there’s I-Memorial – your own personal journey where you chronicle your life, record videos that can be seen after your passing – even record a video message for your child who  might only be three now but may open it on her 16th birthday.  You can use it like a vault to store sensitive documents- I-Postmortem partners with a Swiss data warehouse that boasts of some pretty sophisticated security.  $120 per yearfor an I-Memorial account.

You work on your I-Memorial during your lifetime – kind of like a multimedia journal.  And when you pass on, your death declarator whom you appoint like an executor, says you’re really dead (an email goes out to you to make sure that someone isn’t messing with you) and your I-Memorial turns into an I-Tomb and goes on the World Virtual Cemetery, unchangeable by anyone, and is viewable by the public or only by those you designate.   Your friends can place virtual candles, incense, and flowers as well as comments, video and music in your I-Tomb. (These get screened by the I-Tomb administrator before being published.)

When I first heard about this I felt uneasy.  It made me thing of our mortality, of things left undone.  But at the end of the day, it’s products like these that make us think about the process of life itself.  And when the little stuff is taken care of and we know we’ve said what we want to say to the people we want to touch, then doesn’t that really make life a bit sweeter?

Tags: Apps, Tech Trends, Uncategorized, Web Services // Add Comment »