End of Digital Life after our Physical Life

In the future, we will invariably die two deaths: The first will be physical and the second, and potentially more noticeable death will be digital (Facebook memorializing, stagnant Twitter accounts, lost passwords). Just recently, Twitter established a policy to handle accounts after the death of a user. Family members and close friends can now petition for the removal of a loved one’s account, after filing the right paperwork.

According to the new policy page, requests must be sent to the site along with:

1. Your full name, contact information (including e-mail address), and your relationship to the deceased user.

2. The username of the Twitter account, or a link to the profile page of the Twitter account.

3. A link to a public obituary or news article

If the paperwork checks out, Twitter can opt to either delete a deceased user’s account, or create an archive of the user’s tweets for family members. Similarly, Facebook’s deceased user policy, which was put in place in October, includes an option to deactivate. Alternatively, the policy also offers to keep the account open as a digital memorial, meaning that the user’s profile is still visible (only) to friends, though all status updates and contact information have been removed.

Jeremy Toeman, who is the CEO and founder of Legacy Locker–a site that acts as a digital safe  for things like Web site log-ins, and messages to family members that can be accessed after a person dies–thinks Facebook’s relationship requirements just aren’t good enough. In a post on Legacy Locker’s company blog Toeman notes:

“This policy lacks the concept of desired intent. What if an individual wanted their Twitter stream archived (and not just by the Library of Congress)? What if another user wanted it wiped out (a challenge with any service, we acknowledge) completely? What about any situation wherein the desires of the user who dies are in conflict with those who support them, or a conflict within the surviving family members?”

Facebook will not just give your next-of-kin access.  They clearly state that it’s against their Privacy Policy to do so.   Furthermore, the 1986 Electronic Communications Privacy Act prevents the disclosure of stored communications unless there is a court order.  This means litigation.

So, with these 2 lives, Physical and Digital, time has come when we would be required to have the formalities to end the digital life !!You never know, maybe we would soon have e-will (to pass the digital estates) like Adsense revenues, Followers, Subscribers and Fans to be transfered to someone, mentioned in the will.

eLearning through YouTube and Free !

Few weeks back one of my close friend Navin shared this interesting story of an One Many Army who has started a unique way to teach millions of people or students through the medium of YouTube channel, and that too totally FREE !

His name is Salman Khan and google his name to know more about his ‘Khan Academy‘

Check out this video to learn more …

Express your views…

50 Interesting Facts

1. Look at your zipper. See the initials YKK? It stands for Yoshida Kogyo Kabushibibaisha, the world’s largest zipper manufacturer.

2. A raisin dropped in a glass of freshchampagne will bounce up and down continuously from the bottom of the glass to the top.

3. A duck’s quack doesn’t echo. No one knows why.

4. 40 percent of McDonald’s profits come from the sales of Happy Meals.

5. 315 entries in Webster’s 1996 Dictionary were misspelled.

6. On the average, 12 newborns will be given to the wrong parents daily.

7. Chocolate kills dogs! True, chocolate affects a dog’s heart and nervous system. A few ounces is enough to kill a small sized dog.

8. Most lipstick contains fish scales.

9. Ketchup was sold in the 1830′s as a medicine.

10. Leonardo da Vinci could write with one hand and draw with the other at the same time.

11. Because metal was scarce, the Oscars given out during World War II were made of wood.

12. There are no clocks in Las Vegas g@mbling casin0s.

13. Leonardo da Vinci invented scissors. Also, it took him 10 years to paint Mona Lisa’s lips.

14. Bruce Lee was so fast that they actually had to slow a film down so you could see his moves. That’s the opposite of the norm.

15. The original name for the butterfly was “flutterby”!

16. By raising your legs slowly and lying on your back, you can’t sink in quicksand.

17. Mosquito repellents don’t repel. They hide you. The spray blocks the mosquito’s sensors so they don’t know you’re there.

18. Dentists recommend that a toothbrush be kept at least six feet away from a toilet to avoid airborne particles resulting from the flush.

19. The first product to have a bar code was Wrigley’s gum.

20. The first owner of the Marlboro Company died of lung cancer.

21. Michael Jordan makes more money from Nike annually than the entire Nike factory workers in Malaysia combined.

22. Marilyn Monroe had six toes on one foot.

23. Adolf Hitler’s mother seriously considered having an abortion but was talked out of it by her doctor.

24. The three most valuable brand names on earth: Marlboro, Coca-Cola, and Budweiser, in that order.

25. “Stewardesses” is the longest word that can be typed with only the left hand.

26. To escape the grip of a crocodile’s jaws, prick your fingers into its eyeballs. It will let you go instantly.

27. A mathematical wonder: 111,111,111 multiplied by 111,111,111 gives the result 12, 345, 678, 987, 654, 321.

28. The most common name in the world is Mohammed.

29. The average person falls asleep in seven minutes.

30. The “pound” (#) key on your keyboard is called an octothorp.

31. The only domestic animal not mentioned in the Bible is the cat.

32. Rubber bands last longer when refrigerated.

33. The average person’s left hand does 56% of the typing.

34. “Dreamt” is the only word in the English language that ends in “mt”.

35. It’s impossible to sneeze with your eyes open.

36. In Chinese, the KFC slogan “finger lickin’ good” comes out as “eat your fingers off”.

37. A cockroach can live for 10 days without a head.

39. We shed 40 pounds of skin a lifetime.

40. Yo-Yos were once used as weapons in the Philippines.

41. Coca-Cola can be used as car oil.

42. Mexico City sinks abut 10 inches a year.

43. Brains are more active sleeping than watching TV.

44. Blue is the favorite color of 80 percent of Americans.

45. When a person shakes their head from side to side, he is saying “yes” in Sri Lanka.

46. There are more chickens than people in the world.

47. It’s against the law in Iceland to have a dog.

48. The thumbnail grows the slowest, and the middle nail grows the fastest.

49. The only word in the English Language with all vowels in reverse order is “s ub c ont in ent al”.

50. There are more telephones than people in Washington, D.C.

Do you have such interesting Facts to share, here is the place ! Add on……….

What a digital age we are now into… interesting ? amazing !  Yes… it is but there are questions and thoughts around it as well which in others words can be put as concerns as well.

Most of us have been growing with the computing evolution in terms of social media way, as we have first learnt about ‘email account’ and what it does and slowly adopted emails as part of our daily life like other daily activities. Email has been working fine to express all our eMotions in the electronic way, official communication became blessed with the emailing stuff and we almost made the retirement of the postal services.

And then … we were still not satisfied maybe with long, boring emails to express our needs. As the mantra today with almost every product or service is ‘Do More with Less’, we started playing with this and Jack Dorsey translated this idea into action by creating ‘Twitter’.

Cool … now we have learnt rephrasing our expressions internally to produce it with a ‘Limited Edition’ of only 140 characters. Wow … they say Life is short and now expressions are shorter and gosh… don’t know what is waiting for us when we become smarter.

We need to think and express ourselves with character limitations when we need to be social in the internet domain. Forget about the character limitation in the text box to enter but also our ears and mind will get tuned to listen and understand the first 140 or shorter characters that you say or write.

Folks, we are lucky that in 2010 we still have 140 words but be prepared to do (express) the same maybe in next few years with 100, 80 or 60 character limitations in gradual way.

With the addiction to get hooked onto the social networking services, a person is now incomplete if he/she is does not maintain a Facebook, twitter or Linkedin profile. I met my neighbor the other day, in line with our social networking bondage, she asked me ‘is everything okay … as I don’t see you tweeting these days ?”

So, if you find a friend of yours who is not doing the tweets, posts, commenting on the wall, scraps etc for some days spare some minutes out of your hectic life to give him/her a buzz (not again restricting to your mobile plan of pulse/minute etc) or visit him/her to say ‘hey! How are you?” and carry on with the conversation beyond any expressive limitation.

Celebrate Reading…..

A turtle family decided to go on a picnic. Turtles, being naturallyslow about things, took seven years to prepare for their outing. Finally the turtle family left home looking for a suitable place for their outing. During the second year of their journey they found a place ideal for them at last! For about six months they cleaned up the area, unpacked the picnic basket, and completed the arrangements.
Then they discovered they had forgotten the salt. A picnic without salt would be a disaster, they all agreed. After a lengthy discussion, the youngest turtle was chosen to retrieve the salt from home.
He agreed to go on one condition: That no one would eat until he returned The family consented and the little turtle left. Three years passed and the little turtle had not returned. Five years….six years… then on the seventh year of his absence, the oldest turtle could no longer contain his hunger. He announced that he was going to eat and begun to unwrap a sandwich.
At that point the little turtle suddenly popped out from behind a tree shouting, “SEE I knew you wouldn’t wait. Now I am not going to go get the salt.”

“Some of us waste our time waiting for people to live up to our expectations to finally realize that it is better to have done it ourselves than to have waited for someone to complete.”