Thousands flock to web to visit Whitney Houston's Online Memorial

Remembering Whitney Houston,

Thousands of Whitney Houston fans poured online to express their condolences at Whitney Houston's online memorial website.

The multimillion-selling singer who emerged in the 1980s as one of her generation’s greatest R & B voices, only to deteriorate through years of cocaine use and an abusive marriage, died on Saturday in Beverly Hills, Calif. She was 48.

Ms. Houston was found in her room at 3:55 p.m., and paramedics spent close to 20 minutes trying to revive her, the authorities said. There was no immediate word on the cause of her death, but the authorities said there were no signs of foul play.

Online memorials change how people think of - and celebrate, the lives of their loved ones. These Facebook-style websites allow friends and family to share pictures and memories from anywhere in the world, at any time. By combining videos, pictures and stories, an online memorial will share more about a person’s life and legacy than a headstone ever can.

Remembering our Heroes on Volunteer Firefighters Day...

"All men are created equal, then a few become firemen." ~Author Unknown

We've all seen this image time and time again. As it brings back memories of over 10 years ago, we don't often reflect upon the people behind it. Today is the day we celebrate the unsung hero who bravely rushes into peril to save someone he doesn't even know. January 10th is Volunteer Firefighter's day.

The first organized force of firefighters was the Corps of Vigiles in Roman times. Now there are volunteer Fire, EMS, and Rescue Services around the world. Every 23 seconds . . . somewhere in

 the United States firefighters are responding to a call. What you probably don't know is that three out of four firefighters are volunteers, risking their lives for others - and sometimes losing their own.

Of the 72 firefighters who died while on duty in 2010, 44 were volunteers.

Today Remembered.com recognizes their sacrifices by offering free memorials for any Firefighter who has passed on whether on duty or by other causes.

Just visit our website at : Remembered.com for information on how to create a free memorial.

Are Death and Charity Always Connected?

Death is a touchy subject, and people certainly have a lot of questions. Who wouldn't?

Here at Remembered.com we know that people are stressed and emotional when they lose a loved one. We try to answer every email that we receive as best we can and be sensitive to the feelings of people during bereavement. But this week we received a surprising email from someone who asked about charity...

Not really about charity, it was more subtle (NOT) - actually he asked if we are "simply making money off of people's grief?" And followed it with "That would be pretty scummy if you do."

WOW... It took me a long time to craft a response to that one...

I can't imagine walking into a funeral home and accusing them of "making money off of people's grief". To my knowledge, funeral homes, headstone makers, cemeteries, and other memorial sites are all businesses that don't donate large portions of their income to charity. Maybe they do - but I think you'd hear about it. As a six month old startup, we don't have a lot of money to donate either - but we HAVE been offering free memorials for many worthy causes in the last six months to help build awareness for them. For example:

• October - Free Memorials for Breast Cancer Awareness month
• November - Free Veterans Memorials for Veterans Day through Pearl Harbor Day
• December - Free Memorials for World AIDS Day
• January - Free Firefighters Memorials
• February - Free Memorials for Heart Disease Awareness month
• March - Memorials for Kidney Awareness month and an Organ Donation public awareness campaign

I thought our track record was pretty good. But this one email did get me thinking about how often charity is linked to a person's passing...

If you Google about charitable giving when someone dies, you'll be deluged with information about the great tax deduction that you get for doing so. You don't get much guidance about which of the many charities are best to give to for one reason - it's a very personal matter. We each have our own sympathies - there are many charities that speak to each of us in our own very personal way.

What about the deceased? Someone who dies of a heart attack may wish you give towards childhood literacy instead of the Heart Association. And since the top 10 causes only account for 55% of deaths - what about the other 45% - do they deserve less attention because of their lower body count? In 2010 Cancer became the leading cause of death worldwide - meaning we've made some great strides against malaria, AIDS, and heart disease. This begs the next question - WHICH of the thousands of cancer charities is best to help? Do we help those suffering with Cancer now? Or help those trying to prevent Cancer in the future?

There are no easy answers when death or charity are the topic...  Here's what I told our critic.

We started Remembered.com to celebrate lifetimes, not to have people wallow in grief. Simply put, this site is for the living to remember those they love. And as a 6 month old endeavor, we can always do better. So I'll tell you what we're going to do to make things better... 

1. April is Autism Awareness month. Autism is on the rise and becoming a major problem in society, affecting 1 in every 110 children - and even more startling 1 in every 70 boys born. Traditionally we would have given away free memorials to build awareness. But Autism is a problem for those living through it, or caring for someone who does. So instead we are going to give $5.00 for every paid memorial during the month of April to Autism Speaks. It's a great charity. If you don't want to create a memorial, you can donate directly to them here.
   
   
2. We are going to make redesigns to both the Funeral Notice and the Online Memorial that will allow people to specify a link to the charity of their choosing that will be tied to their memorial - forever.
3. We will help provide information to help people select charities that return a high percentage of funds raised back to their causes. CharityWatch.org lists those charities that return more than 75% of their funds on programs serving those who'll benefit from that charity. I encourage you to review their rating list next time you think of giving.

And from now on, at least at Remembered.com - Death and Charity will always be connected.

Think we made the right choice? Leave a comment below...

Remembered.com is Cool Site of the Day!

Great news coming in from all around!

Yesterday we passed 2000 "Likes" on Facebook and over 1000 followers on Twitter.
That would be reason enough to celebrate, but today we got an even better one!

March 16th, 2011 we were selected as Cool Site of the Day!

So today I'm asking for all your help in voting for us to be highly ranked at CSOTD.
Go to this link - http://bit.ly/h7miAs - Rate us a 10 and click SUBMIT

What could be easier? Thanks for the assist!

Andy & the staff @ Remembered.com

A Message for the Living...

Maybe you didn't know it, but March is National Kidney Month. In fact - March 10th is World Kidney Day. Certainly not the most glamorous day of the year is it? I'm sure it's not even on most people's calendars. 


The green ribbon is very fitting since March 10th is
World Kidney Day. Cuz just a week later, most kidneys
are getting a serious workout on St. Patricks Day.

Lets face it. There probably won't be a lot of people wearing green ribbons next week like the more popular pink, yellow, and red ones. But that doesn't make the kidney any less important. I am most certainly not talking about the kind of things that get cleared up by drinking some cranberry juice...

Chronic Kidney disease affects 26 Million Americans - and most people don't even know they have it. Kidney disease is often silent without any symptoms, it can sneak up on you, especially those who are not aware of the major risk factors. If you have high blood pressure, diabetes or a family history of these conditions or kidney disease - you should get your kidneys checked. Find out more information about screening here.

Okay - Now to what I really want to talk about.

PLEASE BECOME AN ORGAN DONOR

The human body is amazing. A living person can give up some lung, liver, or pancreas to save another person's life, and still live a relatively normal life themselves. But by far the most donated organ by a living person is the kidney. Remember this next time you wake up in a hotel room bathtub packed in ice: If you donate your kidney to a family member in need, they have a 70% chance of being around 5 years later to thank you for it. Take a look at this graph from 2009 (latest they had)...

The gap between what is needed and what is available keeps growing as our population ages. Currently:

•  110,460 people waiting
•  18 people will die each day 
•  1 donor can save up to 8 lives

This is a tremendous opportunity for you to make a difference in the lives of others after you're gone. You may think it's nothing to check off a box on a form. But it's a random gift of kindness to a complete stranger - and LIFE IS the greatest gift of all.

Go here to learn more information about becoming an organ donor... http://www.organdonor.gov/

Here at Remembered.com, we celebrate lifetimes. We want you to have a long and healthy one.

We're going to try to build awareness for National Kidney month by making memorials just 99 cents.

We hope you'll appreciate a 90% off sale, and if you've lost a loved one - create a memorial that all your family can share by getting the coupon here: http://remembered.com/healthy-kidney-month 

Thanks!

Andy & the staff @ Remembered.com

We're standing here with a Heart On!

Okay - I apologize. We've succumbed to the lure of the punny, racy headline. It's just a desperate bit for attention you see. Why are we looking for attention?

It's because February is American Heart Month...

Heart disease is the leading cause of death in the United States, and in 1963 Congress proclaimed February to be American Heart Month. We're doing our part to raise awareness for people by offering free online memorials to anyone during the month of February. Here's some key things to know...

• Did you know that the tendency to develop heart disease is passed through family generations ?
• Heart disease can be prevented by practicing healthy eating habits and frequent physical activity.
• Friday, February 4th 2011 is National Wear Red Day so wear red and tell others to do the same.
• Monday, February 14th 2011 is Valentines Day. So let your sweetie know you love them!

So if you've got a family member who's passed away due to a heart attack, stroke, or any other heart disease - this is the month to remember them. Create a memorial to them and share it with the rest of the family to build awareness about our number one killer, and how it can be prevented. Click here.

One last thing...

We're at the end of a development cycle. We're about to do some maintenance upgrades to the photo gallery and shopping cart and then we're back to creating new enhancements and features to the site. We'd love to hear from you on what we do next. You can let your opinion be heard on Uservoice - where you can vote or leave ideas. https://remembered.uservoice.com/forums/96063-general 

Thanks for your feedback!

The Staff @ Remembered.com Online Memorial Websites

Super... Heroes...

In New York City, the murder rate has been steadily dropping since around 1995 or so. Which in itself is a great thing. At the rate it's going down, the leading cause of death in NYC will soon be "acting in the new Spiderman musical". Okay, I'm kidding - you're much more likely to die waiting for the airports to open after a snowstorm. I can't leave for 4 more days? Really? Come on!

So today's blog post is really about some real heroes. The ones you see every day and probably know a few. And since tomorrow is Volunteer Firefighter's day - it's only right that we talk about our nation's bravest. Lets start here - remember these guys?

It's pretty amazing that this image has been seared into our minds for over 9 years now. I was right across the street when it all happened. Watched from the windows as the towers collapsed. When I got home I didn't sleep, didn't shower, didn't shave, didn't speak, didn't leave the house for 3 days. I was glued to the TV set and my mental state was just... In a word... F@#KEDUP.

Not everyone retreated. Some heard the call and ran out the door. It takes a certain type of personality to run TOWARDS something that is going to wreck you. I'm happy that they passed the 9-11 responder's bill in Congress. The people who put themselves in harms way when everyone else was herding in the other direction - these are our heroes. No, wait - these are our SUPER HEROES. So on January 10th, 2011 we are going to celebrate those people who heard the calling, responded, and paid the ultimate sacrifice.

So to recap... Monday, January 10th, 2011 is Volunteer Firefighter's Day. If you see a fireman, a firewoman, or a dalmation. Give them a hand, give them a hug, give them a high five. They deserve it.

We are going to do what we do best. Give them a memorial. Because someone who paid the price deserves to be recognized. And if it creates an ounce of prevention, just one less fire, and a bit more appreciation for those that risk their lives - it will be 100% my pleasure.

Create a memorial for free here: Volunteer Firefighters Online Memorials

Thanks,

The Staff @ Remembered.com

We're now on Facebook! I said - WE ARE NOW ON FACEBOOK!

Hello and Happy Holidays everyone!

One of the long-time goals of Remembered.com was to get tightly integrated with Facebook. (If you call 18 months a long time, and in technology 18 months is a lifetime...) We designed the site specifically so it would fit into the 720px Facebook wrapper. Heck, Last week we even redesigned this BLOG so it would fit into the Facebook wrapper. We're simply gluttons for punishment, what can I say?

Our goal was to create a hybrid website. Something that could work as a standalone website AND as a Facebook application. Early on we debated going with the IFrame or rewriting Remembered.com in FBML (Facebook Markup Language). We agonized over learning FBML, especially after we were just getting our hands dirty with Joomla and PHP. Our site probably seems fairly simple from the outside - but Remembered.com has a LOT of moving parts - Registration, Shopping Cart, Invite Module, Photo Gallery, Emails, Comments, etc. that all have to talk to each other - correctly.

Can you imagine having to maintain TWO versions of each? One in PHP and one in FBML? By detecting your FB wrapper it determine's which one to run? Luckily - we didn't go that way. Everything today is served up to you in a single format AND works within the context of the Facebook app. WHEW!

I have give a TON of credit to Adolfo and Ivan for keeping a lot of balls in the air and delivering a superb product to the market. They have given 110%, learned new technology in days instead of weeks, and pushed the envelope with our development partners to make this a great website.

So here we are... Out there and ready to rock. Find us on http://apps.facebook.com/beremembered/

Thanks for all your support and Happy Holidays!

Andy, Ivan, and Adolfo...

Blogs! Blogs! Blogs!

I found this handy article on Ereleases.com about ten great places to post your blog... click here
Before doing so I would definitely get a Feedburner account as it makes the process a lot simpler.

So keep an eye out for us on Bloggapaedia and Technorati real soon!

FW5XGBSJ9TVJ

Doing something special for #WorldAIDSDay

Hiya,

I hope everyone had a Happy Thanksgiving and there's a lot we all have to be thankful for. It's been awhile since we've last posted and there's been a lot of development here at Remembered.com in the last few weeks. But before talking about what we've done, let me tell you a bit about what we are doing for World AIDS Day.

AIDS has killed more than 25 million people, and an estimated 33.2 million people worldwide live with HIV, making it one of the most destructive epidemics in recorded history. And although it may not be in the limelight like it once was - AIDS is still a very much here and taking lives much too early.

World AIDS Day, observed December 1 each year, is dedicated to raising awareness of the AIDS pandemic caused by the spread of HIV infection. It is common to hold memorials to honor persons who have died from HIV/AIDS on this day. For this reason, we are offering Free Memorials for anyone who has been lost to AIDS or HIV complications for the entire month of December. Details here:

You can help spread the word and bring about more AIDS/HIV awareness by posting this on your Facebook status:

#WorldAidsDay - World AIDS day is TODAY! Paste this message to your status - Help us build HIV/AIDS Awareness. http://bit.ly/ihgJa6

Okay - now onto our latest developments for Remembered.com ...

• We've put in place a new firewall to protect against DOS attacks and bad people on the internets.
• We've added a Memorial Wall, which lets invited friends and family post comments and condolences
• We've upgrade our Facebook Connection and are able to take advantage of Facebook's more powerful API features and functions.
• We've added a new activity list, which shows all the activity associated with a memorial.
• We've integrated Remembered.com even more with Facebook, allowing activities to stream over.

Hopefully you like everything we've accomplished so far, and if you have any suggestions be sure to
let us know about them here... http://remembered.com/suggestions

Thanks!

Honor Our Veterans Today!

Today is Veterans Day. We've chosen to Honor our Vets in the best way we know how.
We're giving free memorials for any Veteran who has ever served. Ever. For details click here.

It's been awhile since we've posted so I'll give you all a rundown on what's happening...

We'd gotten great response to our Breast Cancer campaign, with a number of new memorials
created for just that purpose. Our users and traffic were up 100% over September's numbers.
We slowed down a bit at the end of October to retool, and now we're blasting off again.

We've done a number of major upgrades to the site, including a new Firewall for the website,
a new Memorial Search, a Memorial Wall where people can leave comments, and a number
of targeted ad campaigns for breast cancer awareness, and now Veteran's Day.

We hope you like some of the new changes, and there's some more in store for you in the
coming months as well. Stay Tuned...

Hey - Do you think we're just a bunch of boobs?

Did you know that 12.15% of women will have breast cancer in their lifetime? October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month and we're doing our best to contribute to awareness by offering free memorials for anyone who has passed due to breast cancer. Did you know that if you catch it early enough - your 93% likely to be still kickin' after 5 years. Another interesting fact is if you're ever diagnosed, taking aspirin is a great way to improve your odds of surviving.

We're hoping that awareness of catching it early will help increase long term survival rates and well, give us less business here at Remembered.com.

We got a lot accomplished since leaving Beta. We did a bunch of tweaks to the website layout. Launched a new Funeral Notice service that we think will take a lot of time and distance out of the bereavement process. Put our first sets of ads onto Facebook (which are doing quite well, as opposed to Google Adwords) and things are rolling along. Traffic to our website is up 88% week over week and the average visitor stays for about 5 minutes and views 5 pages of content. All good numbers for a site that's just starting out.

But as good as news gets, it's never good enough is it? This week was a bit humbling for me. I hired a consultant (I know!) to review our site and give us some ideas to a. make process improvements and b. build traffic. Oh - well here's the punch line - He's a Rabbi. Yep - He knows a bit about life and death business. But those weren't his only qualifications - he's been awarded Entrepreneur of the year and mentioned in dozens of business magazines. What the heck - why not find out if what we're doing is errrrr.... Kosher?

Apparently, we are a bunch of boobs (at least this month) and we have absolutely no idea what we're doing. In 45 minutes our good Rabbi proceeded to give me a L O N G list of things that need to change. Some ideas were great - like having a way for people to donate to charity right from the memorial, or putting testimonials from people on the site. Other ideas - like raising the prices to $39.95 and $19.95 for memorials took a little more convincing. I'd rather keep it affordable for everyone. On a scale from 1-10 I'd give our man a 9. So if you've got a small business and you need a little bit of accelleration give the good Rabbi a shout out.

So be on the lookout for a bunch of changes to the website next week. I leave you with this thought :


Q: Most bees make honey, but there is a certain type of bee that makes milk. What kind of bee makes milk?


A. Boo Bees!

Save your groans, you know you're going to repeat it at work tomorrow.

Leaving Las Betas... Get your memorials FREE for one more week.

Well here we are. Another week gone by and we're putting in a whole host of changes.

First, we're going to make some tweaks to the home page so that it looks / aligns a bit better. I think it may also help a bit with SEO but we'll see when we get there... We don't want to be like Facebook redesigning every 6-9 months, but I think the changes are a net positive.

Props out to Nicole Ferraro of InternetEvolution.com who "gagged" when she saw the Facebook "Like" button on the memorials. It didn't register with me until someone posted a memorial for a 10 year old girl. Somehow "Be the first person to LIKE this" just hit me way hard and I nearly lost it. We're changing the button as I type this.

Once the payment system is in and tested we'll be leaving Beta (finally!) and start charging for memorials. So if you have a family member or a loved one that you'd like to share photos and memories with your family, you've got a chance now to create a free commemorative memorial anytime before September 30th.

Last note - today a Utah serviceman was killed in Afghanistan. I'm thinking that it would be good if we didn't charge the military, policemen, firemen, etc. for memorials. I think anyone who has served their country should be honored in every way possible. What do you think?

Until next time...

Two weeks in - How we doin'?

Well it's been an interesting 2 weeks since we launched. Where do I start?

We're still struggling to get the shopping cart customized so that we can accept payments on the site. The software we selected is new, and they're still ironing out the bugs as we go. So much for collecting money out of this thing. The good news is that we can now offer and accept coupons on the site - so let the 100% discounts begin! (or uh... continue...)

We've gone through testing a new invite system that allows us to send HTML emails, and we did quite a bit of testing to make sure they don't arrive in your spam box when they are sent. It also has the ability to put people's photos in the email. That should be coming online this week. Fingers crossed.

We knew at some point we'd have to make a policy decision on handling memorials for pets. Then lo and behold we get our first PET MEMORIAL.  Yes, it's a pet mouse. Yes, it's from Germany. Yes, it's in German. What can I say? We now accept Pet Memorials. Guess somebody needs to update the Terms of Service. (And write a version of it in German.)

We've started running ads across a number of websites. Many are flash ads that I can't display on this blog - and some traffic is finally rolling into the site. But I really don't care for the quality of the hits you get at Adwords. Most people just close the box as soon as it pops up. There must be a better way to get people's interest...

Marketing is never easy when the subject matter is death. The press (who ironically make quite a living telling us "who died today") has really been hit or miss with our product launch. Here's a miss: Nicole Ferraro who covers Web 2.0 sites at InternetEvolution.com doesn't really care for our "social deathworking" moniker - or the subject matter in general. She found a place selling cremation jewelry - which even I admit is a bit creepy. I mean, even I draw the line at selling you a coffee mug with Uncle Joe's picture on it while his funeral is going on. It's a tightrope we walk when we're dealing with a sensitive subject, and there's very little room for humor. But every day I learn there's a little bit of room for humor, when I told one of our programmers about her negative take on things, his first response was "She's really cute."  Programmers...  ;-)

Check out her cuteness, her tirade against the ghouls of the internet (and my response) here.

That's it for this week. Tune in next week for more fun from Ghoul Central, where another press release is sure to drive the media into a somnabulistic typing frenzy. Or not...

3-2-1 LAUNCH!

Today we kicked off Remembered.com in grand fashion!

We dropped a press release out to over 300 media outlets, and I hand submitted to at least 100 more magazines and websites. Fingers are crossed but traffic to the site is flowing. You can read the release on Yahoo here.  We also got our first article written by Sherrie Giddens of the St. Louis Examiner that you can take a look at here.

We've got a number of web ads about to come online. Right now we're focusing on areas of the US that have high median age populations, and we'll broaden based on ad-testing and success. All apologies to Dave Matthews band but here's a sample ad - tell me what you think?

In other interesting news. We got picked up somehow by KillerStartups.com and profiled as one of their great startup ideas. They rank the ideas by votes given by people on the site, so if you're reading this and haven't voted - please do so by going to the blue button on the top left of this page and clicking the + button.

Work on the shopping cart continues... Adolfo's been cranking into the odd hours to get it done. There's a lot of customization to do because we don't have a lot of products to offer - basically just two, and we don't ship you  anything so it's a matter of removing code to make it align with our offerings. It's performing well in testing, and we should be able to put it online in a few weeks. That said - everyone getting in right now basically gets the site for FREE. Hooray!

Poor Ivan has been working his tail off the past week to get the site ready for primetime. I'm sure he's losing his mind with every odd request I throw his way. He made a great breakthru with our HTAccess component so that the subdomains don't get duplicate indexed. This should go a long way to helping Googlebot crawl the site correctly without a ton of garbage displaying. Longer term, he's replacing our Invite component with something new that allows HTML emails to be generated. We've still got a problem with Remembered.com mails appearing in people's spam folders, but I think it's because we're new and not necessarily a trusted commodity yet.

It's been a heck of a week... and it's only Tuesday. Sheesh.

Andy & the Staff @Remembered.com

Getting closer and closer...

This week's meeting was a long one. We covered a lot of ground though. Let me hit the high points...

Adolfo is setting up the order/payment system using a new component that he found. We gave up on the previous component because it was actually too powerful for what we needed. We would have had to customize downward for our needs. The new one shows tremendous promise from the demo, but we're starting from scratch again. I hope we're able to get it integrated quickly.

There's a ton of cleanup work from the beta, lots of little things that would make the site better. Ivan and I have been running around fielding grounders and turning and occasional double play. On the development side, he's been diligently integrating a new "invite" component that would replace our existing on.

As for me, I got in a bit of a pickle with Google. I opened an Adwords account for the company, but when I linked it to Google Analytics, I was logged in with my personal email address. Hence our cost data is not being associated with the proper adwords account. Google support has not been very helpful in rectifying the situation. Somehow I suspect a language barrier is in the equation to slow things down.

Anyway - we're pulling things together. Hopefully a couple of weeks and we're ready to blast off.

AJ

Great Meeting Today...

We're close to adding our payment systems after going through a few different options out there. The gist is that credit cards = good and paypal = bad. Not sure how we got there, but I'm comfortable with where we are going. Facebook integration right now seems very difficult. They are always changing their game and it's hard to make a solid connection with an ever changing borg.

Nuff Said - I am goodnightin'

AJ

Welcome to Remembered.com

We're going to use this our forum to post development updates and issues with Remembered.com
We hope you'll come back from time to time and learn about what we've been up to.

Andy & the Staff @ Remembered.com