Attachable tablet adds digital data to cemetery headstones

After eons of little change in the world of gravestones and memorials, we’ve begun to see new innovations popping with increasing regularity. Several of the ones we’ve featured have focused on adding a sense of personal style to memorials and urns—Shine on Brightly, for example—but it was only just recently that we spotted one that brings cemetery markers into the digital age. RosettaStone is a palm-sized stone tablet with an embedded microchip and up to six engraved symbols that can be selected to represent key milestones or affiliations in the deceased’s life. The brainchild of Arizona-based Objecs LLC, the RosettaStone can be preinstalled in a new gravestone or added to an existing one to create a technologically enhanced memorial that will allow future site visitors to read the deceased’s story from a mobile device. Both photos and text can be linked with any RosettaStone, including genealogical information, achievements and relationships or even favourite recipes and philosophical beliefs. Using NFC-RFID technology, an enabled phone need only be touched to the tablet to display its associated information; for phones that are not NFC-enabled, the information can be accessed via an associated URL. Mounted outdoors, the granite RosettaStone is expected to last 3,200 years. It’s currently priced at USD 191. Online connections are enhancing countless objects in the offline world, but it’s hard to imagine one with more potential to have a lasting emotional impact. Objecs currently has partnerships in place in the US, Canada and the UK; one to team up with elsewhere on the distribution end…? (Related: App lets users attach digital content to any barcode — Google window decals link online & off for popular retailers — Wine by numbers, with a digital content twist — Connecting online and off with rfid for the masses.) Spotted by: Simon Kirby