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QR Codes For Memorials

Posted by samzenpus on from the last-message dept.

mikejuk writes "Companies in America, Denmark and the UK are adding QR codes to gravestones that can be used to view online memorials via smartphones. The idea is that these living headstones can include photographs, videos and memories of the dead person from family and friends. Genealogists and historians have always found graveyards a useful resource. If the QR idea takes hold memorials will be able to tell much more to future generations."

10 of 127 comments (clear)

  1. EEEEEEE by Mr.+Kinky · · Score: 5, Insightful

    If the QR idea takes hold memorials will be able to tell much more to future generations

    Yes, put obsolete technology there. Why not just put floppies?

    You don't need QR codes for that information anymore. Everything is saved anyway. You could just put the persons social security number there and all that information and much more would still be available.

    1. Re:EEEEEEE by aNonnyMouseCowered · · Score: 4, Insightful

      The QR codes would only work as advertised if the "cloud" part of the system is still intact. Otherwise you'd have just some fancy hieroglyphics for future archaelogists to decipher. If this is the case, why not just carve out the human readable URL of the poor dude's FB/Twitter/G+ page.

    2. Re:EEEEEEE by hairyfeet · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I have one word for those that think this would be a good idea....Geocities? Anybody remember Geocities? people had their whole lives on those pages and guess what? Went tits up and bye bye all that work. Of course most people aren't web designers so it was a brightly colored nightmare, but hey, some people like gaudy crap.

      For these to work you have to have a "permanent cloud", we're talking centuries permanent, except the cloud is the biggest "her today, gone this afternoon" medium we have. if you want to do something like this what we need is the data embedded in the stone itself, hell putting a fricking flash stick in the rock would be a better idea than this, at least if you have it built in the rock, with it read only, it should last for decades if the person isn't rock star popular.

      TLDR? Stupid idea because it depends on something that never lasts.

      --
      ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
  2. Future generations? by pnot · · Score: 4, Insightful

    If the QR idea takes hold memorials will be able to tell much more to future generations.

    Uh huh. How many future generations? For how long are QR codes going to be a popular format, and for how long are these companies going to be around?

    1. Re:Future generations? by Minwee · · Score: 5, Funny

      QR codes may not be popular for long, but they are easy enough to build a program to read. Do you really think future humans will be carrying around weaker computers than we are now?

      The company being around is not that important considering you can store ~2KB in a QR code.

      Wonderful. Future humans with their amazingly powerful computers will be able to decipher such amazing messages as "http://www.qr-memories.co.uk/memorials4less/115223/b11235/4.gif".

      Through sufficiently advanced technology, future generations may eventually use that message to discover that their great uncle Leon's favourite number was 404.

    2. Re:Future generations? by gman003 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      More to the point, how long are QR codes on a tombstone going to be readable?

      When I visited England, I visited several churches and graveyards. Some of them were barely legible, after sitting out in the rain (and acid rain) for centuries. I know QR codes have a lot of error correction on them, but are they going to be readable after 1cm of stone has eroded away?

  3. Re:QR codes != information by Sarten-X · · Score: 3, Informative

    Wrong. QR codes can store over 2KB of arbitrary binary data.

    --
    You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
  4. What will future generations really see? by ljhiller · · Score: 4, Funny
    Get the best deals on:
    Cars
    Mortgages
    Viagra
    This website www . eternalmemories . com is available. (C) 2015 Godaddy.com

    Nothing is so impermanent as an online web service.

  5. Re:QR code ubiquity by Sarten-X · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Thanks to the error correction algorithms and necessarily-lenient recognition, QR codes can be colorful, stylized, and smoothly integrated into most graphic designs.

    Of course, the disconnect between nerds who know this and the artists who make the signs means we'll be stuck with ugly QR codes for a while.

    --
    You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
  6. Re:Companies don't live forever. by pnot · · Score: 3, Informative

    QR codes can store more data than just a website address. In addition to a URL, name, dates, and a brief biography are reasonable things to include in a large QR code.

    But at that point you may as well write the brief biography in English, and save your descendants from having to figure out how to read a QR code.

    If our forebears had done this a hundred years ago, great-great-grandad's brief biography would be encoded on a bronze punch-card in an encoding nobody can find the documentation for. Text, on the other hand, has been working just fine for millenia.