Before You Depart:
Preparing For The Unexpected

An interesting story has been in the news and on the blogosphere lately about Oscar, a cat who can apparently tell when nursing home patients are going to die by curling up next to them in their final hours. According to the New England Journal of Medicine, “he has presided over the deaths of more than 25 residents on the third floor of Steere House Nursing and Rehabilitation Center in Providence, Rhode Island.”

According to a CNN.com article, the families of the gravely ill nursing home patients mostly appreciate the advance warning he provides. At first I found this fact surprising because I thought the families would have been terrified of this feline harbinger of death. Thinking about it more, I would find a lot of comfort knowing that a gravely ill family member was being cuddled by a loving cat in their last moments.

Here are a few other places with their take on the Oscar story:
http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/full/357/4/328 - The New England Journal of Medicine article referenced above.
http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/07/25/death.cat.ap/index.html - The CNN.com article referenced above.
http://www.mentalfloss.com/blogs/archives/7060 - This one features a bunch of LOLcat cartoons people have created (warning, not all of these are in the best taste).
http://lolcats.com/ - A link to the official LOLcat website, so you know what “LOLcat” even means. http://digg.com/offbeat_news/The_LOLcat_of_death_pics - The previous article is very popular on social bookmarking website Digg.com

I was sent an article today about a new website, MyDeathSpace.com, that covers individuals who have passed away and have a myspace account: http://www.cnn.com/…dying.on.the.web.ap/index.html

It is definitely an interesting idea since more and more of peoples’ lives are being lived online. A myspace profile may be the culmination of hundreds of hours of time spent creating a profile, uploading pictures, interacting with friends, and building a network. When someone dies, it is no longer just the people in their local community that are affected; everyone they interact with online feel the loss too.

Coverage of this sort of site points to something we have been seeing for a while now, and that is greater acceptance of death as a part of life in this society. One of our early concerns with the YouDeparted service is that people would be too squeamish to think about their own mortality, regardless of how necessary it is to do so. Interest in our service and articles like the one about MyDeathSpace in CNN point to the fact that people are willing to face the inevitable head-on and even with a bit of humor.

Today, Collin and I looked through our email accounts and found passwords to our online services, bank statements, financial information, contact information for just about everyone we know, and a whole lot more. When someone passes away, being able to access the email account of the deceased can be a great help to the survivors since important information can be viewed, contacts can be notified, and future emails can be retrieved. Unless you have the login information, obtaining access to an email account of the deceased typically requires death certificates, powers of attorney, and long waiting periods for all the paper work to go through.

For instance, here are the steps necessary to obtain access to a Gmail account of the deceased:

1. Your full name and contact information, including a verifiable email address.
2. The Gmail address of the individual who passed away.
3a. The full header from an email message that you have received at your verifiable email address, from the Gmail account in question. (To obtain the header from a message in Gmail, open the message, click ‘More options,’ then click ‘Show original.’ Copy everything from ‘Delivered- To:’ through the ‘References:’ line. To obtain headers from other webmail or email providers, please refer to http://www.spamcop.com/help_with_headers/)
3b. The entire contents of the message.
4. A copy of the death certificate of the deceased.
5. A copy of the document that gives you Power of Attorney over the Gmail account.
6. If you are the parent of the individual, please send us a copy of the Birth Certificate if the Gmail account owner was under the age of 18. In this case, Power of Attorney is not required.

In order to make the whole process infinitely simpler and quicker for your family if something happens to you, we have a special “Passwords” category built right into all YouDeparted accounts. Just like every other type of entry, your Passwords are encrypted with military-grade 256 bit AES, so you can rest assured they are safely and securely stored in your YouDeparted.com account. Recording your email passwords and designating who should receive them is very easy to do with YouDeparted, and will ensure that your family will not have to deal with complicated paperwork and waiting periods.

Over the last couple days, we have gotten some great coverage!

Check out this article by Anita Creamer in the Sacramento Bee:
http://www.sacbee.com/107/story/289271.html

See this writeup on one of the most popular blogs in the world, TechCrunch: http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/07/26/youdeparted…

It has been interesting creating and updating my own youdeparted.com account and it has forced me to rethink some of the information I have posted to the site.

For example, shutting off the water in the winter. If you read my last post, I added information about shutting the water off. As I started to write it, I realized how difficult it would be for anybody but me! Not only is the valve in a very difficult place, but once you get to the valve,  (you have to twist and turn yourself around all kinds of obstacles) you need to have a bucket handy. Next, you have to somehow thread the bucket through all the pipes to catch all the water draining from the outside lines. Otherwise the little room gets about two inches of water all over the floor.

So…until I wrote it out, I just never thought it would be so complicated. Now I realize it’s time to make it simpler. I’m going to move the water valves, connect a pipe so it can drain outside so you don’t need the bucket anymore.  Okay, this is a small thing, but I noticed man details which need improvement.

Every time I use the site, I feel I’m getting more organized and changing some of my methods. This not only will make it easier for my family when the time comes, but it’s making things easier for me now.

As one of the founders of the company, many of you have asked me what I have in my youdeparted account. Since I have several business interests, an active household and many hobbies, I have slowly been adding to my account as something comes up.

1) Instructions for turning the sprinklers and outside hose bibs on and off. This is something I’ve always done and my wife and family probably would not give it a thought. Without instructions on this, nobody would remember and then my family would have burst pipes everywhere.

2) Detailed business instructions. I have written who my suppliers are, what they supply. Who my distributors are. Banking and business Insurance information. Details of my credit card merchant accounts. Telephone and internet service. 940, 941, estimated taxes, etc and all the other forms the IRS needs.

Weekly I think of something new to add to this section as I want my family to have the opportunity to continue running my businesses should something happen to me.

3) Personal information. I have many on-line accounts so all my usernames, passwords and url’s are listed and what they are for. All of the bills I pay on-line and when there due. Property taxes, insurance both home and car. Life Insurance Policies and agent names. Health insurance policies. All my credit card accounts. The number and location of my safety deposit box and what’s in it. Listings of my brothers and sisters with their names and addresses. Anybody I want contacted when I die. IRS information. These people don’t care if you are dead or not if you still owe taxes!

Burial information. Okay, this was a tough one. I never really thought about it until now! Who wants to think of such a thing. But then, better I leave good instructions for my family now. I decided to donate any good organs, my remains to be cremated and scattered at the top of my favorite jogging trail. My wife and I decided to purchase burial plots in Appleton, ME where we can have a marker. Still haven’t decided if I want an open casket and can’t quite picture what I’ll be wearing…but hey, I’ll keep thinking of this one. My wife says I look good in my suit. Jeez!

Wills and Trusts. I uploaded copies of my will and trust. I just scanned them and upload them. I probably won’t upload my insurance documents as copies of these are readily available, but sure hate to lose my trust documents so nice to have a copy now.

Personal Organizer
I’ve also been using the site as a personal organizer for information I usually forgot like my kayak and locker combinations. I keep copies of my passport and drivers license. I have started a home inventory with pictures of all our possessions. I keep thinking of new things I want to put on the site.

Upload or make Entries?
If I already have information written out, say in Word or Excel, I’ll just upload the document with instructions on whats in it. If it is something new, then I’ll just type it out on the site.

As I make new entries, I’ll keep reporting on my progress. I plan to keep everything updated as often as information changes.

We just rolled out a free* “Mini” accounts and 14-day free trials on all premium accounts so now you can try YouDeparted completely risk free. Check out the new accounts here. We also streamlined the sign up process so now you can literally get a YouDeparted account in mere seconds rather than minutes. We hope you like the updates!

Given that we are offering a very unique service, we want to let people take a thorough look first to try it out. With the Mini account, you can store a small number of entries and up to 1MB of space, and specify who will receive your entries if something happens to you. With the premium accounts you can store from 100 to unlimited entries and up to 5GB of pictures, movies, documents, audio, and other files. Our pricing is very competitive with many of the top online storage providers with the added benefit that we are more secure and that your account can be unlocked if something happens to you. With all accounts, you can specify which of your Recipients will receive each piece of information.

Again, we hope the updates come as welcome news, and we always appreciate any feedback or comments!

-The team at YouDeparted.com

*The account is free for 90 days. At any time you can upgrade into our basic account and all your information will be transferred.

Early this morning, a powerful 6.7-magnitude earthquake shook northwestern Japan resulting in at least three deaths and hundreds of injuries. According to an article in the New York Times, the devastating quake destroyed about 300 buildings in the city of Kashiwazaki and “flattened dozens of wooden houses and triggered a fire at a nuclear power plant.” Our hearts go out to everyone in Japan affected by this disaster.

Earthquakes are simply a matter of fact in many parts of the world and especially in densely populated Japan. Here in the western United States we are no strangers to earthquakes either. Take a look at the map above that shows faults and recent earthquakes in California/Nevada. We do have a few faults running around us here on the north shore of Tahoe.

Living in an earthquake prone area means we must accept the reality of the situation and be prepared for chance that one will actually happen. A recent report placed the probability of a major earthquake occurring in the Bay Area in the next 30 years at greater than 62%!

So if you live where the ground may unexpectedly throw your life into turmoil at any time, you most certainly should have your essentials in order and in a safe place.

Hello everyone, we’ll get back to covering the usual topics of this blog, but right now we have some important news about our service:

As stated in the last post, we have increased the total secure online storage space that comes with each account. You can now upload from one to five gigabytes depending on the type of membership you have.

We have also changed our annual pricing in order to ensure YouDeparted’s continued quality and security far into the future. Current members will not be affected by the price change until their renewal date.

Our introductory pricing of $9.95/yr for an account with 20mb of space is now $29.95/yr and comes with 1GB.  An account with 2GB is now $39.95/yr and 5GB is now $59.95/yr.

More about the pricing change:
We want the best for you, our customers, and you are buying the YouDeparted service to organize and store vital information which is passed on if something happens to you. You truly rely on our service to do take care of very important matters. In order to ensure that we can offer you the best customer service, security, and product, it is necessary for us to have the resources to do so far into the future. Our pricing change provides those resources.

When you think about it, our pricing is quite a bargain for what you get:
A service that passes on information that will truly help your family if something happens to you.
The ability to create and store an unlimited number of entries and messages for family and friends.
An utterly secure, encrypted, electronic safe deposit box with enough storage space to keep thousands of documents, pictures, movies, audio and more.
A service that helps you get your own life organized.
A service you can use while traveling to keep backups of essentials like your passport, credit cards, itineraries, visas, and travel documents.
Peace of mind because you will know that if something happens to you, your family will have everything they need.

We have decided to significantly increase the amount of file storage that comes with YouDeparted accounts. This will come as welcome news to our members who want to store large amounts of pictures, videos, copies of documents, and other files. Every account includes the ability to create an unlimited number of entries.

Here are the new numbers:
Basic account - 1GB - $9.95/yr
Enhanced Account -  2GB  $19.95/yr
Ultimate Account -  5GB -  $39.95/yr