Virtual Heaven is one of many sites on the World Wide Web that will let you post a memorial. May some solace be found in the knowledge that the memories of those who enhanced and enriched the lives of others are able to exist, through the wonders of digitalization, indefinitely within this most eternal of sites. Despite the prevalence among them of Hallmark-style floral graphics and banal euphemisms, there's almost always some core of genuine emotion at work. Digital graveyards tend to be depressingly sloppy compared to the genuine article. For obvious reasons, stonecutters don't make typos.
Some memorial sites are simply attempts to find a business niche in the hardscrabble online world.
Judging by the sparse population of these virtual boneyards, none of them is raking it in. Free sites, like the Virtual Memorial Garden or Deathnet's Garden of Remembrance , tend to do brisker business. Still, however ill-executed and underpopulated these sites may be, they are clearly onto something. And instead of disappearing into dusty microfilm drawers, the words honoring the deceased live on through hypertext and search-engine hits. Even if we assume that the Web itself sticks around for a long while, there's no guarantee that the Internet company you choose for your memorial is going to be in business in a hundred or even a dozen years.