THE PRINCIPLE

Pushing boundaries opens up new possibilities

Facebook, Twitter and all manner of other social networking sites let you communicate easily with friends and family. Most of us would expect that communication to stop when we leave this life. But the people behind a company called I-Postmortem decided not to stop at the usual boundaries.

With their i-memorial service you can build your own virtual memorial and leave messages to be delivered after you’re no longer around. You can upload video, audio, photos, text, music and documents to tell your own life story and perhaps say things you didn’t want to say while you were alive.

The company has secure servers based in Switzerland. When they get proof of death, they make the person’s account go live (so to speak) on the internet, as an i-tomb. Friends and family members can add tributes, and a post-mortem administrator, who may have been chosen by the departed, can control what’s added.

It’s too early to judge how successful the company will be but they get full marks for not letting conventional limits restrict their thinking. What boundaries could you push to create a whole new category for your product or service?