onlime memorial sites

Best Internet Bereavement Resource

21 September 2016
Fran Hall
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Categories: bereavement, funeral trends, Good Funeral Awards, memorialisation, onlime memorial sites

09-jonathan-davies-muchloved-best-internet-bereavement-resource

Jonathan Davies of MuchLoved.com

MuchLoved, the UK’s best and most ethical memorial website, is ten years old this year, and has facilitated more than £25 million of donations to charities. The award celebrates these achievements together with the unpaid input of co-founder Andy Daniels.

Andy Daniels, who founded MuchLoved.com with Jonathan Davies, and is the technical brains behind the platform, is stopping day-to-day work with MuchLoved this year after more than a decade of unpaid volunteer work helping to create and then develop the service. He’s lost thousands of hours of sleep in the meantime. Andy has played a leading part in getting MuchLoved.com to where it is today.

MuchLoved was conceived and founded by Jonathan Davies after he suffered the sudden death of his brother Philip aged just 21 whilst at University in 1995. MuchLoved is the working name of the MuchLoved Charitable Trust which was awarded registered charity status early in 2007. It is run by a board of trustees.

Jonathan Davies said: “In the mid and late 1990’s I lost both my brother and mother in quick succession. My brother’s death at the young age of 21 was in particular sudden, unexpected and overwhelming in shock.

“I was keen to create some sort of online memorial to him, a legacy that could show many of his happy years and make it easy for his school and university friends in particular to view, make contact and send in pictures and thoughts of their own. After some research I found however that there was no appropriate service available and I also felt that the technology and cost needed to create the type of tribute I wanted was prohibitive.

“I was also preoccupied with my own grieving and sense of loss and imagined that people were maybe not yet ready for the idea of an online memorial. After a few years my life started to move on again in a positive direction, with marriage and children, but the idea did not go away. In March 2000 I registered the domain name MuchLoved.com and a couple of years later started to meet with my friend and computer programmer Andy Daniels to discuss actively making the idea a reality.”

MuchLoved.com is a labour of love. Andy’s volunteer work is matched by the commitment, hours of unpaid work and thousands of pounds of his own money that Jonathan Davies himself has poured into this project.

 

Runner Up in this category: Funeral Stationery 4U

Should old acquaintance be forgot

5 June 2014
Charles
2 Comments
Categories: onlime memorial sites

There was a time, way back when the world was new and green (remember green?) and a joyous revolution in funerals was imminent. It was a time when scarcely a day passed without the launch of a new online memorial website. The concept ticked all the boxes, floated all the boats, captured the zeitgeist: innovation + web technology + new trends in commemoration (remember the great Baby Boomer Fallacy?) Some were in it for love, others for money. The GFG team celebrated every new arrival.

In the right hands the online memorial website is an excellent concept capable of offering much solace to the bereaved. But only great techies with their hearts in the right place can ever get the concept to work. There have been some egregious turkeys.

Our own favourite, the Titanic of the genre, was the late lamented EternalSpace, pictured above, which launched in 2009 awash with venture capital and sunk days later. It offered grievers highly monetisable “peaceful, serene online environments” where you could choose “your own tranquil landscape that could be “customized to reflect and honor an individual’s life and legacy”. You could buy “virtual tribute gifts, selecting from a diverse range of items including flowers, trees, candles, hobby and sports memorabilia, and other unique gifts that reflect the personality, interests and life of each individual.” It was truly madly deeply bonkers.

Over the years, new sites have sprung up overnight to a blare of PR-inspired publicity, then withered and perished along with all their memories becoming, in their extinction, the antithesis of everything they had aspired to be.

Startups have declined to a trickle in the last 3 years. The very few stayers have improved their functionality, refined their service and worked on their sustainability. In addition to giving bereaved people a place to go, day or night, where they can reflect on the person who has died and share memories, online memorial sites now, also, facilitate online fundraising; and they have partnered with funeral directors, offering them an own-branded memorial site, bringing a welcome element of localism to what can seem a remote and cloud-borne entity. This has enabled them to bring more people into awareness of their presence at the same time as enabling funeral directors to enhance their service by offering their clients a useful grief resource. All good. Market stable.

Then the other day we noticed that Tamworth Co-op and Midlands Co-op had signed up with HeavenAddress. Never heard of it? Nor had we. So we checked it out. Loads of funeral homes in the South Pacific; no others in the UK except for AB Walker in Reading. What’s so special? Nothing we could see. Baffled. If we missed something, tell us.

Check out the Tamworth Co-op page here.

And then do what we do, and compare it with MuchLoved’s branded site for, say, Arthur C Towner here.

Little point in checking out Midlands Co-op because, doh, HeavenAddress links it to a memorial website called RememberedForever (nope, we hadn’t either) not to be confused with RememberedForever (you’d be forgiven). The latter is a dot org, but we can’t find it at Companies House or the Charity Commission. Its ownership is a mystery. We’d love to post a screenshot of its home page so you could enjoy the misspelling of ‘remembrances’ at the top right, but its Ts and Cs threaten dire consequences: “any re-publication of the Websites or content on the Websites is strictly prohibited, and You agree that the consequences of commercial use or re-publication may be so serious and incalculable that monetary compensation may not be a sufficient or appropriate remedy.” Incalculable? Heck, what would be appropriate? Baseball bats? We offer them the words of Psalm 112:  Surely the righteous will never be shaken; they will be remembered forever. They will have no fear of bad news; their hearts are steadfast, trusting in the Lord. Their hearts are secure, they will have no fear; in the end they will look in triumph on their foes.

Anyway, you can see the misspelling here. 

Apologies for the digression. As we say, in the right hands the online memorial website is a great concept. We at the GFG have long been fans of MuchLoved because we think their heart’s in the right place and they’re impressively bright — they’re ethical and they’re savvy. They’re also a proper charity. If someone better came along, of course we’d switch allegiance just like that.

For now, however, it seems to us, they remain way, way out in front.

MuchLoved launches multi-charity fundraising in memory

22 May 2014
Charles
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Categories: memorialisation, onlime memorial sites

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Example of a MuchLoved online charity giving page

 

We’re always happy to promote the work of top people we really like. One of them is Jonathan Davies and his team at MuchLoved.

MuchLoved is the pioneer of online charity fundraising at funerals. Enhancements to the website’s functionality means it’s now possible to fundraise for any number of charities.

“This in part reflects the fact that many more people now have pre-existing relationships with charities as a consequence of participating in fundraising events such as charity runs and walks. Therefore when it comes to arranging a funeral, family members often decide to nominate more than one charity, a request that can multiply the administrative work for the Funeral Director in dealing with the associated cash and cheque burden!”

You can check out how it works by taking a look at this example here.

A survey by the GFG of online fundraising websites is available here: Fundraising in memory

Online grieving — candles

2 April 2012
Charles
5 Comments
Categories: onlime memorial sites

From the message board at GoneTooSoon: 

Q. Could someone help I already remove the candles of the person I would like to block can I still block them if so how? Thank you

A. hiya courtney to be able to block anyone the have to be in the list of relations/relation to admin see memorial options right hand side of your garden if another member is giving you any problem then please open a support ticket you will see help at the top of any page click on there to open ticket and get help from admin hope this helps

Modern life

28 February 2012
Charles
6 Comments
Categories: onlime memorial sites

 

 

yesterday was my mum’s heavenly birthday i light candles every day for my friends angels and wish them heavenly birthdays and put a pic in there garden yes she had a couple of verses put on but not one heavenly birthday wish or pic i know people dont have to do this but i feel hurt when i think what i do for my angel friend i have also notice although i light every day my angels are getting less and less candles can someone tell me why i know i dont light candle to get candles back for my angels but on special days it would be nice .

 

Message posted at online memorial site GoneTooSoon

Modern times

27 February 2012
Charles
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Categories: onlime memorial sites

Rum goings-on emerge from the online memorial website GoneTooSoon here (which we’ve never had a lot of time for at the GFG), where a variation of trolling seems to be going on. In an online discussion titled Victim of FAKE memorials 🙁  Vicki writes:

I’m sorry, but recently, I have been the victim of several fake memorials, I have made photos, lit candles, and even bought these fake people presents!!! As soon as I hear that these memorials are fake, I remove every one as relation, remove all candles, photos and gifts left to these fake people!!

Because of the large amount of fake memorials coming from the Brothers and Sisters of Suicide Group Garden 
http://brothers-and-sisters-of-suicide.gonetoosoon.org/memorial/ I have removed myself from all connections with this garden. I do not support fake memorials and the other members of the garden can decide for themselves whether they want to stay or not.

I am not very happy about this. I remember many times being in so much pain, but wanting to help these people (who, I now find out are not real)! 

I’m going to have to take a break from here until I can figure this out. I may have to leave. This literally makes me sick. I’ll let you know what I decide. All my love, Vicki

So far as we can see, GoneTooSoon has taken its suicide garden down. 

No opportunity wasted

17 February 2012
Charles
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Categories: Bastards, onlime memorial sites, scandals

Posted by Vale

Someone dies and another sees an opportunity: death is an opening in more ways than one. Now, it seems, the cyber criminals have got in on the act. When Whitney Houston was discovered in her bath at the weekend all the nodes and synapses of the internet flickered into life and, as the Malware Blog reports, Cybercriminals were quick to take advantage. The site found a fake video spreading on Facebook:

Wall posts with the subject “I Cried watching this video. RIP Whitney Houston” come with link to the supposed video. Clicking it leads them to a Facebook page that contains a link to the video. However, clicking this link only leads to several redirections until users are lead to the usual survey scam site.

Apparently the same trick was tried when Amy Winehouse died. I can’t for the life of me make out the commercial benefit, but there must be some. Don’t you hate this way that death can generate this sort of conscience-less entrepreneurialism? No, wait a minute…

Can you identify me?

27 January 2012
Charles
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Categories: Attitudes to dead bodies, bereavement, Death masks, Memorialising, onlime memorial sites

Posted by Vale

A young girl went missing. A body was found. A young man went to the police and said that she might be his sister. They said that was not possible; her age is wrong. That was how it happened back in 1994.

Today, police are looking for this man. The man who said that the young unidentified girl found in Pogonip Park was his sister. She still might not be his sister, but they need to find him to make sure.

The young girl was murdered in an area of the park where homeless people stayed. Now new tests have shown that she might have been younger than the police first thought…

I was an African American Male, about 50 years old, I stood about 5’8 and I wore a gold loop earring in my left ear. Now you know what they know. What they don’t know and maybe you do is my name.

Let me back up for a minute.

On July 23, 2006, a man and his son were crossing Mosquito Lake (Cortland, Ohio – Trumbull County) in the swampy area. While they were crossing they saw what they believed to be human remains. The authorities were contacted. Tests were run, they figured out my general description, the one I gave you above; but they couldn’t match me to any of their records on file, missing persons, etc. In time, the phone stopped ringing and all leads simply dried up.

The unknown victim is one of many whose stories are told on an American blog called Can You Identify Me? In its own words:

The site was started in 2007 as a blog dedicated to America’s Unidentified. It brings these individuals back to life if only for a brief moment to share some invaluable information along with their forensic reconstructions. Can You Identify Me gives the victim a first-person narrative and temporary Doe name until someone out there recognizes them. Once they are identified, they can be reunited with their families and the victims can rest in peace with a tombstone shining with their given name.

As one of their readers says ‘Not many blogs make me stop and read almost all their current posts. Topics like these bring be extreme sadness. Its a great thing you are doing. It saddens me to see how many lives go off without any closure.’

You can find the site here.

Online amnesia

3 November 2011
Charles
2 Comments
Categories: memorialisation, onlime memorial sites

ObituariesToday.com is national obituary service, with funeral home listings, pre-planning information, a resource section for funeral information, as well as obituaries and memorial announcements. In other words it’s one of those online memorial websites. There are lots and lots of them. 

If you want to find the page on ObituariesToday which commemorates, shall we say, David Victor Regier, you go straight to it by clicking this link — here. 

Yes, whoops.

We can’t find out what’s happened to Obituariestoday.com. It looks as if it might have gone down with all decedents and everybody’s memories of them. It wouldn’t be the first online memorial site to have suffered this fate.

Caveat online memorialiser bigtime.

Here at the GFG we only endorse (and hugely admire) MuchLoved.com