First, Wu showed how, at least in California, digital data could be viewed as property just like physical property that an executor of a will should be able to obtain with a court order. “‘Property’ means anything that may be the subject of ownership and includes both real and personal property and any interest therein,” California probate code states.

And it turns out the data can have value. A recently deceased writer might have stored a breakthrough novel in her Dropbox, or she might have valuable assets on Second Life. She might have bought songs on iTunes, too. If those accounts get automatically deleted, though, the value can go away.

“What happens to that music upon death? It’s not really clear,” said Wu (pictured).

Literal money could also get lost, Wu said. If, say, $1,000 is sitting idle in her PayPal account, the money might not get passed to her relatives and instead could end up as unclaimed property on a state level.

Different states have different policies in place on what happens to data after death.

As Wu pointed out in a white paper this week, Oklahoma allows an executor or administrator to take control of social media accounts and email accounts, although cloud storage accounts and PayPal-like services aren’t included. Connecticut and Rhode Island only grant control over email accounts, Wu said.

Wu recommends that people share usernames and passwords with people they trust — an idea that has come up before. But that method might not always work, because some companies have their own answers to the data-after-death question. Yahoo’s terms of service declares that an account cannot be transferred and that its contents “terminate upon your death.” That could pose problems for estate planners, Wu said.

Google takes a different approach. Last month, it introduced its Inactive Account Manager as a way to handle what happens to a people’s Google Accounts after death. “Google has taken a really great step by making this an option,” said Jed Brubaker, a UC Irvine Ph.D. candidate speaking at the conference who also thinks about data after death. More attention on the Inactive Account Manager could lead other companies to ask users to set their own policies up front, Brubaker said.

Beyond the variability among states and companies, it’s worth asking if access to data post-mortem should extend beyond family members and enter some kind of publicly accessible data repository, which data scientists and presumably anyone else could explore. In presenting this concept, Brubaker used the word “donate,” not unlike a person permitting organ donations after death.

While it isn’t always fun to talk about death, it might make sense to talk more about data after death, because until clear policies emerge, dealing with it all is going to remain messy.

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Before blogging became a big business, Stern created a tech blog called Center Networks, which became a go-to destination for many in the early Web 2.0 movement. Later, he sold that business and shifted focus to a new startup called CloudContacts — and more recently, he moved from his home town of New York to Austin, Texas to start a company called Let’s Talk Fitness.

My good friend @allenstern has passed. Founder of @centernetworks back in the day. The original blogger king, and a heart of gold. :(

—
Louis Gray (@louisgray) April 07, 2013

Having struggled with his weight for much of his life, Stern poured his energy into becoming more healthy, and had lost more than 125 pounds in the past year or so, according to his friend Louis Gray. His most recent business was aimed at helping others achieve similar results with the use of fruit and vegetable smoothies and other products, and he had built a large following for his newsletter.

Here’s what Om had to say about Allen:

“He was a stand-up guy and always spoke his mind. He never took to fools and as a result always found himself defending those who couldn’t defend themselves. I met him once, briefly at a Techcrunch 50 event, but we were internet friends and often exchanged Facebook and Twitter messages. He was always in good cheer, ready to share a moment of sadness and spread the happiness. As a fellow Yankees fan, he and I would often talk baseball during our exchanges.”

Tech and health blogging innovator Allen Stern has died. He was a kind man with a lot of integrity & hustle. facebook.com/allenstern/pos…

—
Marshall Kirkpatrick (@marshallk) April 07, 2013

Louis Gray, a startup advisor who now works at Google and wrote a remembrance of his friend on his blog, had this to say:

“I’ll miss Allen. I missed it when he stopped posting as regularly to CenterNetworks as he once did. But more, I’ll miss the fun email threads and fun phone cals that always left me laughing and feeling better. Death sucks and tonight, I’m sad. Bye, Allen.”

So terrible to hear that @AllenStern, a longtime NY tech fixture, passed away this week: bit.ly/14NHAq9 (via @DanDotLewis)

—
Caroline McCarthy (@caro) April 07, 2013

Others have also posted their memories of Stern, including Dan Lewis — who founded the site ArmchairGM and is now the director of new media for Sesame Workshop — and another early blogger named Duncan Riley, who said Allen would be sorely missed by friends who “came to appreciate a big guy with a huge heart who spoke as we all should: honestly and from the heart.” Author and entrepreneur Jesse Stay posted on his Google+ page:

“This is devastating news – even though we never met in person (but I sincerely hoped to, and have had numerous remote video conversations with him), I considered Allen Stern a dear friend of mine. He always knew how to lift people up and make them laugh. I sincerely enjoyed his health posts as of recent, and am very sad to hear of his death. This was way too soon, and many, I’m sure are mourning with me.”

Oh my. My friend @allenstern has passed. A big loss to our community. Very sad.

—
Micah Baldwin (@micah) April 07, 2013

As tech blogging became more and more of a cut-throat business, Allen remained a personal friend to most, and was always sincere in his openness to others. As Om put it: “The world just got a lot less nicer because of this one subtraction. Give heaven a taste of your heaven, Allen — you will be missed by me and thousands of others whose lives you touched.”

Post and thumbnail images courtesy of Flickr user Chris Tingom

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Twitter didn’t turn Ebert into a star, of course — he was already well known as half of the Siskel and Ebert movie-reviewing team long before he moved online, and his TV presence in turn came about because he was a popular film columnist with the Chicago Sun-Times. But after he was diagnosed with thyroid cancer in 2002, and had to have a series of operations that eventually left him unable to speak without a computer voice simulator, he poured much of his enthusiasm for life and the movies into Twitter and other social-media tools, including his personal blog.

I’m glad @ebertchicago got his voice back with Twitter.—
Burrito Justice (@burritojustice) April 04, 2013

In a piece he wrote in 2010 for his Chicago Sun-Times blog, Ebert celebrated the role that Twitter played in his life, something he said he never expected to say of the social network that he originally saw as an irrelevant distraction. As he put it:

“I vowed I would never become a Twit. Now I have Tweeted nearly 10,000 Tweets. I said Twitter represented the end of civilization. It now represents a part of the civilization I live in. I said it was impossible to think of great writing in terms of 140 characters. I have been humbled by a mother of three in New Delhi. I said I feared I would become addicted. I was correct.”

The part about being humbled by a mother of three in New Delhi says a lot about how Ebert used Twitter to connect with his readers — and critics. His passing was mourned by celebrities, but he was also more than willing to talk (and argue) with just about anyone who felt like engaging with him, and not just about movies but about plenty of other things as well. One follower who took part in a debate with him remembered how he and Ebert argued about the artistic value of video games.

A @rogerebert tweet is worth as much traffic as a small Digg or YCombinator hit. Crazy. That's some distribution power.

—
Alexis C. Madrigal (@alexismadrigal) August 05, 2012

In a sense, Ebert’s adoption of Twitter was somewhat ironic, since social media has helped to rob traditional movie reviewers of much of their authority — to the point where many newspapers don’t even employ a dedicated reviewer any more. But for Ebert, it became a lifeline, and one that only enhanced his popularity. He also came up with his own rules for how to use Twitter, which are good advice not just for journalists but for anyone:

“My rules for Twittering are few: I tweet in basic English. I avoid abbreviations and ChatSpell. I go for complete sentences. I try to make my links worth a click. I am not above snark, no matter what I may have written in the past. I tweet my interests, including science and politics, as well as the movies. I try to keep links to stuff on my own site down to around 5 or 10%. I try to think twice before posting.”

His interest in new-media tools extended beyond Twitter too: While many media outlets like The Atlantic are experimenting with “native advertising” and Gawker is trying out affiliate links, Roger Ebert started playing around with those kinds of monetization methods over two years ago — making a few of his daily tweets recommendations, with an Amazon affiliate link included. Although he got some criticism for doing so, most of his fans were happy for him to have the extra revenue.

The ultimate example of how being from “old media” doesn’t mean you can’t be great in “new media”: Roger Ebert.

—
Jason Snell (@jsnell) April 04, 2013

But it was Twitter that captured Ebert’s heart the most, because it said it was like having a running conversation — something he could never again have in real life — with thousands of people from all around the world, with all of the ups and downs that any conversation brings:

“When you think about it, Twitter is something like a casual conversation among friends over dinner: Jokes, gossip, idle chatter, despair, philosophy, snark, outrage, news bulletins, mourning the dead, passing the time, remembering favorite lines, revealing yourself.”

Ebert certainly did reveal himself — as human, and vulnerable, and funny, and smart. That made his fans love him and look forward to his reviews all the more. And that is the power of social media in a nutshell.

Post and thumbnail images courtesy of Shutterstock / FeatureFlash

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I confess that when I first saw my friend Michael’s face appear in my chat list, I was taken aback — and more than a little disturbed by it. It was a couple of weeks after his funeral, and so the memory of his death had faded to some extent, and his smiling picture felt like a rude reminder. It reminded me of web articles I had seen about how (or whether) to delete deceased friends or family members from Facebook’s social graph, and at first I thought about doing that.

But then I thought about how difficult it had been deleting another friend’s contact information from my cellphone after he died (this was before Facebook had become popular) and how it felt like I was deliberately forgetting about that person, which didn’t feel right.

How social do we want death to be?

It occurred to me that we often keep photos of loved ones in our wallets or in picture frames on our mantelpieces, as a way of remembering them after they are gone. I have pictures of my father, who died more than a decade ago now, as part of a random photo slideshow that comes up on a spare computer and on the television for the same reason. So why does it feel so different when we see that person’s avatar pop up in our Facebook feed or a chat window? Perhaps because social media is inherently about communication — and in most cases real-time communication — and that person can no longer be communicated with.

Facebook has a process whereby a person’s page can be “memorialized,” or turned into a kind of static page as a tribute to them, where friends and loved ones can post and see messages posted by others but access is restricted and it doesn’t show up in recommended lists (you can ask the social network to do this by filling out a form). In many cases, particularly when young users die in some violent or tragic way, their friends turn the page into a memorial quite quickly — and of course journalists then often show up asking for comments or photos, which brings up a host of other questions about what’s appropriate.

But if the page belongs to someone who hasn’t really been a public figure, and didn’t die in any kind of newsworthy way, then it falls into a kind of grey area. Do you maintain the page? Mothball it? Eventually delete it? In the case of my friend Michael, who was a fairly prominent user of social media in his job as a marketing professional in Toronto (one of the reasons I believed he wouldn’t mind my live-tweeting his funeral), his family chose to keep the page alive — and has even posted messages to him as though he was still around, which I find heart-warming in an odd way.

When real death meets virtual death

And Facebook is just one part of the equation when it comes to handling a person’s social media after they die. What about their Twitter account, or their Tumblr account, or even their email? When my father-in-law died, the family was confronted with a dilemma because he and his wife had shared an account that used both of their names — so when an email came in from my mother-in-law, his name showed up in the address field as well, which was somewhat uncomfortable. But changing email addresses is not easy.

There are also issues around who owns a user’s social content after they die: does Facebook own that person’s page and status updates and photos, and if so what duty do they have to provide it to family members? What about iTunes? Twitter is less of an issue because no one can get access to their tweets anyway, even if they are alive (unless they make a special request, as Andy Carvin of NPR did for his tweets during the Arab Spring). But what about Flickr photos or Pinterest pages? It’s still a somewhat unexplored region of our online lives at this point.

But for me, the more interesting aspect is how we look at all of those pages and tweets and photos and avatars. Are they a welcome reminder of that person and how we used to fit into their lives, or are they a cruel joke played on the living because they seem to promise a level of interaction that we will never be able to have again? Perhaps they are both — and perhaps it is too much to ask that our virtual worlds be any more comfortable around death than our offline ones are.

Post and thumbnail images courtesy of Flickr user Chad McDonald

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Tellabs CEO Rob Pullen died Monday morning of colon cancer, succumbing to the disease after several months of chemotherapy and a recent surgery. Pullen, who was 50, was one of the major figures of the U.S. telecom industry, leading Tellabs for the last four years and serving as chairman emeritus and executive board member for the Telecommunications Industry Association.

Pullen started his career at Tellabs in 1985 straight out of college as a rank-and-file engineer, climbing all the way to the top of the company hierarchy. He took over as CEO in 2008 from Krish Prabhu and was responsible for Tellabs’ transformation from a company focused on older telephony technologies to one specializing in new optical routing and mobile backhaul products.

Under Pullen’s leadership, Tellabs expanded beyond its core North American market and into developing markets in Latin America and Asia. Those new markets now account for half of Tellabs revenues, according to the company.

Here is the statement Tellabs Chairman Michael Brick issued this morning:

Dear Stockholders, Customers, Employees and Friends,

It is my sad duty to inform you that Tellabs CEO Rob Pullen has lost his battle with cancer. He passed away today.

We extend our sympathies to Rob’s wife Dawn, his children Brittany and Brendan, and his family. Our thoughts and prayers are with them.

On a personal note, I was honored to have worked side by side with Rob at Tellabs for 30 years. No words can describe the grief I feel right now.

Pullen notified shareholders he had been diagnosed with cancer in April, but he stated he was “determined to fight it and beat it.” He underwent regular chemotherapy sessions, but he didn’t give up his duties as Tellabs CEO. Last week, the company said he underwent surgery, but was recovering in stable condition. Pullen, however, lost the battle with cancer five days later.

Dan Kelly, Tellabs EVP of global products, was appointed temporary CEO when Pullen was hospitalized and will remain acting CEO of the company.

“The [information and communications technology] industry has lost a great innovator with the passing of Rob Pullen,” TIA President Grant Seiffert said in a statement. “Our thoughts and deepest sympathies are with his family during this difficult time. Rob’s leadership and relentless commitment to progress and innovation has helped make the ICT industry what it is today — and will forever influence what it will become.”

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This is a very personal post for me, since I am dealing with the sudden death of my father, a fellow geek and web worker. He died without a will and without any way for us to access his password-protected computers. He did freelance work for clients as well as in-home computer repair for individuals. We have a stack of computers that we are pretty sure belong to other people, but they aren’t labeled and without access to his computer records, we can’t find the owners. We also know that he administered a bunch of systems for a big client, but we don’t know exactly who the contract was with, or who to contact to notify them. The computers in the house also control key household components, like the lights, and run the web servers for his personal and professional websites, so we’re trying to wait a bit before trying to hack into them to get access for fear of taking out critical household functionality. Would your family members would have similar difficulties if you died or became incapacitated in some way?

Here are a few things that you should consider:

• Password management. Come up with some way for your family to access certain critical accounts or computers. I know one person who has an encrypted database with all of his passwords and the access information is in a sealed envelope in a safe. Other people use a password management system, like 1Password or LastPass, and make sure that a trusted family member has a way to access it. How you choose to do this depends on how you manage your passwords and how often you change them. I think most of us could find some creative way to make it easy for our family to get access to at least a few key accounts.
• Technical documentation. Make sure that you have some kind of documentation about your technology in a place that people can access it without having access to one of your systems. This is especially important if you have systems tied together in a complicated manner. If you don’t have another tech-savvy family member, make sure that this documentation includes the names and phone numbers of a couple of trusted friends who can help out.
• Client or work contacts. Keep a file or some kind of documentation about your clients in a place where other people can access it. At a minimum, you might want to include the name, email address and phone number of each current client, or your manager if you are a corporate worker, so that they can be contacted. I know that when I was running my solo consulting business, I kept everything on my password-protected computer, and it would have been very difficult for my family to contact my clients if anything happened to me.
• Digital assets. Most of us have family photographs and other digital assets that our family will want to access later. Make sure that someone knows how to find those important photographs and other documents, and don’t rely on online photo storage services, which might be deleted at some point. If you keep most of your data on your own server (hosted or onsite), leave instructions for how to access and download anything that someone might want to save.

What else can we do to make this easier for our families? How prepared are you?

Photo used courtesy of Ken Mayer

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We mentioned in an earlier post that the Mini hasn’t seen an update since November of 2007, and it shows its age in hardware specs. Slower processor, slower wireless networking, and dismal integrated Intel 945GM graphics all stand as signs of an old work-horse put out to pasture. Or was it more of a pony?

Sales of the Mini exceeded expectations early on, but have tapered off more recently, to the point where the bare bones computer is the weakest link in Apple’s chain of Mac offerings. When introduced at Macworld 2005, it was positioned as a key weapon in the battle to convert Windows users, since it was affordable and could easily be swapped into an existing PC set up in place of a Windows-based tower.

Many users have found a place for the Mini as an effective home theatre PC, since it offers similar functionality to the Apple TV while providing the expanded feature set of a computer, with a nearly identical physical footprint. The potential for the device to cannibalize Apple TV sales may have figured in the rumored decision to axe it.

Gizmodo’s Jesus Diaz suggests the product line’s demise could be announced as early as the Q4 Earnings conference call happening today at 2:00 PT/5:00 ET, so if you’re interested in the fate the once mighty box, tune in here for the webcast.

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