Quiring Monuments, Inc. has introduced a new twist in cemetery memorials: a code affixed to gravestones that can be scanned with a smartphone to give more information about the deceased. Company President Dave Quiring said he’s been exploring interactive gravestone technologies for years, but prior attempts were too expensive and the technologies were too temperamental and limited. Now he thinks he has found the right combination.
Quiring has now developed its own way of incorporating a QR code — a squarish-lookingbarcode that smartphones can read — into a grave marker through a small plastic-metal composite tag affixed to the gravestone, no batteries required. A QR-operated website provides the information. Scan the code with a smartphone and a web browser wil open, taking the vistor directly to the web page associated with that tombstone.
Anyone can scan a grave maker with their smartphone and learn more about the person buried there, Quiring said. Only friends and family members who have log-in access will be able to leave comments.
You can read more about the Quiring Monuments QR code in an article by Steve Wilhelm in the TechFlash web site at http://www.techflash.com/seattle/2011/04/gravestones-that-can-be-scanned.html
Quiring Monuments does have competitors. I wrote some months ago about Memory Medallions: a microchip on a tombstone, at http://blog.eogn.com/eastmans_online_genealogy/2010/12/memory-medallions-a-microchip-on-a-tombstone.html
My thanks to Peter McCracken for telling me about this story.
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