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Reuters - Researchers create DVDs with massive storage

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Researchers create DVDs with massive storage

Wednesday, May 20, 2009 5:5PM UTC

LONDON (Reuters) - "Five-dimensional" discs with a capacity 10,000 times greater than current DVDs could be on the market within 10 years, researchers reported on Wednesday.

A team from Swinburne University of Technology in Australia said that by harnessing nanoparticles and a "polarization" dimension to existing technology, storage can be massively boosted without changing the size of a current disc.

The researchers, who have signed a deal with Samsung Electronics, said the technique had allowed them to store 1.6 terabytes of data on a disc with the potential to one day store up to 10 terabytes.

One terabyte would be enough to hold 300 feature length films or 250,000 songs.

"We were able to show how nanostructured material can be incorporated onto a disc in order to increase data capacity, without increasing the physical size of the disc," Min Gu, who worked on the research, said in a statement.

"These extra dimensions are the key to creating ultra-high capacity discs."

Discs currently have three spatial dimensions but using nanoparticles the researchers said they were able to introduce a spectral -- or color -- dimension as well as a polarization dimension.

The researchers, who published their findings in the journal Nature, created the color dimension by inserting gold nanorods -- which form so-called surface plasmons when hit by light -- onto a disc's surface.

Because nanoparticles react to light according to their shape, this allowed the researchers to record information in a range of different color wavelengths on the same place on the disc.

Current DVDs are recorded in a single color wavelength using a laser, the researchers said.

The researchers also created an extra dimension using polarization, a technique in which they projected light waves onto the disc, to record different layers of information at different angles.

"The polarization can be rotated 360 degrees," another member of the research team James Chon, said in a statement.

"So for example, we were able to record at zero degree polarization. Then on top of that we were able to record another layer of information at 90 degrees polarization, without them interfering with each other."

Some issues, such as the speed at which the discs can be written on, need further work but the scientists said their research could have immediate applications in a range of fields.

For instance, they could help store extremely large medical files such as MRIs as well as financial, military and security areas by offering higher data densities needed for encryption, they added.

(Reporting by Michael Kahn; editing by Maggie Fox and David Cowell)

Reuters - Researchers create DVDs with massive storage

This article was sent to you from bombastic4000@yahoo.com, who uses Reuters Mobile Site to get news and information on the go. To access Reuters on your mobile phone, go to:
http://mobile.reuters.com

Researchers create DVDs with massive storage

Wednesday, May 20, 2009 5:5PM UTC

LONDON (Reuters) - "Five-dimensional" discs with a capacity 10,000 times greater than current DVDs could be on the market within 10 years, researchers reported on Wednesday.

A team from Swinburne University of Technology in Australia said that by harnessing nanoparticles and a "polarization" dimension to existing technology, storage can be massively boosted without changing the size of a current disc.

The researchers, who have signed a deal with Samsung Electronics, said the technique had allowed them to store 1.6 terabytes of data on a disc with the potential to one day store up to 10 terabytes.

One terabyte would be enough to hold 300 feature length films or 250,000 songs.

"We were able to show how nanostructured material can be incorporated onto a disc in order to increase data capacity, without increasing the physical size of the disc," Min Gu, who worked on the research, said in a statement.

"These extra dimensions are the key to creating ultra-high capacity discs."

Discs currently have three spatial dimensions but using nanoparticles the researchers said they were able to introduce a spectral -- or color -- dimension as well as a polarization dimension.

The researchers, who published their findings in the journal Nature, created the color dimension by inserting gold nanorods -- which form so-called surface plasmons when hit by light -- onto a disc's surface.

Because nanoparticles react to light according to their shape, this allowed the researchers to record information in a range of different color wavelengths on the same place on the disc.

Current DVDs are recorded in a single color wavelength using a laser, the researchers said.

The researchers also created an extra dimension using polarization, a technique in which they projected light waves onto the disc, to record different layers of information at different angles.

"The polarization can be rotated 360 degrees," another member of the research team James Chon, said in a statement.

"So for example, we were able to record at zero degree polarization. Then on top of that we were able to record another layer of information at 90 degrees polarization, without them interfering with each other."

Some issues, such as the speed at which the discs can be written on, need further work but the scientists said their research could have immediate applications in a range of fields.

For instance, they could help store extremely large medical files such as MRIs as well as financial, military and security areas by offering higher data densities needed for encryption, they added.

(Reporting by Michael Kahn; editing by Maggie Fox and David Cowell)

Reuters - Geithner says U.S. making headway in battling crisis

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Geithner says U.S. making headway in battling crisis

Wednesday, May 20, 2009 6:19PM UTC

By Glenn Somerville

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said on Wednesday the Obama administration was making headway in calming financial markets and would have a program to cleanse toxic assets from banks' balance sheets up and running by July.

He told the Senate Banking Committee the U.S. financial system was "starting to heal" after a period of severe trauma, crediting an array of emergency government programs for helping ease a crisis sparked by a surge in mortgage defaults.

But Geithner said the outlook remained fragile and the administration had to be cautious about how it uses the dwindling money left in a $700 billion financial rescue fund Congress approved in October.

"We still face a very challenging economic and financial environment, and we need to be careful to preserve substantial resources and flexibility to deal with future contingencies," he said.

Geithner estimated about $123.7 billion remained in the fund, down from about $135 billion in March, but he said that reflected a conservative forecast that banks would repay just $25 billion they have received and added that Treasury might not finance other programs as fully as it currently plans.

The U.S. financial system stumbled into one of its most severe crises since the 1930s as rising failures in subprime mortgages drove lenders to the wall and helped drive the U.S. and much of the world economy into deep recession.

The administration has taken unprecedented steps to inject taxpayer capital into banks to try to foster lending and, in company with the U.S. central bank, to set up facilities for buying debt to keep the financial system liquid.

FACING BAILOUT CRITICS

With a number of big banks now lining up to return money, some Republican lawmakers argued those repayments should pay down U.S. debt rather than be recycled for further bailouts -- an interpretation of the law that Geithner disputed.

"I think it's important that the government ... has that flexibility, because we are still in an enormously difficult, challenging, fragile period of time and there may be circumstances where the necessary thing for the country is to use that authority carefully to support expanding these programs," he said.

Geithner said the administration had no choice but to act aggressively to avoid a financial meltdown. He conceded, however, that winding down the government's deep involvement in business was an important challenge ahead.

"Crises this severe don't burn themselves out. To fix them requires the action of government," he said.

But he added it was too soon to lay out a plan for withdrawing the government's unusual support for private firms. "I'm not prepared to talk to that today," he said. "We're not quite there yet."

SMALL BANKS TO GET AID

Geithner said financial companies were adjusting their operations in ways that will make them less vulnerable to shocks like the one they have gone through.

"Leverage has declined, the most vulnerable parts of the non-bank financial system no longer pose the same risk, and banks are funding themselves more conservatively," he said.

While public attention has largely centered on big banks, including the 19 that underwent "stress tests" to see whether they needed to raise more capital, Geithner said small banks also will get an expanded chance to qualify for taxpayer aid.

He said these companies would now have six months to make themselves into bank holding companies that would qualify for aid, or to reapply for aid if they are already eligible.

Geithner also said a plan to entice private investors to buy distressed assets from banks by putting up government capital alongside private money -- a cornerstone of the administration's financial rescue plans -- would begin operating over the next six weeks.

Geithner said a presidential task force set up to deal with the collapsing U.S. auto industry would keep working with General Motors Corp right up until a June 1 deadline the government has set for the automaker to come up with a viable long-term business plan. GM may need to enter bankruptcy to restructure, as the Chrysler Corp already has done.

Geithner said the Obama administration would ensure that financing remains available for remaining creditworthy auto dealers and also will try to boost demand for new cars.

(Additional reporting by David Lawder and Corbett B. Daly; Editing by Neil Stempleman)

Reuters - Symbian sees smartphone market up 12-15 percent

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Symbian sees smartphone market up 12-15 percent

Tuesday, May 19, 2009 4:42PM UTC

By Tarmo Virki, European technology correspondent

PARIS (Reuters) - Sales of smartphones are set to grow 12-15 percent in 2009, said Lee Williams, chief of the Symbian Foundation, the consortium of companies around the world's most popular smartphone operating system.

Smartphones are seen as a bright spot on the shrinking cellphone market this year, with some analysts forecasting above 30 percent market growth for phones with advanced capabilities like e-mail or Internet browsing.

"For the first time people are realizing you don't have to carry your digital camera with you and your phone, for the first time people are realizing that you can do your email and access Internet services on your mobile phone," Williams said on Tuesday at the Reuters Global Technology summit in Paris.

He said larger display sizes and more memory for media such as music were also encouraging consumers to buy smartphones.

ARM, the world's leading chip designer, said on Monday it expects the smartphone market to grow 10 percent, while France's second-largest mobile operator SFR said it was seeing strong demand for smartphones.

"There we are seeing strong demand and strong growth," SFR Chief Executive Frank Esser said at the summit.

The overall cellphone market contracted in January-March at the fastest pace in its history, with analysts estimating production falling 13-16 percent -- with most expecting 2009 market to fall 10 percent or more due to the recession.

Williams said the mood in the wireless industry has improved somewhat, with companies starting to see "the light at the end of the tunnel."

"They realize they are still in a tunnel and they don't know how long it will take to the light, but if you go back two or three months nobody could even see the light," Williams said.

"It's still tight and awful ... I do think some still have to be hit by a train in this tunnel though," he said.

So far, Canada's wireless equipment maker Nortel Networks and Germany's Qimonda have filed for bankruptcy protection, while many loss-making firms are struggling to refinance their debt.

LOOKING FOR CHINA BOOST

Williams said he expects membership of the foundation to grow to more than 100, excluding independent software vendors, by the end of 2009. In February Symbian said it had 78 members.

The foundation inherits intellectual property from Nokia and other former shareholders of UK-based smartphone maker Symbian.

Nokia bought out other shareholders of Symbian last year, and committed to give all its software to an independent foundation, which will develop it on an open-source basis, meaning all members can freely use and adapt the code.

Symbian has lost market share for several quarters to new entrants like Apple and Google, but Williams said he expects to turn the trend.

Williams said Symbian was seeing increasing interest toward its software from Chinese and Taiwanese companies, and was already in close talks with China's Huawei and ZTE, known for their aggressive pricing to win market share.

"We have very active discussions with both of those companies," Williams said, adding it was also very likely that one or two of China's mobile carriers, three to five original design manufacturers and at least one chip maker would join the foundation.

Getting Chinese vendors on board could take Symbian to mass market, while its takeup has been in history been hampered by high pricetags of smartphones. Also Nokia has said it expects to take Symbian to lower price levels.

(For summit blog: http://blogs.reuters.com/summits/)

Reuters - Marvell: 1 in 2 phones will soon be smartphones

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Marvell: 1 in 2 phones will soon be smartphones

Monday, May 18, 2009 10:52PM UTC

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Marvell Technology Group Ltd Chief Executive Sehat Sutardja said he expects multimedia-enabled smartphones to account for at least 50 percent of all cell phones in the next three to four years, and grow even more popular in the following years.

"Smartphones today are only addressing the tip of the pyramid," Sutardja told the Reuters Global Technology Summit in New York on Monday.

"I would say in the next three to four years, at least 50 percent of the market will move to smartphones," he said, adding that may grow to 90 percent in six to seven years.

Sutardja also said it was hard to tell if technology demand was recovering, noting it was hard to distinguish between temporary moves to replenish inventory and a real rebound in demand.

(For summit blog: http://blogs.reuters.com/summits/)

(Reporting by Gabriel Madway and Ritsuko Ando; editing by Carol Bishopric)

CNN - Despondent dads driven to kill loved ones

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Despondent dads driven to kill loved ones

ln April, a Maryland man wrote six suicide notes expressing his love and sorrow for his family, and then shot his wife and three children, before killing himself with a shotgun.

This month, a man killed his wife and two sons in their home near Tampa, Florida. Troy Bellar chased after his teenage son with a high-powered rifle, but the 13-year-old escaped. Bellar later shot himself.

In some of this year's most disturbing cases of family violence, fathers have turned against their own flesh and blood -- asphyxiating and beating teenagers, firing shots into sleeping children tucked in bed, slaying grandparents and shooting infants in diapers.

The killings are cruel inversions of nature where a father murders his entire family in an act called familicide. After the carnage, the question lingers: Why did they do it?

For decades, psychiatrists have been studying such cases to determine what mental issues trigger this behavior. A person who kills his family could have control issues that lead him to decide the fate of the children, spouse and pets, researchers said.

While mentally healthy people cannot make sense of killing someone they love, for people with mental illness, "it has to do with their distorted thinking and depression," said Donna Cohen, a professor and head of the Violence and Injury Prevention Program at the University of South Florida.

The person with a mental illness views his wife and children as possessions, believing, "I have to keep this. This is mine," Cohen said. "Nobody else is able to take care of them except me. If I can't control this in my life, I'll preserve it in death so that my world doesn't change. It's the psychiatric issues."

Murder-suicide plots could brew in a person's mind for months, even years.

"For a period of time, the idea to commit mass murder takes hold of them and they can't shake it," said Louis Schlesinger, forensic psychology professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York City.

If there is news about other familicides, the intense news coverage may cause others to lose their inhibition and commit the same type of crime.

"They think they're saving their family and that they will be remembered with sympathy," Schlesinger said.

Those thoughts become action when a precipitating event, or trigger, occurs, such as divorce, suspected infidelity or loss of job.

While research shows that suicide rates rise when the economy is in trouble, it may not be true for murder-suicides.

Statistics from the Violence and Injury Prevention Program at the University of South Florida based on news reports, found that murder-suicides seesawed during the last nine years.

According to research at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio, about 60 percent of the perpetrators of familicides were unemployed. While the shaky economy could increase stress levels, experts warned against attributing the spate of violence to the economy.

"That's careless to say a bad economy causes people to kill whole families," said Schlesinger. "You could kill during good times. It's very complicated and not simple as a bad economy."

In research during nearly three decades, Dr. Philip Resnick, director of the division of forensic psychiatry at Case Western, has outlined two motives for familicides: revenge or despondency. In latter cases, a "nonhostile, hopeless father" kills his family to save them from perceived doom, because he feels unable to provide for them.

"They become very depressed as the breadwinner," Resnick said. "With their distorted, depressive perceptions, they feel that rather than allow their children to go hungry, they may feel they're doing a favor to take their family with them as they end their own life. ... They're not depriving them of life, they're ending what they see as an intolerable life."

In recent cases, some men were facing financial turmoil. In April, a New York attorney who was involved in questionable financial dealings asphyxiated and beat his wife and 11- and 19-year-old daughters in a Maryland hotel. Investigators later found that $20 million from his clients was missing.

A man who decides to commit suicide might want to avoid his family facing the stigma, said Richard James Gelles, dean of the School of Social Policy and Practice at the University of Pennsylvania.

"They couldn't leave people behind to be ashamed and humiliated," said Gelles.

On the night of his birthday in 2003, Curt Wheat shot his wife, Marie, as she slept in their bedroom, then shot himself. Neither of the couple's two children was at the Sahuarita, Arizona, house during the shooting.

His then 29-year-old daughter, Cari Wheat was living in San Francisco, California. Wheat believes her father pulled the trigger out of a sense of love for her mother.

"My dad made a decision," Wheat said. "I'm sure he believed that my mom would not have lived with that decision -- that it would've been so destroying for her. So unfortunately, he made that decision for both of them."

He was being treated for depression and trying different medications, she said. Her father was an introvert, a geologist who examined mines and quarries. He often took his family camping and they split their time globetrotting between Arizona and Australia. Her mother was gregarious elementary school librarian.

"My dad was kind of a loner, quiet," Wheat said. "My mom was full on cheerleader, perky and in-your-face. They were different and complementary."

Curt Wheat did not leave a note or any explanation for the shooting.

"I'm definitely angry...," she said. "You'd be angry with anyone else who took your parents away. It's confusing because it is somebody you love."

In 2003, her younger brother, Joshua Wheat, was living with the parents, but had been at work during the shooting. After the murder-suicide, the question of whether Curt Wheat would've shot his son had he been home that night has crept into their minds.

"It's something my brother really struggles with and wonders about," Cari Wheat said. "From research that I've done, once you're at the state and you have made this decision to take your own life, your thinking is so primitive. It's very black and white. There are no more gray areas."

Every 16 minutes in the United States, a person commits suicide, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

"I don't think we realize that because it's hush-hush," Wheat said. "It isn't a character flaw in those uncles or brothers or parents. It's a mental illness. That's what makes it tricky. We're all squeamish about mental illness. I don't think we've gotten to a place yet where in the U.S., where we see this as a chemical problem, like a disease, like we'd treat breast cancer. ... Suicide is the end result, it's the way people die from that [mental health] disease."

Case Western researchers found that more than three-fourths of the offenders in 30 murder-suicides in the Cleveland, Ohio, area had signs of mental illness. Half of the men had borderline personality disorders, which trigger significant mood upheavals, impulsiveness and feelings of worthlessness.

"We can't prevent all of them," Cohen said. "But it's essential that we begin to educate communities about signs of mental health problems and distress."

Close family members and friends usually know of problems in the household prior to the murder-suicide.

"People don't get involved, even when they know there's threat in violence because they believe they don't think anything will happen," Cohen said. "It's essential to get to domestic violence safe houses and be much more proactive in understanding there are people who have problems."

Hello Dear, Please my dear, do not feel embarrassed by my mail to you. I am Mrs. Joy Ramento, The wife of Bishop Alberto Ramento the prominent human right defender and chairperson of the Philippine independent church community for the movement national freedom. Who his sudden killing on the 3rd of October 2006 has been a shock to me and my children. Well during my late husband death threat, he gave me the total sum of $13.5, million dollars for the up keeping/future of our children and asks me to put it in a metallic box and deposit it in a security and finance company in abroad. This deposit was coded under a secret arrangement as a family treasure. This means that the security company does not even know the content of this trunk box.Since the death of my late husband, the Philippine government has blocked all me and my late husband account and also my late husband family has succeed in collecting from me all the properties of my late husband, trying to leave me with nothing for the future of my children I am contacting you because I want you to help me in securing the money in the box for the future of my children. Since my late husband family made it impossible for me to have access to calls or to move out of the house as they always monitor me. I hope to trust you as who will not sit on this money when you claim it.I will give you 15% of the total money after you have successfully secured the box. For your assistance to me. If you are willing to help me, email me back though this ID ( jramento@hotmail.fr) so that we can discuss in details. Best regards Mrs. Joy Ramento

CNN - Can a Palm Pre multitask better than an iPhone?

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Can a Palm Pre multitask better than an iPhone?

Palm's comeback attempt rests squarely on the notion that it has found a better way to manage your complicated digital life.

Ever since its January coming-out party at the Consumer Electronics Show, Palm has generated buzz for the Pre unlike any other phone released since Apple's iPhone arrived in June 2007 (that includes impressive phones such as Research in Motion's BlackBerry Bold and HTC's G1 Android phone.)

The two phones will be forever compared -- not just because of their consumer-oriented styles and emphasis on gesture-based user interfaces, but because of the very real enmity between the proud team that worked on Apple's historic iPhone breakthrough and the ex-Apple executives and engineers attempting to rebuild Palm.

While the iPhone has set the standard for future smartphones, Palm's WebOS delivers two important improvements that the iPhone can't yet match: true multitasking between applications, and a subtle notifications system that doesn't interrupt your train of thought.

It does that while unveiling its own stamp on the multitouch user interface that Apple introduced to the masses with the iPhone and finding room for a slide-out hardware keyboard favored by CrackBerry addicts.

There are several reasons why no one should expect the Pre to turn the smartphone world upside down just yet.

Business users still love their BlackBerrys and RIM is aggressively courting the consumer. Apple has a killer brand, great audio and video player technology, and more than 35,000 applications inside an easy-to-use App Store that grows by the hour.

All the same, Palm has taken a few steps forward that developers and users should take seriously.

Until we know how much it's going to cost, it's impossible to predict how many other smartphone users will see value in these improvements, but they (and the competition) will notice.

The Pre is expected to arrive sometime within the next few weeks, although all Palm has said is that it will be out in the first half of 2009.

Let's examine the subject of multitasking first, which has been a major criticism of the iPhone almost ever since it was released.

Outside of a few core applications, such as the phone and iPod player, an iPhone user must completely exit out of one application in order to use another.

For example, you can return to the home screen and select another iPhone application while staying connected on a phone call, but you can't move back and forth between two applications while allowing the first application to run in the background, making it harder to use applications like instant messaging or streaming radio.

Apple has said these limitations are necessary to prevent battery life from dropping off a cliff and to ensure application stability. That is perhaps part of the reason why Palm has chosen a different development model.

WebOS applications will be created with standard Web development tools such as CSS, JavaScript, and HTML that run on a version of the Webkit engine.

This doesn't mean they are "Web applications," which require a connection to the Internet to work. It does, however, mean they are (in general) more lightweight and less-resource intensive than iPhone applications, which are developed using the Objective-C programming language.

That may limit the performance of WebOS applications. Don't expect the sophisticated gaming community, for example, to embrace the Pre.

But Palm's approach means it will be very easy for anyone who has developed a Web application to get up and running on Pre development, which could help expand the number of applications in the early days of the device if the smartphone world likes what they see.

Other mobile operating systems -- notably Android and Windows Mobile -- allow multitasking, but Palm has developed an elegant way of switching between "cards," something vaguely akin to a combination of Windows' Alt-Tab switching and Mac OS' Expose, or switching between tabs on a Web browser.

New applications can be launched using the "Launcher" software button on the bottom of the home screen, and users navigate between different applications by flicking finger left or right.

It remains to be seen how many open WebOS applications it will take to crash the Pre. (Palm product managers at CTIA 2009 refused to speculate, but said it would be very hard to overload the phone.) But Palm's implementation of multitasking is slick, as is its method for delivering notifications.

Notifications are the lifeblood of the mobile computer: if I'm carrying an always-on, always-connected computer, then I want to know right away when something has happened.

With the release of iPhone OS 3.0, Apple plans to expand its notifications service to third-party applications, whereas right now it only works for core applications such as incoming phone calls, text messages, and calendar appointments.

But Apple's system for notifications uses a pop-up window that interrupts you in the middle of a task, pauses the application, and forces you to make a choice (close, view) before proceeding. Palm's notification bar is much less obtrusive.

When a Pre user receives an e-mail or text message, that alert will pop up on the lower part of the Pre's screen as a horizontal bar.

But the alert won't interrupt the application, and if the user chooses simply to ignore that alert, it will soon retreat to the lower edge of the screen to be accessed later when the task at hand is completed. That alert will always be at the bottom of the Pre's screen no matter what application or view you've selected, along with some brief information such as the sender or subject line.

Apple's approach lets you dismiss the alert and continue what you were doing but forces you to remember that you received notifications from a specific application, such as the ESPN Alerts application demonstrated at the iPhone 3.0 event.

A number outlining how many alerts you've received will appear over the icon for that application -- just as you can see how many e-mail messages await you -- but if you're in a different sector of the home screen, you won't necessarily see the alerts for that particular application.

Some may dismiss these differences as simply user preferences. But multitasking and notifications are among the most important reasons to own a mobile computer, and few companies have managed to come up with something that advances the game along those lines since the iPhone OS made its debut. Palm has.

CNN - New services promise online life after death

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New services promise online life after death

Your husband, an avid gamer and techie, dies of a heart attack, leaving his vast online life ­-- one you don't know much about ­-- in limbo.

His accounts, to which you don't know the passwords, go idle. His e-mails go unanswered, his online multiplayer games go on without him and bidders on his eBay items don't know why they can't get an answer from the seller.

Web site domains that he has purchased, some of which are now worth hundreds of thousands of dollars,­ will expire, and you may never know.

It's a scenario that's becoming more likely as we spend more of our lives online. And it's raising more questions about what happens to our online lives after we log off for the final time.

The answer, until recently, was nothing.

But now, as online usage increases and social-media sites soar in popularity, more companies are popping up to try and fill that void created in your digital life after death.

Jeremy Toeman, founder of the site Legacy Locker, recognized that when he was on a plane and wondered what would happen to his online life if it crashed. While his will leaves everything to his wife, including all of his digital assets, Toeman realized how difficult it would be for her to access his accounts.

"My GoDaddy account would belong to her, but it doesn't solve the practical reality of how she would get access to it," he said. He experienced a similar scenario after his grandmother died, and he tried to get the password for her e-mail account -- only to give up because of the hassle.

So Toeman built his company to change all that. Legacy Locker allows users to set up a kind of online will, with beneficiaries that would receive the customer's account information and passwords after they die.

"We know it's a hard thing to think about -- to get people to face mortality. We know it's kind of morbid, but for those who live their entire lives online, it's also very real."

A Legacy Locker account costs $29.99 a year. Users can set up their accounts to specify who gets access to their posthumous online information, along with "legacy letters," or messages, that can be sent to loved ones.

If someone contacts Legacy Locker to report a client's death, the service will send the customer four e-mails in 48 hours. If there's no response, Legacy Locker will then contact the people the client listed as verifiers in the event of his or her death. Even then, the service would not release digital assets without examining a copy of the customer's death certificate, Toeman said.

Eddie Lopez is the kind of tech-savvy guy for which a service such as Legacy Locker was made. The St. Paul, Minnesota, man has three online banking accounts, a PayPal account, domain names, Web-hosting accounts, multiple e-mail addresses and many social-networking accounts.

"I do think this is something people should be really considering these days," Lopez told CNN when asked about services such as Legacy Locker. He wants to hire a service to handle his digital assets but is concerned about privacy.

"Although I'm glad there's people breaking ground in this area, I don't think I would jump at the first opportunity to sign up," Lopez said. "My concerns are turning over such an exhaustive list of user names and passwords to a single business. That's one-stop shopping for any hacker to get access to just about every detail of my life."

Lopez would prefer to entrust half of his digital-security information to a service such as Legacy Locker and the other half to family members, so that each side's information would be useless without the other's.

"I hope Legacy Locker and similar services can address these privacy-security concerns with some real-world solutions," he said. "I just don't feel comfortable turning over my digital life -- built over 15 years -- to a kind promise."

Legacy Locker isn't the only new company helping techies plan for death in the digital age.

AssetLock (formerly YouDeparted.com) offers a "secure safe deposit box" for digital copies of documents, wishes, letters and e-mails. Deathswitch and Slightly Morbid also offer similar services in a variety of prices and packages, depending on how many accounts are involved.

Not all of these services deal with online assets. There's also a growing trend towards giving all aspects of death --­ the grieving process, the funeral, the memorial and even the grave site --­ a digital makeover.

FindaGrave.com claims to have cemetery records for 32 million people in its searchable database, while EternalSpace.com offers a new spin on the traditional grave site by offering virtual memorial pages ­full of videos, pictures and tributes.

On Eternal Space, loved ones can choose from different headstones and bucolic landscape backgrounds -- the mountain lake is a popular option -- to create a customized online grave site. Loved ones can add "tribute gifts" such as roses, candles, stuffed animals and other items, while mourners can access photos and videos in a "Memory Book" and leave remembrances of their own.

Jay Goss, president of Eternal Space president, is trying to bring the funeral experience to anyone who can access the Web. In that way, he hopes to provide a gathering place, and a voice, for mourners who may not be able to attend the real-life memorial service.

"It'd be the equivalent of a funeral where everyone can attend and everyone can spend 30 minutes behind the podium," Goss said. "It gives everyone a chance to put a 360-degree wrapper on the life the person lived and celebrate that life from how every person knew them."

Eternal Space's virtual memorial sites are currently only being offered through select funeral homes, cemeteries and crematoriums. Goss' hope is that the site will help allow the deceased's memory to be "eternally" passed on.

"All of these stories and videos are being left, in essence, to this Eternal Space Web site so that everyone can share, not just that day, not the days after, but the weeks after and years after," he said.

Some funeral-industry professionals believe these online memorials and virtual grave sites provide a valuable service.

"Assuming the site is handled with respect, virtual memorials respond to a basic human need to remember our deceased family, friends and colleagues," said Robert M. Fells, general counsel for the International Cemetery, Cremation and Funeral Association.

"Based on our members' feedback, I'd have to say that virtual memorial sites are gaining popularity with the public as a very practical alternative to being present at the grave site," he added. "There's nothing 'weird' about them as far as we have seen."

"There are funeral homes out there that will help families create virtual memorials, but ... we've also seen Facebook and MySpace profiles of deceased persons being turned into memorials," agreed Jessica Koth, spokesperson for the National Funeral Directors Association. "Consumers have become increasingly comfortable with expressing their grief online."

"While not a replacement for a funeral, online memorialization can help people work through their grief after the funeral," she added. "We've all become accustomed to communicating and expressing ourselves electronically -- via e-mail, Facebook, Twitter. Expressing one's grief online is an outgrowth of what's happening in other areas of our lives."