When a friend of ours told us she was going to the graveyard to put up her mother's headstone, we were amazed we didn't blurt something like, "But your mother died ages ago!" No, we remembered that in our friend's religion it is customary to wait a year before the gravestone is set. Once that came back, we remembered that our friend and her brother had been surprised to hear from their mother's estate administrator that she'd left instructions about the epitaph: Nothing flowery, she had written, but something about Florida.

She had, indeed, loved Florida. She moved here full-time after her husband died. And, being an amateur photographer, she left behind mountains of pictures of birds and beaches and sunsets and hurricane-shuttered homes. It would have been terrific to make all of those a part of the gravesite.

There is a way, and a clever young man may have unwittingly started a new trend in memorials. This kid had a QR code attached to his own mother's gravestone. Anyone who aims a smartphone with a camera at the QR code is taken to a website devoted to his mother's memory.

The site includes pictures and stories from family and friends. The technologically inclined son wants it to be a work in progress -- dynamic, evolving over time. His objective is to create a record of his mother's life that will be available to future generations, related or unrelated to him or his mom.

For those of us who have avoided the smartphone phenomenon, a QR code is a two-dimensional barcode. A one-d barcode holds 20 numerical digits, max. A QR code, though, can hold thousands of alphanumeric characters. Scanning a QR code can trigger an application on your phone, or it can take you to the web. The codes are quite handy for consumers and merchants alike.

The QR code on the tombstone is a small work of art. Carved into the stone with a laser, it is filled with a black paste. To preserve it, a piece of glass is placed over it.

And scanning a code like that could take visitors to our friend's mom's tribute website, where they could see her pictures and read stories of her travels. It wouldn't be too flowery, but it would definitely have something about Florida.

Source: Mashable.com, "QR Code on Tombstone Creates Dynamic Memorial," Adam Ostrow, 07/15/2011