The Navigator By Linton Weeks Washington Post Staff Writer Thursday, March 26, 1998

Maria Naumann's tribute was created by her daughter, Nancy Forrest, a Washington-based Web page designer. The straightforward site displays photos and an adoration written by Forrest. In this age of video wills and interactive headstones, Web-based memorials are multiplying. Online perpetuity makes perfect sense. At once you can announce the death of a loved one and provide a place for people to go to pay their respects.

Visiting a virtual vault will never be as satisfying as stopping by a grave on a blustery afternoon or pausing on a bench in a columbarium. It may not be the Pyramid of Khufu, but in the face of sudden nothingness, it's something.

(From the World Wide Cemetary Web Site)

Michael Stanley Kibbee understood this. Kibbee, a carpenter and an engineer, died last March in Toronto. One of his last projects was to build his own coffin; another was to create the World Wide Cemetery.

In Kibbee's online graveyard, memorial pages, called "monuments," include written obituaries, still photos and video and audio clips. For $15 you can fashion a monument for a loved one, or, presumably, for yourself -- to be posted posthumously. Scores of testimonials are posted. There is a special page of appreciation for Kibbee.

People of all ages and nationalities are memorialized here. The site is arranged alphabetically, geographically and chronologically. It's also divided into cause-of-death sections, such as AIDS, cancer and World War II. Visitors can leave online messages, called "flowers."

Last year Christine Ancell, 48, launched a memorial site, Angels Online, from her home in Alberta, Va., for another reason -- to honor her late father. "We have seen other sites grow," she says. "Hospitals and universities have huge grants to provide such Web sites as a form of counseling." She says hers is operated on a shoestring.

More ornate than some others, Ancell's pages are alive with angels at angles and multi-mountain motifs. "Everybody has different tastes," she says.

The site is catching on, says Ancell. "We're getting hits on our guest book from around the world." But not everyone's dying to get online.

"This year we've lost money on it," she admits. "We need one client a month to break even." In search of other revenue streams, she's started contacting funeral homes and encouraging them to offer online memorials as an option for their clients.

"One funeral director thought it was distasteful to charge for a memorial," Ancell says.

Denise Moriarty, 32, and her husband Steve, 36, had pretty much the same idea. They run Arrangements.com, a Web-based service in Gettysburg. Funeral homes pay $50 apiece to list deaths and funeral arrangements on the site. Online since August, Arrangements.com has signed up three funeral homes and posted seven obituaries.

This business, Moriarty says, is "clearly in its infancy."

Ancell agrees. "We're becoming an international family," she says. As people move around the world, they are better able to keep up with the lives and deaths of friends and relatives through the Internet.

"The older end of the baby boomers are really not technologically ready for something like this," she explains. "Younger members are more likely to use this for closure."

Linton Weeks can be reached at weeksl@washpost.com

Click: The endless pursuit for quick money has led to some pretty goofy inventionsin this country. Take the "all-terrain stroller," a battle-ready baby carriage that comes with tank treads and steel armor. That actually has been patented, as has the "face-flexor" exercise machine and a bargain nuclear fallout shelter that purifies the air when you flap it. Totally Absurd —Dan Pacheco panchecod@futureforecast.com

Surfing: Perturbations, pleasures and predicaments on the I-way

Click Me Into the Ballgame . . .

(From the Official Orioles Web Site)

You know who you are -- black and orange are your favorite colors and you can't wait for Opening Day Tuesday at Camden Yards. Well even if you can't get to the ballgame, there's the Web.

A good place to start is the Orioles Fanatics Page. It features two counters (one for Opening Day, one, of course, for the Cal Ripken streak) and about 20 other categories.

There also is the Official Page, which is pretty bare -- it doesn't even offer online ticket ordering.

The online version of this very newspaper has the Orioles page, with current stories, pictures, and an online discussion area. Other good sites include the Baltimore Orioles MegaLinks Page (great links to other sports publication) and John Skilton's Baseball Orioles Link page (lots of fan pages and links to discussion boards and mailing lists).

So settle in with those peanuts and Crackerjacks, mutter "Browser Up" and have a great season!

—Carol Light clight@his.com

A Really Creative Writing Aid
Most of the advice on Dr. Ruth's Web site is pretty humdrum: Book some time alone . . . send the kids to Grandma's house. What's really worth the visit, though, is that you can download a file that will replace your cursor with an image of a wiggling one-celled male progenitor.

—L.Peat O'Neil oneilp@washpost.com