The RosettaStone is a palm-size stone tablet representing the deceased. It bears an RFID tag that communicates with mobile phones — directing
users to an Internet memorial archive.

That archive might contain photos and recordings of the departed, or notes made by others “left below.’’

The RosettaStone uses the RFID technology, Near Field Communication, or NFC, which is likely to become standard issue on new mobile phones by
2012. (The RFID industry is promoting NFC as a handy way to make
contactless payments and other transactions.)

Don’t own an NFC phone? You can always raise a departed one’s data, by punching the URL on the RosettaStone into your handset.

The device works as an heirloom or memento, which you can keep in a leather and felt pouch. (Imagine handing the stones out at a funeral.) You can
also have the RosettaStone affixed, or inlaid, on a headstone,
according to its manufacturer, Phoenix-based Objecs, LLC.

The RosettaStone is available as a piece of granite, or travertine — the latter looks like it came from a set of runes you would find in a
Wiccan store in Salem. Prices start at a little more than $200, and
include lifetime access to the online memorial database.

You can order your RosettaStone to be marked with several of Objecs’ own weird hieroglyphs. Say you are memorializing a professor. You might
choose the symbol depicting a figure at a podium. There are also
symbols for cops, crooks, bowlers, babies (I know, sad), guitar
players, and many others.

Objecs says it will soon have a New England distributor for the RosettaStone, so it might not be long before RFID-tagged tombstones begin popping-up
in Forest Hills Cemetery..