Cleaning out the bookmarks and today's look is of Russell Shaw's bookmark list . Russell Shaw was a columnist and author covering the online industry, VOIP lately, and he died in March of 2008. I didn't know Russell , nor did I really know any of his work . I have no idea why I loaded and kept his bookmarks around. Maybe it was due to his Web 1.0 method handling bookmarks. While many of us have moved to online bookmark managers, Russell kept his in a simple HTML list in alphabetical order. It wasn't a simple bookmark dump from a browser, as he annotated all his links like so:

American Rhetoric.com- Sometimes, words speak as loud as actions. That is especially true when words make history. Here, you can read the text of and listen to audio feeds of more than 5,000 memorable speeches, and more than 200 audio clips from celebrities.

When I came across the tab today it got me thinking how does your online presence go when you die? Think about all the things you access on a daily basis. The number of sites that track your great contributions to the internet. The number of self-renewing services. It's amazing that in a little over 10 years the web has become an integrated part of our lives. 

If you have a wife, husband, girlfriend or boyfriend, most of your online life can be wrapped up by them. What about those without someone to look after there virtual lives? 

There are a few services on the internet allowing you to send notes after your death, but nothing that encapsulates your online access and comings and goings. If you don't have virtual friends folks might not notice you're no longer typing. 

Eventually those self renewal items will drop off, Google will start to deindex your contributions and the bits evaporate. Fascinating. Something that you contribute might or might not live on after you.