ShareThisBy VIRGINIA LINN
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Friday, June 08, 2007
Technology is lending a hand to help older people preserve their life stories, well, forever.
New Web sites have emerged that provide the tools to help people assemble their own autobiographies -- whether online or in memory books -- complete with photographs and mementos, even if they have no writing skills themselves.
Of course, the better-written and more complete you want your narrative, the more it will cost. But think of the gift you're leaving your children and grandchildren.
LifeBio.com and biowriters.NET are two such sites.
LifeBio.com was started in 2000 by Lisbeth Sanders after she interviewed her grandmother on audiotape and realized what a rich experience it was.
"Her life was inspiring; it gave me courage and strength to deal with life's challenges and face them as she did," she wrote on the Web site. "Grandma wasn't famous, but she made me realize that even average people's stories have extraordinary value. I wanted to encourage people to record their life stories, and LifeBio was the result."
Both sites are essentially questionnaire-based writing services, but they help to organize your thoughts and prompt you to remember long-forgotten details and milestones of your life. Clients have the option of having their biography be a list of answers to different numbers of questions or having professional writers prepare the information.
LifeBio offers several levels of membership. For $9.95, you can answer 102 questions about your childhood, memorable vacations, school plays, first time driving a car, life motto, the best time of your life, etc. For $39.95, you answer 250 questions. For $49.95, you answer the 250 questions, but the answers are put in a hardcover, hand-written memory journal. There's also a $199 service in which LifeBio staff interview clients over the phone and send the compiled information in an audio recording on a CD and a printout.
Biowriters has a similar setup but uses a monthly subscription for however long you're involved in the writing process. It is more expensive than LifeBio, but it offers more options, particularly on the high end, that can pump out a professional autobiography. The top-of-the-line service, in which the company's writers pull together the answers into a real narrative, costs $485 a chapter, or up to $3,450 for a 14-chapter book.
Both services require that users sign up to get a member ID and password.
