If you were going to sit around a conference room and brainstorm with some brilliant minds on what you could take away from the newspaper industry next, what would it be? No, not the fact that its product still makes a mess of your hands — we're talking revenue streams. Craigslist all but decimated their classified business. When Jeff Taylor started Monster.com fourteen years ago, he started what eventually would decimate their job listings business. So what's the next big idea that can usurp the struggling industry one more time? Dead people.

None other than Taylor is back at it with online obituaries. Tributes.com, completely with a candle in the logo, is what he hopes to become the homepage for remembering your loved ones, though he's already entering a competitive field: Legacy.com and Memory-Of.com have a leg up on him by trolling newspaper death notices and creating microsites for those who passed. Taylor's strategy?

Taylor says his new venture can do that and more, but without relying on newspapers for information about funerals and deaths. Instead, Tributes.com will glean that information through alliances with funeral homes and groups directly as well as trade associations and public information about deaths from Social Security, though he declined to divulge specific deals.

Sophisticated search and database technology will allow users of Tributes to get e-mail alerts, say when someone from their home town passes away, Taylor said. Tributes expects to make money from selling advertising, online memorials and gift items like flowers and cards.

Just imagine: You're walking up the five flights of stairs to your walk-up, arms full of groceries, when your BlackBerry beeps with a new text message. As you struggle to lean against the wall and shift all the weight of milk and Diet Coke to one arm so you can check who's pinging you, you find out that guy from high school, who was the first person to give you crabs, has died. Web 2.Oh No, indeed.

[E&P]