Time capsules will be stored in the cloud, not the dirt

It’s a scene that has played itself out in countless films: a family member dies, and the lawyer pops a VHS tape into a VCR. “If you’re watching this…I didn’t make it.”

Switch out the VHS tape for a digital recording, and the lawyer for a new online service called Evergram. According to their website:

Evergram allows people to easily create and send meaningful keepsake communications into the future – to the people they care most about. When video, text or audio messages are sent for future delivery, whether hours, days or even years later, the degree of thoughtfulness usually increases. This is a phenomenon often experienced in letter writing, and one that our team has integrated into the Evergram experience.

Sign up today for their private beta, and you could soon be recording a message to be delivered at the time of a future birthday, wedding, or years after you’re long gone.

USA Today spoke with creator Duncan Seay, who described the process:

Evergram users record 15-second messages directly into a smartphone camera or computer webcam and select the date for it to be played.

For instance, if a wedding is on June 15, guests are invited to leave congratulatory messages to be viewed on the wedding day. The Evergram calendar is programmed to send the couple an e-mail and present the videos in an online album that’s either public or private.

To pull something like that together otherwise, “You’d have to call your friends, they don’t know where the video software is, the files are too big to send, and when you receive it, you have no way to put it into a beautiful album,” says Seay. With Evergram, “We do that all for you.”

Currently, users will primarily send messages for events in the near future…but  with Evergram as just the beginning, it’s not so hard to imagine sending a video message to yourself fifty years in the future, or to your yet to be conceived great-great-grandchildren.

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