Wired Magazine for this winner on Jeff Taylor’s plans to launch a standalone website for memorial tributes:

Monster.com Founder Starts Social Networking Site for the Dead

That is just too good to pass up. Anyway, as Wired reports:

Tributes.com is scheduled for a soft launch in June. It aims to provide a central location to house online memorials for those who have passed on. It’s starting with $4.3 million in funding, with The Wall Street Journal as a lead investor.

Jeff is the founder of Eons.com, which had an initial focus on death notices that some found a little creepy. Tributes.com goes down the path pioneered by Legacy.com, which lets the bereaved post online memories of loved ones. Wired also notes that online tributes have taken off at sites like MySpace and Facebook.

A Charlottesville, Virginia publisher has rolled out a local bi-monthly magazine for Boomers in the region, called TheNext50. Publisher Eric Lund told a local newspaper that editorial will be locally-focused, studiously non-senior and that the target is affluent Boomers retiring to the area in growing numbers. These days, it’s great to see new ventures in print (of any kind). Speaking from my own experience launching Satisfaction Magazine in Chicago, readers will love it. But the big challenge will be convincing local advertisers to value a niche market that they will perceive as “old”….no matter how hard you work to frame it as something else. That can make it difficult to attract luxury goods, autos, fashion and high end retail pages. And many advertisers are looking for pure tonnage at the lowest cost in regional markets–not something strategically targeted. On the national level, more advertisers are getting comfortable with the affluent Boomer niche.

But here’s wishing TheNext50 all the best. It would be great to see someone finally crack the code. Initial circulatin is 15,000 and it’s distributed free around the Charlottesville area.

Legislation was introduced in the U.S. Senate last week aimed at making it easier for older Americans to stay in the workforce longer and encourage employers to recruit and retain older workers. The bill has bi-partisan sponsorship of Senators Gordon H. Smith (R-OR), Herb Kohl (D-WI), and Kent Conrad (D-ND).

I’ll have more on this in a future column over at RetirementRevised, but here are key provisions, according to a press release from the sponsors:

- Removing penalties in certain pension plans for workers who phase into retirement by receiving a lower salary while working reduced hours;

- Allowing seniors to earn delayed retirement credits for Social Security purposes for an additional two years until age 72, instead of age 70;

- Reducing the amount of Social Security benefits lost to seniors who claim benefits before reaching normal retirement age and while they continue working;

-Forming a National Resource Center on Aging and the Workforce within the Department of Labor to collect, organize and disseminate older worker information;

- Changing how Civil Service Retirement System (CSRS) annuities are calculated by correcting a glitch that results in a disproportionate reduction in benefits for certain employees who phase into retirement by working part-time;

- Requiring states to include older worker representatives on the state and local workforce investment boards and set aside five percent of the Workforce Investment Act (WIA) funds to assist older individuals;

- Expanding eligibility of the Work Opportunity Tax Credit (WOTC) to include older workers; and

- Clarifying that certain defined benefit pension plans can define normal retirement age under their plans as the earlier of (1) the attainment of a specified age or (2) attainment of 30 or more years of service.

Kohl chairs the U.S. Senate Special Committee on Aging; Smith is its ranking member. A recent committee hearing on the bill is available as a webcast [requires Real Player].

Our friend Jeff Williams of Bizstarters is taking his act on the road, with a series of “Ultimate Boomer Business Start-Up Workshops” York, Chicago and Boston this June.

“We’ve learned from working with hundreds of Boomer entrepreneurs that many just want to run their business part-time and so are looking for a quick, easy way to launch,” says Williams. “We’ve spent more than a year designing a one day workshop and follow up coaching group to get our Boomer clients open for business quickly”.

The seminar is designed for individuals who have a pre-existing business idea and who want to be well on their way to launching their business at the end of the one day workshop.

Details and registration information on the workshop can be found here

A Dutch organization called Route50Plus launched an ambitious new website this week, Route50plus, with a mission to “track, share and distribute” information and knowledge about the 50+ market globally. The idea here is a B2B resource for marketers focused on 50+ consumers, and we can always use more light in this area. The venture’s interesting group of partners include Plus Magazine, 50 Plus Beurs, SeniorWeb, Nederland Bureau door Tourisme & Congressen, Omroep MAX, De Telegraaf, MediaPlus, and Booming Experience.

The publisher’s description is promising:

On the home page is an agenda with upcoming international events and seminars. At the heart of the site is a digital knowledge centre with the latest news published in both Dutch and English. Content and links can be found from more than 4000 national and international sources. Topics include fifty-plus marketing, media, new products, services, and trends. “This is a website marketers around the world have been waiting for,” said Claudia Biegel, Project Manager of Route 50Plus. “Finally you can find and download the most up-to-date and relevant information about everything concerning the fifty-plus on one comprehensive website.”

Just one problem: all the navigation is in Dutch and the content is a somewhat confusing blend of Dutch and English. This will be a bit of an issue for those non-Dutch speakers out there, of which there are . . . a few.

Suggestion to the publishers: reorganize the site so that visitors can opt for an English or Dutch version.

If you think all Boomers are . . . well, doing anything en masse–think again. AARP and Focalyst go after the top ten myths about Boomers in a new report. Via Marketing Charts.