A while back I posted about an 8th grader who won first place at a regional science fair. Patrick's project incorporated digital watemarking as a means to help deliver dosage information for OTC drugs. If you missed it, you can read it here. Well, that young man was invited to the state science fair and I'm very happy to say that he got 1st place again. Even better, he received an award for the "Best in Category" for Behavior Science which included over 200 projects.

Congratulations young man! Digimarc is very proud of your acomplishments. He's now entered his science fair project in the 3M/Discover Channel contest. Best of luck! A future entrepreneur or scientist is certainly among us.

He told us that the judges asked him why it's not happening today... We agree! Someone get a move on it!

Digimarc for Images is committed to the photography community, especially travel photographers! We like to live vicariously through all the adventures and exotic journeys they get to go on — all in the name of "work." To highlight our committment, we are a proud sponsor of the Travel Photographer of the Year (TPOTY) contest, "The premier travel photography awards and your showcase to the world."

The following banners were provided to Digimarc to help by TPOTY to help showcase our involvement. Can anyone tell us what kind of whale/dolphin that is???

One of the really creative things you can do with watermarking is to place multiple digital watermarks within a single image. This creates multiple "hot spots" that your readers can explore within a single interactive item.

Creating multiple hot-spots requires only a good layout application, a Digimarc Discover account to create the web services and watermarks; Photoshop can be used as well. You can find YouTube videos for creating hot-spots with InDesign here or using Photoshop here. Or to see a video of how this unique functionality can be well appled, watch here.

While the image embedded to the left only features a single watermark that you can scan with your smartphone, if you download the PDF with multiple watermarks you can see this same image with 6 watermarks. Each of these watermarks has a pop-up text overlay to tell you where it links to, the vest, the jewelry, etc. and tapping on the screen will take you to that product. In a way the printed page responds to a smartphone with a reader app like a website and mouse-ing over links.

Can you imagine this same image with 6 QR Codes on top of each product to create the same affect? Not something an advertiser would want to see. The really nice thing about multiple watermarks within an image is that you don’t need a quiet zone like a QR code; they can be placed next to each other. If anything you will want to make sure not to put too many watermarks within a small area which may confuse the reader. While watermarks can go down to a 1” x 1” area we recommend keeping the watermarked areas at least 2” x 2” for ease of use.

A few months ago a sharp 8th grade student named Patrick reached out to me, inquiring about the use of digital watermarks on over-the-counter (OTC) drugs to deliver dose information. He believes this would help reduce the number of dosage error found in pharmacies nationwide. Always willing to help out a budding technologist, Digimarc gladly supported this project. I'm happy to say he received first place in his regionals and is off to the State Science Fair at the University of Illinois very shortly. Nice job, Patrick!

House Beautiful Opens the Door to Innovation with Digimarc Discover™

Do you want to know how easy it is to use digital watermarking in your publication? Check out this Case Study with House Beautiful.

Are you thinking: “Wait, a Case Study sounds like homework. Why would I want to read that?” Well, let me explain what you’ll learn:

• Embedding digital watermarks into images takes just seconds.  (Seriously, try it out yourself at www.digimarc.com/portal)
• Why digital watermarks are preferred over other mobile response codes.
• How to successfully implement and introduce digital watermarks into your publication.
• Why Payoffs for editorial and advertisements must provide real value.

Interested in learning more? Contact me at matthew.szerencse@digimarc.com