The following is a guest post from Justin Herbert, an education professional. As such he is interested in how technology is affecting education. His post discusses using "Mobile Response Codes," a term we've begun using internally to group the rapidly expanding print to web options; QRcodes, Microsoft Tags and [most importantly] digital watermarks to name just a few.

Technological advances in cellular capabilities, web applications, and interactive content storage have led to the creation of digital watermarks and quick response (QR) codes. QR codes are two-dimensional bar codes that users can scan with a webcam or smartphone app, such as QR Droid or Red Laser, that lead directly to interactive content. Digital watermarks work in a similar fashion, but offer a more aesthetically pleasing layout. Invisible to the naked eye, but perceptible by your smart phone, digital watermarks provide a sleeker, visually pleasing look and can be used by simply pointing your smart phone at the watermarked content of interest and using the associated app.

I've got some great news I wanted to share with everyone. We've posted a few times within our blog about how House Beautiful was integrating digital watermarks within their publication. The results have been just wonderful and I'm happy to announce that momentum has been building.

They've now partnered with Glidden Paint to launch a marketing campaign for the February edition. Readers will be able to access the MyColortopia site, which is Glidden's new color portal. It's pretty cool that House Beautiful now has interactive editorial and advertising content enabled through Digimarc Discover. Read all about it here. Nice work House Beautiful!

Camera prints, film and slides ability to survive thanks to the physical nature of their materials is pretty common. Keeping in mind that photography only began in the 1820's and we may find that digital photography could be even more durable.

I loved reading this story about a DSLR that spend a year at the bottom of a bay. Not only was the diver able to retrieve images, but he also found the owner of the camera and images using a social network.

A bit more disconcerting is this story of a woman who finds a family photo in Ikea that she posted to her blog. Ikea bought the image from a stock photography company. I was unable to find a follow-up to this story. Most likely the stock photography company paid their base rate for a stock photo if there's no copyright infringement.

My two conclusions:

1. Make sure you erase that SD card really well before you sell off an old camera.
2. Before posting images to the web consider adding a digital watermark like Digimarc for Images and copyrighting them. If your stolen photos are found and have your copyright you could do better than a base rate for stock photos.

 

Digimarc was chosen as App of the Day by Apple’N’Apps.com! We are honored and pleased to be in such excellent company as Apple’s Store app and Mint.com.

House Beautiful magazine first began using Digimarc Discover™ technology in their July/August issue. Their adventure with digital watermarks was a success, and the October edition contained seven watermarks and introduced a new digital Table of Contents section. You can read the full press release here. The momentum continued to build when they announced that their November cover would be their first to be digitally watermarked. The payoff was a fantastic video short that paid homage to early Andy Warhol films. As of late, House Beautiful has also announced that they will begin leveraging digital watermarks in their advertising and marketing beginning in February 2012. Take a peek at the video below of Digimarc Discover in action in their November pages:

 

I'm very excited to announce that the Digimarc Discover™ Online Services Portal now offers two new tools for customers to create print-to-mobile campaigns that can deliver even richer media experiences and help drive ongoing engagement.  The new Pop-Up Label Overlay and Menu Button Overlay templates empower consumers to choose the product and/or experience that they want to have prior to being connected to an online landing page.

InPublishing just wrote an exciting article about how Armani launched a campaign that uses digital watermarks. This campaign was delivered by Digimarc's partner Digital Space in the UK.

You've probably noticed that a lot of campaigns today are starting to incorporate different types of codes that enable consumers to interact with the brand or product. Digital watermarks are an imperceptible alternative; much more appealing than your typical QR code or machine readable codes. We like to say: The bridge from print to online doesn't have to be square!

We've already seen magazines like House Beautiful, Xbox 360, Photoshop User, and many more integrate digital watermarks into their publication. And we're starting to see a lot of traction and interest with digital watermarks, so we'll continue to update you as more publications hit the street using technology enabled by Digimarc Discover.

For some reason smartphone manufacturers neglect to tell us that your smartphone camera does NOT take a photo when you tap on the shutter button. The camera takes the photo when you RELEASE the shutter button, or at least it does on iPhone and Android phones that follow the OS specs.

So... when you are trying to get that photo of your kids, pet or a group that's in motion, try this: Place your finger on the shutter button and release it when you see the shot you want to take.

You'll avoid shaking the phone by not tapping on the shutter button. You could get a shot of your friends or kids smiling! Better photos in less than 30 seconds.

You may have seen recent news about the Digimarc Discover solution and how it will enable print to become interactive. That was just the beginning; The Oregonian newspaper (in Oregon) launched its new mobile reader application that will deliver rich content to its users by utilizing the Digimarc Discover watermarking technology. News & Tech had a great article about it, so I wanted to say "thanks!" to the editors.

 
Please stay tuned in the coming months when I will post more information about different magazines that will also be inporporating Digimarc Discover.

If you're one of the lucky ones who've discovered the value of using Action Scripts (to digitally watermark lots of photos, of course) and your software of choice is Adobe Elements, you should read Erin's blog at Texas Chicks.

It seems that purchasers of Adobe Elements 9 on the Mac App Store are NOT allowed to install action scripts through the Effects Palette.

Be sure to read Erin's blog (she's an Action Scripting Goddess for those using Elements). Just incase you're lazy... the solution is (a spoiler alert?); buy direct from Adobe or Amazon to avoid this issue.

Thanks again to the Texas Chicks!

The key is to start at the end and work backward.

Consider the example of a print advertising campaign enhanced with QR Codes, Digital Watermarks, or other embedded signaling. Whatever the signaling methodology, the technology itself is not the strategy. Instead it is merely a tactical weapon to trigger a desired consumer response.