Last week Kevin and I attended 6Sight in Monterey, California (I know, I know, tough duty...) One of the featured speakers was photographer Rick Smolan. If you aren’t familiar with his work, check out the "A Day in the Life" and "24/7" series of books, which combine creative storytelling and state-of-the-art technology.

The "Obama Time Capsule" is his latest project where he brings together incredible images and shots from over 100 of the nation’s top photographers with our own personal experience of this historical election. Each book is unique and personalized to the buyer.

Check it out at:  www.theobamatimecapsule.com

This is a public service announcement from yours truly...

Okay, I admit it, I have been one of those annoying people who probably spends far too much time posting pics and video to Facebook; but hey, my family lives in Michigan (I’m in Oregon), and I have friends all over the world that I want to share my life with through photos. Come on, the photos are usually what people want to see most!

So, I’ve spent an embarrassing amount of hours creating my albums and uploading them to my Facebook page – eagerly awaiting the comments. Since I travel for work, I often take photos and video using my iPhone, which I promptly delete from my phone once they’re posted. Because I didn’t have any reason to worry about my precious photos, right? WRONG!

I’m attending Advertising Week in NYC through Thursday and sat in on the Mobile Ad Summit today. Read on for the highlights from this event, details from an interesting session with Google Creative Labs, plus the tie-in to our world of digital images.

According to Tiny Pictures founder and CEO, John Poisson, Tiny’s camperphone photo and video sharing service, Radar, will extend Shutterfly’s reach into the mobile and social networking environments. As you may know, I am keenly interested in these new developments where the imaging industry meets mobile. ‘Tis the future my friends... click here for the details if you’re interested.

Photographers for Spain’s Autofácil magazine recently witnessed readers of the magazine linking from their photos of cars to video tours inside the automobiles and more. The magazine was the first in Spain to digitally watermark photos so that readers with enabled mobile phones could detect the watermarks, linking to a wide range of new and enhanced content never before available from printed magazines. As we watch the suffering publishing industry struggle to survive, this use of digital watermarking certainly looks to provide a great way to bridge the traditional printed publication to the web and other premium content. I think it is a great way to re-engage readers and keep them coming back for more.

Javier Gonzalez, Director General of aquaMobile, and I will be co-presenting a web cast on how digital watermarking is enabling these new mobile experiences. Javier will share their experience with Autofácil and what the reader response has been to date. If this is something you’re interested in learning more about, please join us. It’s free and should be a very informative hour.

Click here to register online via the Digital Watermarking Alliance.

Last week I attended the ad:tech conference in Chicago and thought you might like a summary of what I picked up there. Here is the quick, abbreviated, blog version of my notes, which I think you'll find interesting if you didn't have the chance to be there in person. By the way, do you like Cheetos? Read on...

I’ve written before about the power of making your photos and other images interactive. Keep watch for more and more pilots using a range of technologies that enable your mobile phone to provide a wealth of new information and experiences from the printed page. Recently, we talked our CTO, Tony Rodriguez, into giving the world a quick demo of how digital watermarking can be used to bring newspapers and magazines to life. If pictures are worth a thousand words, then this video should be worth...? Well, a lot!

Take a minute and watch Tony as he explains what we are doing. Click here, then select "Video Demonstration" to watch the video.

I'm just back from New York and typing up my notes from the Advertising 2.0 conference in Queens. So for those who are interested in what’s going on with the advertising business, plus the impact on digital photography and watermarking, here is a quick high-level recap of my key takeaways...

I’ve mentioned in earlier posts about new opportunities to make photos interactive using digital watermarks. Today’s smartphone cameras are finally reaching the point where they can be used to detect and read digital watermarks in printed images used in magazines, newspapers, etc. This allows readers to use their mobile phones to link from the printed page to video, the Internet, promotions… all kinds of stuff. We see similar capabilities with campaigns using 2-D barcodes, but for the “image purists” out there, digital watermarks basically become an invisible barcode so you can get the same experience without having an ugly symbol cluttering up the image.

Last week, autofacil (a popular car magazine in Spain) launched its first issue using interactive images. 

Speaking as someone who has watched the photo industry from black and white prints to color to Polaroids that provided instant gratification to the ever advancing digital cameras we all use today, I continue to be fascinated by the power and value of images.

A few months ago, I sat in a conference session with a company that manufactures very tiny miniature cameras. Their vision was for these little cameras to be located literally everywhere so that consumers no longer had to take their own photos, but could request images taken from a specific location, time, perspective, etc.