Thank you for visiting, clicking through, linking to us, and emailing our Open Source Business Intelligence Lens. You have helped us keep our rank in the top 100 Squidoo lens.

Our lens provides comprehensive links to Opens Source Business Intelligence Projects and other contents shown here:

If there are other links you want us to include, please don't hesitate to contact us.

If you have not done so, visit and explore our lens.

We are working on a Content Management System for a customer and we are applying Digital Watermark to protect the customer's photos from unlicensed use. We are using Digimarc MyPictureMarc™.

It has been a frustrating experience for me since the embedded digital mark keeps on disappearing. I embed the digital mark, save and close. When I reopen the file, the digital mark is gone. It does not happen on all the photos but only some of it. It seems like the watermark does not survive at all.

The photos (from screen shots) below should illustrate my point:

Click to view original size
Digimarc Embedded and Verified

Click to view original size
Photo saved. Notice the © symbol in the filename - ©HappyValley1.jpg when it was opened by JASC PaintshopPro

Click to view original size

Closed the file and re-opened.... Digimarc Gone!

We are using an older version of JASC PainshopPro Version 7.04 so the current downloadable Digimarc Plugin does not work. (Separate issue opened with Digimarc). So, we are using the Digimarc interface that comes with our version, seen below:

Click to view original size

Another weird thing: Using Digimarc MyPictureMarc Reader, the file: 37oakrd11170303.jpg does not have the digimarc sign.

Click to view original size

Opening it up in JASC,:

Click to view original size
the © symbol is not there. But if one reads the digimarc, it is there:

Click to view original size

These are my Digimarc woes ...

I wrote Digimarc support to see why this is happening. Keep posted....

I don't know what Rep. Richard Pombo (Tracy, CA Republican Representative), Chairman of the House Resources Committee, is thinking. According to the Fact Sheet - Pombo Reconciliation Draft Legislation Threatens America’s Heritage, Pombo is proposing to "close 15 national parks and sell them off to the oil and gas industries and private developers; demanded that park vehicles and facilities be turned into billboards for commercial advertising; and suggested that commercial naming rights be sold for park buildings and trails, among other unprecedented proposals." That proposal is simply ridiculous. It infuriates me.

The Sacramento Bee Editorial: Rep. Pombo's yard sale, calls this a “bizarre thought” --- to sell off the National Parks if we don’t drill in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. I think it is not only bizarre but also barbaric. What kind of tactic is that? I hope the people of Tracy, CA know what their representative is doing. I hope they never re-elect Rep. Richard Pombo. I hope the people in the US never vote for anyone who thinks like Pombo.

Alaska Arctic National Wildlife Refuge
Source of Picture: US Fish & Wildlife Service -Alaska

The 15 sites proposed to be closed are:

1. Alibates Flint Quarries National Monument, Texas
2. Aniakchak National Monument and Preserve, Alaska
3. Bering Land Bridge National Preserve, Alaska
4. Cape Krusenstern National Monument, Alaska
5. Eugene O'Neill National Historical Site, California
6. Fort Bowie National Historic Site, Arizona
7. Frederick Law Olmsted National Historical Site, Massachusetts
8. Kobuk Valley National Park, Alaska
9. Lake Clark National Park and Preserve, Alaska
10. Mary McLeod Bethune Council House National Historic Site, Washington, D.C.
11. Minuteman Missile National Historic Site, South Dakota
12. Noatak National Preserve, Alaska
13. Thaddeus Kosciuszko National Memorial, Pennsylvania
14. Thomas Stone National Historical Site, Maryland
15. Yukon-Charley Rivers National Preserve, Alaska

If you are looking for family members and/or friends who are victims of Katrina, NBC11.com Katrina Connection Clicks has links to sites where one can go. The list includes sites from the Coast Guard, Salvation Army, WWL-TV, to name a few. The site also lists resources that one may find helpful.

Joseph and I listened to the WWL-AM Interview with New Orleans Mayor, Ray Nagin. He lashed on the inefficiency and the slow pace of relief efforts of the US government.

I must say it is a podcast, via Dave Winer's Scripting News, worth listening to ...

WWL-AM Interview with New Orleans Mayor

One part of the interview had this:

WWL: What can we do here?

NAGIN: Keep talking about it.

WWL: We'll do that. What else can we do?

NAGIN: Organize people to write letters and make calls to their congressmen, to the president, to the governor. Flood their doggone offices with requests to do something. This is ridiculous.

After listening to it, my heart went to those who are in need. In support of the mayor of New Orleans, I blog about it to let people know.