Take a picture, it'll last longer

Let me start off this blog post with my general impressions from the Couture and JCK shows in Las Vegas.

As you might have read elsewhere, the shows were better than expected, although both were being measured against some pretty low expectations, given the state of the worldwide economy.

Still, having an above-average show in this terrible economy is better than meeting, or falling below, already low expectations.

A number of issues came up during the show.

The two that stuck out most in my mind were the power of social networking--the time is now to get on the Facebook, Twitter, etc., bandwagon--and the fact that the industry's memo system is in need of a serious overhaul.

I'll be writing about these topics in future issues of National Jeweler so, for now, I wanted to share with you the outcome of an appointment I previewed in a blog post titled "Are diamonds ready for their close-up?" just before the show.

On Monday (rescheduled from Saturday due to my directionally challenged nature; sorry again Gemory!) I met with the founder and CEO of Newark, Calif.-based Gemory, Erwan Le Roy, and Gemory's head of strategic partnerships, Richard Lucquet.

These are the guys of "Smile, you're on a diamond" fame.

The company's system, called DiamondPure, takes photos that have been uploaded to Gemory.com, shrinks them into microscopic but still-viewable images, and then embeds those images onto a diamond.

The picture is then viewed using GemmaView, a small, telescope-like object developed by Gemory.

As I learned during my visit to the EGL USA booth in Las Vegas on Monday (EGL USA is the lab that grades the photographically-altered diamonds), a video-equipped ring box is included with this special photography package.

It looks like any other "I'm-about-to-open-this-and-propose-hoping-you-won't-reject-me" ring box,
except for the inside of the top lid, where there is a tiny little screen.

Just plug the unsuspecting-looking box into a computer and download 100 megabytes of whatever you like: logos, a video, a picture.

The cost for the photo-embedded diamond (not including the cost of the stone, of course, which has already been bought and paid for by this point), the GemmaView and the box is $2,000, according to the guys from Gemory.

The picture on the diamond idea is, technologically speaking, a very cool concept.

Le Roy and Lucquet said that so far, two stores are offering the Gemory program. And