Free DME & DFIR Resources

Moments ago, I completed several updates and upgrades to the Media-Geek community. While most of them where behind the scenes type of stuff, there were some new features introduced that members might find interesting, such as:

• Photo and video support for groups - Group members can now upload photos and videos to be shared among fellow group members.
• Photo Tagging - Users can now tag their friends in any of their photos
• Community Content Sharing - Users can now easily share their videos, photos, group bulletins and discussions with all the major social bookmarking services (digg, delicious, Stumbleupon, etc) as well as social networks like Facebook, Myspace, Bebo, LinkedIn, and more!
• Friend Suggest - Users can instantly expand their network by adding friends with our 'Friend Suggest' tool
• Wall Post Notifications - Get notified when someone posts a new message or responds to an old message on your wall.

Various layout issues and minor bugs were addressed as well during the upgrade process, but as with all Web sites it will always be a work in progress. If you stumble across a problem or have a questions/recommendation, as always, simply shoot me a note or post it to the member forums. Thanks for participating!

I just returned from another great week of DME training at our office out on the east coast last week. One of the themes I've come to recognize through my travels teaching the fundamentals of DME Processing, is that even some of the most seasoned technicians and analysts don’t really understand the significance of hardware to accurate and proper processing of DME. It’s completely understandable why, given the marketing messages of some DME vendors, the fact that we're all constantly asked to do more with less, and the rate of related technological advancements.

Here are the currently supported file types for uploading to our Downloads area:

A look behind H.264, the world's most popular video codec, including encoding parameters and royalty concerns.

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Haven't had much time to post lately, but wanted to quickly say that the new Google Chrome  browser totally rocks!  I'm waiting on some files to transcode and thought I'd type up a quick post using this cool new browser...and the new blogging tool I'm implementing for Media-Geek members.  Anywho...

Three days old (publically released Tuesday) and this browser has me wondering when Microsoft will get out of the browser game.  I know the answer is never, but come on...have you tried IE8?  Please tell me I'm not the only idiot who thought IE8 BETA 2 would be an improvement over BETA 1.   

I've been using Safari for most of my general browsing for several months now, and of course have Firefox 2 and 3 tucked in to my quick launch bar as well.  Unfortunately, as a Web developer, I have to keep a few versions of IE around; but you can bet you won't find it in my quick launch bar anymore.

The Supreme Court today is set to hear arguments surrounding a case involving so-called ’sexting’ on a company-owned pager, of which the decision they make could have broad implications for employee privacy rights in the workplace.

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The Federal Law Enforcement Training Center has multiple vacancies available in the upcoming Digital Photography for Law Enforcement training program (DPLE 905). The program dates are: 06/02/2009-06/11/2009.

This eight-day program, with evening assignments, is an introductory digital photography school that acquaints students with a host of photographic concepts and skills including:

Intel Monday announced a new line of solid-state drives (SSDs) that are based on the serial ATA (SATA) 3.0 specification, which doubles I/O throughput compared to previous-generation SSDs.

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We recently purchased a new cellular phone for our eight-year-old son. The phone allows him to make or receive calls only from a defined list of telephone numbers, which we enter into it, and provides emergency 911 access. A few months ago, a friend of his from school came over and she had a new LG Migo "kid-friendly" cellular phone from Verizon Wireless. Once we saw the LG Migo, we knew we'd be getting him a cellular phone long before we had initially planned. While the Migo is a neat device, we ended up going with the Firefly, which uses Cingular's network.

The Firefly can be used as a pre-paid device, or you can subscribe to a monthly service plan. As with nearly all pre-paid services, the per minute rates are a little outrageous ($.25/min.), but since we anticipate minimal usage, we should be alright for the immediate future. The fact of the matter is this was an impulse purchase, and we may eventually change to the LG Migo and Verizon Wireless anyway.

The Law Enforcement and Emergency Services Video Association (LEVA) is participating in the development of a national standards document for police interview rooms.

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The testing continues today with the Private Messaging (PM) feature that will be made available to all members.  Members will be able to PM each other from any page within the members area, including forum posts.  PM settings will allow each member to be notified of new PM's via email as well, if they'd like; users can be notified of all new PMs, new PMs only when they're offline, or not at all.

Additionally, PM's can be further secured by using an encryption word for each message; you simply enter the encryption word prior to sending the message...and make sure the other party has it or they won't be able to read your PM!

From The New York Times: Cabling Your Mac, By ERIC A. TAUB

A new cable from NewerTech simplifies the transfer of high-quality video from your Mac to an HDTV.

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George Reis, President and owner of Imaging Forensics, Inc., has launched a new MeetUp group for those involved with technical and scientific imaging and photography.

For more information or to join the group please visit http://www.meetup.com/OC-Technical-Scientific-Photography-Imaging-Group/.