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Samsung Semiconductor Monday introduced a handful of new hard disks and optical drives, including a 3.5-inch desktop PC drive which it bills as the world’s fastest Blu-ray drive on the market.

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Merry Christmas & Happy New Year my friends!  Just a quick note to pass along season's greetings and give you a heads up regarding upcoming topics for my podcast, Nerds & Non/Sense™ .

In our January, 2020 episodes we'll be discussing The Illusion of Privacy.  Cambridge Analytica, "The Great Hack" documentary on Netflix, the Best Selling book "The Age of Surveillance Capitalism" and chatting about how metadata about your daily activities is used to not only predict, but influence your behavior.  How you are the commodity, and most of you still don't even understand the extent to which you've facilitated this.

In our February, 2020 episodes we'll be discussing Work/Life Balance.  Mandatory professional therapy and mental health resources & evaluations for digital evidence practitioners, and how they should be mandated in ALL agency SOPs, IMHO.

I was out in Indianapolis last week to assist with the LEVA Level 1 training course. Another great week of forensic video and DME training provided by LEVA, and hosted by the University of Indianapolis.

It was an action packed week both in the classroom and out with students learning and practicing DME fundamentals, and the City bustling with NBA playoff and Indy 500 activities. Thank you to LEVA, their staff, my employer Ocean Systems, and the students for such an incredible opportunity.

Safe travels home everyone and have a great holiday weekend!

I’m excited to announce that I’ll be attending this year’s 100th IAI Educational Conference in Sacramento, CA. This year’s conference is anticipated to be one of the largest, as it’s the IAI’s Centennial event. I will be there representing my employer, Ocean Systems, and we will be showcasing our latest Digital & Multimedia Evidence (DME) solutions in the event's Exhibit Hall.

For more information about the event visit the IAI 100th International Educational Conference web site. Hope to see you there!

Positive & negative, in regards to perspective, can both have unintended consequences. While I don’t have any problem with people referring to me either way (Pessimist or Optimist), in my opinion, both are incorrect for me personally. “Oh, so you're a realist.” No, that sh!* is scary; reality. I’m a believer.

I published the remaining few paragraphs over on LinkedIn and have put the link below if you're interested. I was hoping it would be seen by a wider audience. All the best. - LC

(The original post no longer exists on LinkedIn.)

Prototype stealth device can detect movement behind a thick brick wall. U.K. military is looking into whether it can be used in "urban warfare" for scanning buildings.

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A couple weeks ago I was up in Vancouver to teach Ocean Systems’ DVR Assessment & Video Recovery training course, which was hosted by the Vancouver Police Department. Many thanks to our host agency and students, as it was another great week of training and information sharing. Next week I’ll be in Miami to provide a free seminar on Digital Video Evidence on Monday morning, followed by our 3-day DVR Recovery training course which will run Tuesday through Thursday.

Avid will be releasing a new version of Pro Tools soon that will be entirely free, called Pro Tools | First. It doesn't appear to be a severely stripped down version either, so I'm anxious to give a look first hand. If you are too, you can learn more and sign up to be notified at http://www.avid.com/ptfirst

Atlantic Light Works and Reindeer Graphics announce the release of PercepTool 2.0.2 TM, a Photoshop add-on suite that performs High Dynamic Range (HDR), Tone Mapping and Perceptual Effect operations on digital photographs. Compatible with both Windows and Mac platforms in 32- and 64-bit processing, it operates in Photoshop CS4 and CS5 (Photoshop Extended required for 32-bits/channel). PercepTool 2.0.2TM works with both B&W and Color images in 8-bits, 16-bits and 32-bits.

Yesterday I received my copy of the Adobe Creative Suite CS3 bundle, and although I just installed it I'm already very impressed. Adobe has made great strides with integrating their various design products, making it easier than ever to create, manage, and edit content for any medium. As a matter of fact, I've been using Adobe Contribute now for approximately five minutes with no prior experience, and I'm using it to publish this very post.

A producer for Discovery ID recently reached out to me looking for cases to research for the upcoming 4th season of Discovery ID's "See No Evil"program. They are looking for "cases whereby surveillance footage was key to cracking a mysterious homicide case."  This could be a case you recently worked on which has now been through the courts, or it might be a historical case from 10 or 15 years ago. At this stage, they are merely looking for interesting cases to research, and stated they'd of course go through proper channels to obtain media should the case pass their initial research stage.

For more information please log-in to the members area and see the related Forum post, which contains the producer's contact details.

The Adobe Photoshop 12.0.2 update for Mac and the Adobe Photoshop 12.0.2 update for Windows are now available for download. The Adobe Photoshop 12.0.2 update fixes a number of high priority bugs including painting performance and type-related issues. The most significant fixes in the Photoshop 12.0.2 update include...

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I picked up the new "LG Chocolate in Black" about a week ago after a few weeks of debating over it or the iPhone. I know, I know, it's like comparing apples to oranges; but I wasn't comparing them per say, I was debating on whether to make the leap to the iPhone. Well, long story short, I just felt the iPhone wasn't worth the risk and the price, at least yet; I suspect it will be within a year or so though. So far, the $49 I spent on the new Chocolate (retails for $79 w/a 2-yr. contract) seems to be money well spent.

Basically, LG redesigned the touch pad and navigation wheel on this latest version of the Chocolate and made it smaller and lighter. Everything else is pretty much the same. It sports a 1.3MP camera that takes decent pix and short vids, but it lacks a flash. It has a microSD memory card slot and should you decide to buy one of these phones, I'd recommend using it.