Free DME & DFIR Resources

Ladies and gentlemen, I have a new favorite browser, and it's lightning fast. I downloaded Apple's Safari 3 Public BETA a week or so ago to troubleshoot a log-in issue one of our members was having, and next thing you know I've installed it on all of my PCs at home and the office. Safari 3 provides tabbed browsing similar to IE7 and Firefox 2, which is nice for those of us that have multiple pages/sites open simultaneously constantly. The first thing that impressed me was its look and layout, but I quickly realized that its primary advantage was its performance.

Apple is quick to point out on the homepage for Safari its performance advantages. They claim Safari can load pages up to 3 times faster than Opera, 2 times faster than IE7, and 1.7 times faster than Firefox. Pretty impressive numbers, but what browser doesn't claim to be the fastest? As you can imagine, some of Media-Geek.com's member services are bandwidth intensive, and others require multiple scripts to be loaded by your browser. I did a few rudimentary tests accessing various features of Media-Geek.com using Safari, IE7, and Firefox and was simply amazed at the difference in load times.

Wearable Camera Not Quite Ready For Its Close-Up

Warhol was only half-right. Sure everyone is famous these days, but only for 15 seconds and in 15 fps.

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At the request of the public safety community, UL has begun development of a performance standard for tactical (e.g., hand-deployed, covert placement, robot-mounted) and operational (e.g., body-worn) video camera systems. We are seeking input from end users to determine your needs and requirements: who uses which systems, when and how they are typically used, and what features are used.

We would appreciate your completing a questionnaire using the link below:

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/tacticalcamera

Your input is requested by June 30th so that it can be used to guide the path forward and help to ensure that the standard meets the needs of end users.

Microsoft, in partnership with the New York City Police Department, is announcing a new state-of-the-art law enforcement technology called Domain Awareness System. The said system is designed to bring the latest crime prevention and counter terrorism technology capabilities to New York City and to other law enforcement, and intelligence agencies around the world sometime in the future.

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The Association for Forensic Multimedia Analysis (AFMA) hosted a meeting & conference call on September 19th relating to further development of this new, independent organization for Video, Audio and Image Analysts. Over thirty industry professionals participated in the event, and discussion topics included such things as the organization's scope, purpose, and future direction. As detailed in an email distributed following the meeting:

http://media-geek.com/images/myblog/frontpage/leva-lab2.jpg

There are still seats available for the next LEVA Level 1 training course, which will be held at the LEVA DME Lab September 28th - October 2nd.

Senior level law enforcement professionals have an awful lot on their plate, and the pace of technological advancement keeps heaping it on faster and faster. Bleeding edge and cutting edge technologies are absolutely necessary in the military and law enforcement, but so is common sense. Take for instance the plethora of stories over the last year or so on Harris Corporation’s Stingray and Hailstorm.

Upcoming CS6 versions of Adobe's flagship video software change significantly, with a streamlined interface for Premiere Pro and performance improvements for After Effects.

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The new Media-Geek.com members area is officially open!  If you've already resgistered, take a moment to check out the brief Getting Started tutorial.  Additional, in-depth tutorials and other documentation will be developed over the next few weeks.  In the meantime, if you have a question about any of the features provided in the members area you can post it to the Media-Geek.com "Help!  How do I..." forum, send me a PM, or submit your question via our contact form.

The concept is simple - a team effort, a community resource.  The more people who contribute, the more we all benefit.  If you're a forensic multi-media professional and haven't registered yet, sign-up today!

On 2/5/2015 SWGDE released a new draft document for public comment; "Best Practices for the Recovery of Data from CCTV Digital Video Recorders".

"The purpose of this document is to provide advanced practices for data recovery from CCTV DVRs when the data cannot be recovered via the guidelines provided in the SWGIT Best Practices for the Analysis of Digital Video Recorders."

Visit www.swgde.org for further details.

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.

The Scientific Working Group for Imaging Technology (SWGIT) has released a DRAFT of "Best Practices for the Retrieval of Digital Video" for public comment. The comment period ends April 19, 2013.

Visit SWGIT

You can find a good printing resolution tutorial by Ben Long at creativepro.com. From the intro: While Facebook, Flickr, email, and other online sources are great ways to show and share photos, at some point you'll probably want to make a print of an image. (For one thing, an archival print is still the most durable way to preserve photos.) Whether you print it yourself using a desktop photo printer, or send your images to an online service, you're going to have to size your image and choose a resolution.

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