Free DME & DFIR Resources

It's really fascinating to look back at how far our discipline has come in the last 20 years, and how many resources and solutions are out there these days for Forensic Digital & Multimedia Analysts. Even more exciting is knowing some of the new opportunities and solutions for DME professionals that will be coming in 2019, especially in regards to training!

Late nights, early mornings, and a couple of days with no sleep at all over the last few weeks makes Larry want to buy stock in Starbucks. The new site is progressing well, but I just can't let go of the IE6 issues as easily as I thought I could. They're really no big deal, just some minor cosmetic issues, but when you put all this effort into a project you want visitors to at least see it the way it was designed...even those who choose not to update their FREE browsers.

If you've been here recently, you'll notice I've already changed the new site's layout. The concept is to provide a clean, user-friendly interface; not a fancy, schmancy look. I think this new layout accomplishes that, so I'm sticking with it. Of course, I've had to re-do much of the layout work I'd done on the previous design, but I think it's worth it. Now I just need a MAC user willing to be a "guinea pig".

A new document is being developed by the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center (FLETC) entitled, "Best Practices for Handling Digital Photographs Taken by Law Enforcement." The author of the document is Keith Hodges, Esq., a legal instructor at the center. Keith is seeking feedback from the community regarding his document. The document is posted at http://www.khodges.com/digitalphoto/

Keith is requesting feedback be sent directly to him at the following email address: keith.hodges@dhs.gov

Maybe it's just me, but it seems every other week someone's releasing a new "SmartPhone" that's going to change the way you do business as a mobile professional. But in my opinion, when you peel back that slick new protective plastic and fire it up it's the same old thing. No new killer apps, nothing really new as far as functionality or capability, and more often than not each new "exclusive release" seems to have more bugs than your local landfill on a hot summer day.

How long have they been making "Smartphones" now anyway? Well, to be honest, that I don't really know. I can tell you this, my first Smartphone was a Kyocera QCP6035 that I picked up in 2000 or early 2001. I can't remember for sure, as I think I might have killed those brain cells banging my head on my desk while trying resolve the plethora of issues I've been having with the latest generation of Smartphones. Either way, I'm pretty sure it was one of the first available and can remember how giddy I was to be able to toss my cell and my Palm Pilot for one device.

Your solid-state drive sits there in silence. It’s sleek. Elegant. More than a little mysterious. The hard drive it replaced was easy to understand: A soft hum assured you that its platters were spinning. A quiet mechanical click informed you of its read/write operations. You’d groom it with the occasional defrag. Times were good.

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Today Google launched Google Drive, a free-if-you-just-need-5GB-of-storage Dropbox-like service that lets you easily store and share files in the cloud.

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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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The Photoshop team would like to provide advanced notice that Photoshop CS6 (13.0) will be the last major version of Photoshop to support Windows XP. (Photoshop CS6 does not support Windows Vista.) In addition, all subsequent Photoshop feature updates specifically for Creative Cloud members will no longer support Windows XP.

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You can’t say that the SD Association isn’t keeping up with the times. A good seven months after the association revealed the UHS-I specifications, it’s back again with the UHS-II bus-interface system that promises high-definition recording speeds of up to 312MB/s, allowing professionals to consider an SDHC or SDXC-based camera instead of having to rely on CompactFlash or SSD drives.

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by Stephen Shankland

The group that licenses patents for the widely used H.264 video encoding and streaming technology has committed to charge no royalties ever for use by Web sites that use it for freely available video.

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http://news.cnet.com/8301-30685_3-20014864-264.html

I was out in Indianapolis briefly yesterday to teach a couple of sessions during the LEVA LEVEL 2: DIGITAL MULTIMEDIA EVIDENCE PROCESSING course, which is wrapping up another great week of DME training for law enforcement professionals today at UIndy. Such a great learning environment with a truly talented instruction and support staff. Many thanks to LEVA, the other instructors, assistants, and yet another great group of students who made me feel right at home.

Congrats to everyone and safe travels home. Have a great weekend!

Stumbled on to a well done video from Computerphile called "How Blurs & Filters Work", which I thought some of you may find interesting. Discussion centers on what an image kernel is and how they're used in image processing. Video is under 8 minutes and is embedded after the break. Enjoy.

Despite our efforts to educate everyone in the digital evidence chain on the proper way to label and care for CDs, DVDs, and BDs (see CD and DVD Care and Handling: Stop Destroying Your Evidence!), read errors still happen...a lot. Here are two of my favorite tools for repairing and recovering data from disc-based media.