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Fellow LEVA instructor Detective Keith Swanson of the Scottsdale, Arizona Police Department, is compiling data for a DME white paper. If you haven't already, take a moment to complete his very brief survey.

Click here to take the survey!

One of the features still in BETA for the new member's area is a video sharing service, which will allow users to upload videos or add their videos currently hosted elsewhere to the Media-Geek video library.  In addition to a searchable, categorized library, each member's profile will list their videos.

  Although this feature wasn't initially slated to be rolled out with our launch on the 11th, it now looks like it will be!  Get your training videos together, get registered, and come back next week to upload!

I stand corrected. First, I did find a reference to Pixel Aspect Ratio (PAR) and down sampling uncompressed NTSC video in the joint Forensic Imaging and Multi-media Glossary (PDF) published by the IAI and LEVA, the final version of which was released in July, 2006. Second, in an effort to simplify this discussion, I’ve over simplified the Interpolation Methodology I described in Part 2. I will be expanding on that in this post, in far more detail than I had originally intended.

Headed out to Cincinnati, OH today for the IAI's 101st Forensic Educational Conference. If you're attending, stop by the Ocean Systems booth (#513) and say hello! Safe travels my friends. - LC

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.

It's Saturday afternoon and I'm in the lab today working on the cellular phone of the suspect from yesterday's tragic mass murder here in Binghamton, NY.   While waiting for the device to image I wanted to take a quick moment to thank those from the Media-Geek community who've reached out to me and my family since the tragic events began unfolding yesterday morning.   

I recently cut the cable TV cord with the assistance of the Tablo 4-Tuner OTA DVR, so I thought I'd share a few thoughts on it.

Over The Air (OTA) HDTV

First I'll point out that I don't watch a lot of TV, maybe a few hours a week; however, my family does, and likes to keep up with several TV shows. We've always been cable TV subscribers, both with Time Warner back on the East coast, and Comcast out here on the West coast. We've used the DVR hardware and services from each since they began offering the option(s).

Maybe I'm showing my age here, but I remember way back when Norton products were actually a good thing for your PC. Okay, I suppose that's a little too harsh, but the fact of the matter is that Symantec has gotten awful fat over the last couple of decades. By fat I mean that their flagship products (Antivirus & Internet Security) have become more of a resource drain than they are of assistance to a small business or home user.

In the corporate world these products still dominate, and don't seem to be as useless as I feel they've become for the small office or home network. As a matter of fact, Symantec claims to have 99% of the Fortune 1000 companies as customers. Pretty impressive, huh? Remind you of anyone??? You see where I'm going here.

According to the FBI, digital evidence is present in nearly every crime scene.   Increasingly, this evidence is found on handheld devices such as cell phones, GPS’, iPods—and is leading investigators directly to a suspect’s door—sometimes within hours of a crime taking place.

Register now for the FBI’s Regional Computer Forensics Laboratory (RCFL) Program's free webinar for law enforcement and government officials.  Participants will learn the proper handling of handheld devices at crime scenes, basic data recovery, legal issues and more.

Questions? Send an email to npo@rcfl.gov or visit www.rcfl.gov.

It's a familiar scene in movies and on TV: a character, seeking to understand an issue involving computers, proclaims that an "expert" is needed. A teen is then brought on screen or referenced in dialogue.

The scene is funny because it illustrates something with which the audience is familiar anecdotally: the "digital divide."

While computer literacy is not universal, neither is it rare.

Complete Story w/Case Law References - click here

There ARE Non-square samples, and their shape IS NOT dependent on the # of scanning lines. There are also Non-Square picture elements in CCD and CMOS image sensors, but their electrical charge is never converted to digital in an analog CCTV camera.

Back in the day there actually were Non-Square pixel-based displays, but they were only used for special applications and are not found in the wild today.

If you are aware of a standard that defines the shape of 480i (NTSC) or 576i (PAL) non-square samples differently than through the use of the luminance sampling frequencies, please bring that to my attention. Thank you.

January was quite a month for technology enthusiasts, with MacWorld and CES showcasing tons of cool new gear and promising much more in the coming months. Video is taking center stage in 2007, as manufacturers and service providers dump research and development money into video like never before. While some of the major players are still sticking to their proprietary guns, it's refreshing to see that at least a few are doing the exact opposite.

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.

Full Story