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A DVR comes in to the lab and there’s not a single label on it. No identifying marks, labels, nada. The owner has no clue where it came from, nor any manuals or documentation. Sweet.

Well, in the past, one of the tricks of the trade was to take a photo (or two) and drop it in to Google image search. With any luck you stumble upon one that looks just like it. Success! Not so fast zippy, it’s rarely that easy, but I thought the following was worth pointing out.

Bing has now joined the image search game too, so the next time you’re in a similar pickle, be sure to give them both a shot at it. Good luck!

As you're hopefully aware, this is a gadget blog. As a result, we're innately biased towards stuff that's new and preferably fandangled. More cores, more pixels, more lenses; just give it here and make us happy. The risk of this type of technological greed is that we don't make full use of what we already have, and nothing illustrates that better than the Graphics Processing Unit.

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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.

This fall, CDFS will hold its first elections to the Board of Directors.  There are a total of 13 Board seats.  The current Board has decided to hold staggered elections such that approximately 1/2, or a total of 6 Board seats, will be up for election in the Fall of 2012, and the remainder up for election in the Fall of 2013.  This system has been designed to help CDFS maintain stability and continuity through leadership transitions.

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The ongoing clash between plasma and LCD HDTVs (or rather, their owners) rivals classic tech wars such as Apple versus Microsoft and Nintendo versus Sega in its ability to destroy friendships and alienate loved ones. As with any good tech fight, however, the skirmishes that occur in review comments and home theater enthusiast forums across the Internet are typically characterized by fans exchanging glib one-liners (in this case, about black levels and refresh rates). And many of those one-liners haven't been updated since 2002.

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I'll be in San Diego for IACP 2016 October 15th through the 18th, one of the LE industry's largest trade shows and educational events.

If you'll be attending, stop by the Ocean Systems booth (#2740) to say hello and see what we've been up to. Hope to see you there!

A recent report from NIST on Latent Print Analysis sheds some light on potential human errors in all forensic disciplines.

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Adobe's primary tool for tweaking and organizing photos was always destined to be part of the Creative Cloud offering, but for whatever reason it didn't make it in time for launch. As of today though, Lightroom 4 is available to download on PC or 64-bit Mac (or both, since you're allowed multiple installations) as part of a CS6 monthly license.

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One of our members brought to my attention that the blog post form wouldn't allow you to save and publish your post.  Eventually, I found the reason and resolved it this morning.

You may have seen in a recent newsletter that we're cleaning up our database over the next few weeks.  If you missed that notice here's the skinny - we will be deleting all user accounts that have been inactive for more than 6 months.  If you have logged in within the last 6 months you're good to go; if not, you'll probably be deleted.  Any questions or concerns, as always, feel free to contact me.  Thanks for participating and have a great holiday weekend!

We announced a major update to Adobe Creative Cloud at our MAX Creativity Conference on May 6th and as we gear up to ship this release of Creative Cloud in a few weeks, we’d like to update the community on the feedback we’ve been getting.

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Brooks Photographic Imaging, LLC has two current openings for Visual Imaging Specialists.

We are looking for two dynamic and creative individuals to work for Forensic Training company. We need talented professionals with experience using Adobe Premiere, PhotoShop, Illustrator, Acrobat, and Dreamweaver at a minimum. Candidates must also possess strong video editing, producing, camera, lighting and sound operations skills to help create training videos and for live broadcasts.

For more information on these opportunities or to apply click here.

I was out in the Seattle area Tuesday along with my colleague Ed Baker to provide a couple of free seminars on digital video evidence for members of the Washington Homicide Investigators Association (WHIA).

Many thanks to WHIA for the opportunity and hospitality, as well as to our employer Ocean Systems for their dedication to, and continued support of educating the LE community on the multitude of issues related to digital & multimedia evidence.

Lots of fuss in the news lately about Smartphone encryption and 2 Factor Authentication (2FA). Maybe it's just me, but where have these people been the last decade or so? Smartphone encryption isn't new, it's just become more popular and convenient. Heck, chances are if your Android smartphone is less than 3 years old you already have the capability; it's just not turned on by default. But hey, Apple is going to provide it now too. Everybody panic!