Kicking it up a notch

I received a note from a University faculty member in response to a previous post on using MATLAB and Dr. Farid's work. The professor was worried that I may have overemphasized the utility of MATLAB to the exclusion of other, less expensive or free options.

Fair enough.

One of the things that I do, behind the scenes here, is to scour the research and articles available from the world's think tanks and universities. I have a membership with the ACM and a subscription to their digital library. I check out the latest research and see if I can make it usable in the real world.

Some of my favourite papers are:

• Advanced JPEG Carving by Cohen
• Can We Trust Digital Image Forensics? by Gloe, Kirchner, Winkler, and Boehme
• The Adaptability of Electronic Evidence Acquisition Guides for New Technologies by Turnbull
• An Inexpensive Method to Shield Wireless Devices During Hardware Forensic Investigation in a Laboratory Setting by Hill

There's so much going on in labs and in university classrooms. These hardworking folks deserve recognition for thinking way outside the box. We can all benefit from what they are doing. And ... they can benefit from what we are doing. They need folks to provide raw materials and data from the real world. They need folks to put their theories to the test. We need each other. We benefit from each others' work.

The offer is extended to any researcher: if you want to demonstrate a new technique or if you think that you've got an improvement to a process ... we want to know about it. I'd be happy to feature the work in a future series.

Enjoy.