Monthly Archive for January, 2009

Waterproof Ink

Published on January 30, 2009 in Handwriting. 2 Comments Tags: .

I’m old-fashioned — I write with a fountain pen. I keep paper files and notebooks. Paper and ink has endured for thousands of years. Why should I mess with something that works?

Noodler’s Ink

I have written about my quest for a waterproof fountain pen ink before. Well, I found another waterproof ink, Noodler’s Polar Blue. I found a bottle that proclaims that it is the Winter 2006 Edition and that it is made for the coldest North American, Russian, and Scandinavian winters. I guess they are saying it won’t freeze.

It survives all my tests for being waterproof. I don’t really like the pale blue colour, but it’ll do. Some of the Noodler’s ink that I have tried in the past severely clogged the pen. The Polar Blue has survived the most important test — it still writes after the pen has sat unused for a week. It also flows very freely, making my Lamy extra-fine nib pen a smooth and fast writing pen. For example the Lamy Blue-Black iron gall ink makes this pen scratchy and unpleasant to use and both the iron gall ink and the Kiwa-Guro clog the pen if it sits unused for about a week. Neither of those inks flows freely enough for me to write at full speed, whereas the Noodler’s Polar Blue does.

Competitive Intelligence for the Small Guy

Published on January 29, 2009 in Canada and Competitive Intelligence. 0 Comments Tags: , .

The following is an excellent article about Competitive Intelligence that appeared in yetserday’s Globe and Mail.

Keeping an eye on your rivals

Even the smallest of operations can scout out the competition, and the results can be vital

This is competitive intelligence, and Jonathan Calof, a professor at University of Ottawa’s Telfer School of Management and a leading CI expert, says it’s widely misunderstood.

Perhaps the biggest misconception is that competitive intelligence is too complex and expensive for small businesses to undertake. In fact, most CI techniques cost nothing but time, and the findings are vital to small business success, especially in tough times.

 

Google Street View

Published on January 28, 2009 in Canada, Methods, Search Engines, Search Strategies and Sources. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , .

During a recent research project, I wanted a picture of a commercial property in downtown San Francisco. It’s always good to take a look at the premises from which a business operates to avoid dealing with a phantom business.

I requested that our agent in San Francisco go there and take a picture. He said it would be less bother to get it from Google Street View. He does that all the time.  As you can see on the map, (Google Street View) this isn’t offered for any Canadian city right now, and if the privacy fanatics have their way it never will. However, in San Francisco, this got me two excellent pictures of the building.

The street addresses served-up by Google are only approximations, so you have to move up and down the street looking for street numbers to get the correct building. To get the pictures into a report use print screen as the images themselves can’t be copied.  Pressing print screen key in MSWindows will capture the entire screen, while pressing the alt key in combination with print screen will capture the currently selected window. Paste the image into the report using the ctl-V combination.

The Minority Opinion

Published on January 26, 2009 in Company Research, Competitive Intelligence and Fraud. 0 Comments Tags: , , .

Jon Lowder at CI Marketplace writes that Lenny Fuld highlights the value of the contrarians in our midst when he explains why he’d like to meet a character in the Madoff mess:

No matter how certain, how comfortable you may be with an answer, a popular answer, an answer that comforts or confirms, you need to pay attention to … the minority and taking them seriously.

If you don’t like the content of a minority opinion, then find out if it is right through independent and impartial research!

Open Channel D

Published on January 23, 2009 in Notebooks, Private Investigator, Report Writing and The Investigator's Computer. 1 Comment Tags: , , , .

The Pen Communicator from the Man from U.N.C.L.E. TV series would connect agents Napoleon Solo and Illya Kuryakin with U.N.C.L.E. headquarters in New York City if they said the phrase “Open Channel D”.  It also included amnesia inducer and electronic scanner functions.

Now we have the Pulse smartpen that records conversations and indexes them to what you write using special notebook paper. It doesn’t take much imagination to think of ways one might use this during investigations.

Reformed Fraudster’s Top Ten Tips to Avoid Scams

Published on January 21, 2009 in Fraud. 0 Comments Tags: .

In October 2003, David Alexander was convicted of fraud. Today, Alexander is a reformed sinner, who tries to help companies avoid fraud. His top ten tips are a well thought-out guide to avoiding scams.

Alexander also maintains an interesting digest of fraud  news called The Fraud News Network.

The Commonplace Blog

Published on January 19, 2009 in Methods, Notebooks and Sources. 0 Comments Tags: , , .

The Commonplace Book is a written scrapbook filled with things one learns, but doesn’t want to forget.

The name, commonplace, is a translation of the Latin term, locus communis, which means argument or theme for general application. The theme of my Commonplace Book is the concepts and facts that I have learned and the books I have read.

The Confidential Resource is a modern analog for a Commonplace Book with the theme of Sources & Methods for the Investigator.

Fanatics, Cults, Terrorists, & Martyrs

Published on January 16, 2009 in Terrorism. 0 Comments Tags: .

Have you ever wondered how people are molded into suicide bombers, and why some people consider such pathetic creatures to be martyrs?

Suicidal fanaticism is not a new, nor is it solely an Arab or Muslim, phenomena. For example, on 4 June 1913, British suffragette Emily Wilding Davison threw herself in front of the King’s horse at the Epsom Derby, becoming a martyr for the women’s suffrage movement. Even that honourable cause, led by respectable people, produced a suicidal fanatic. Even though her  reckless fanaticism nearly killed the jockey, she was revered and heralded as a martyr due to her deranged act.

The key concept is that she committed suicide for the movement, just as the Muslim fanatics do for any number of Islamic movements or causes. Hoffer’s [asa link]0060505915[/asa] explains the manipulation followers of a mass movement often experience and how such devious influence may trick people into doing things contrary to normal human nature.

Conrad’s [asa link]0451530500[/asa] explores the characters of a group of pathetic individuals plotting to blow-up the Greenwich Observatory. The motives and characters of the agent provocateur, bomb maker, and the unwitting suicide bomber are particularly germane to our time.

Updike’s [asa link]0345493915[/asa] is  derivative of The Secret Agent, but set in today’s America. The would-be bomber’s empty emotional life allows his Imam to manipulate him into the suicidal mission. This plausible scenario is chilling when one considers the opportunities such people present to the likes of bin Laden.

How to Become a Professional Private Investigator VIII

Published on January 14, 2009 in How to Become a Professional Private Investigator. 2 Comments

The professional Investigator of today has made the transition from the car, a pocketful of coins for the payphone, and the office cubical, to working from home using computers, the Internet, and sophisticated mobile telephones. When I started, video cameras, PCs, the Internet, and cell phones didn’t exist.

Yet with all these wonderful tools, I am amazed at the poor quality of work  produced by so many private investigation firms. It is easy to accept this as the norm. Unfortunately, I’ve done a lot of thinking about why this happens. I also have the laboratory in which test my theories. I use Investigators and researchers around the globe, and get to ask them a lot of questions about how they operate. I’ve come to some conclusions that might be useful to you.

Competence and Operating Procedures

I believe what distinguishes a good Investigator or Investigation Agency from the bad ones is how they accomplish the minutia of day-to-day interaction with clients and the day-to-day problems of maintaining and operating the technology they use to produce the deliverable. Accomplishing these small details involves planning, complex coordination, and skilled management, but it is also relies on the effectiveness of many people competently performing many small components of the job . The differences in quality arise from the variance in competence  between ordinary Investigators, Secretaries, and Managers, and to the efficacy of their respective standard operating procedures.

A high quality deliverable does not require a larger-than-life Investigator, but rather a well-designed system staffed by competent people.

Mobile Phones & Tin Foil Hats

Published on January 12, 2009 in Espionage, Industrial Espionage, Intelligence Services, Security and Surveillance. 1 Comment Tags: , , , .

Under certain circumstances, if you lose sight of your mobile telephone, then you may reasonably assume it has been compromised. These circumstances are more common than you might think. Here are two cases of this that I have encountered over the last year or so. Continue reading ‘Mobile Phones & Tin Foil Hats’

Panama Company Register Now Online

Published on January 9, 2009 in Company Research and Sources. 6 Comments Tags: , .

Opening up a tax haven

 Panama recently put online their company registry. You can now retrieve the names of the current directors of every Panamanian company, as well as all the company’s filings themselves (minutes of company meetings, details of shareholdings, ownership, certificates of incorporation etc. etc.).

Nice, but you can only search by the name of the company. If you want to find somebody who is dodging tax or doing something else dubious, you really need to search by director’s name.

This tool fixes that problem. I’ve scraped all 600,000 company records, going back 30 years, and indexed by directors.

Corporate Yammering

Published on January 7, 2009 in Methods, Social Sites and Twitter. 1 Comment Tags: , , .

 Office Tweeting

…she sent me this article, When Is Social Networking Kosher In The Office? from NPR. You can read it or listen to it.

I had to share this one, because we hear companies discussing this all the time – the pros and cons of social networking. This story talks about Yammer as one workplace solution for team microblogging.

Yammer takes the basic idea behind Twitter and moves it into the workplace, where it is only accessible via SSL  to employees with a valid company email (and other security restrictions).

Yammer might be a useful tool to manage projects and keep track of what teammates or employees are doing without exposing their “Tweets” to the whole world.

Brand Name Search

Published on January 5, 2009 in Search Engines, Search Strategies and Sources. 6 Comments Tags: , , .

Thanks to Wendy Golman Sherer for telling me about this very useful search:

Findownerssearch allows you to:

  • Find the owner of a brand name
  • Find all the brands owned by an individual or company
  • Find brands in a given area/category

    A Curmudgeon’s New Year’s Wish

    Published on January 1, 2009 in Methods. 0 Comments Tags: .

    Please don’t consider these as New Year’s resolutions (I know what happens to those — I still haven’t lost that 10 lbs.). Do these out of consideration for your clients and suppliers.

    Add a signature to your email. A “signature” is a block of text at the end of your emails that contain all your contact information. Your recipients don’t need the hassle of hunting for, or asking you for, your address and phone number.

    Make sure that your website has a “Contact Us” section and ensure that it has your street address and telephone numbers.