Archive for December, 2009

Investigators & the Investigative Process

Published
by
Richard McEachin
on December 23, 2009
in How to Become a Professional Private Investigator, Methods and Private Investigator
. 1 Comment

Sherlock Holmes with his deerstalker hat and magnifying glass is the most familiar image of the Investigator. However, this is a narrow-minded representation of the Investigator.

The investigative process does not belong to the police or private detective.  Investigation is at the heart of every human activity. Scholars investigate. Antique dealers and appraisers investigate. Investors investigate. Medical Doctors investigate. In one way or another, we all investigate something or other. To investigate is to seek a solution. It is the application of information collection skills,  logic, and analytical skills.

This is the last article of 2009.  The next article will appear on Google-Free Wednesday, 6 January 2010.

FaceBook and Investigations

Published
by
Richard McEachin
on December 22, 2009
in Methods, Private Investigator, Social Sites and Sources
. 1 Comment

Facebook: The truth is out there

… Facebook is a good source for data mining.

But one problem is that information gathered is not verified independently.

“These are not facts, just hearsay,” the former Criminal Investigation Department trainer said. “For digital photos, you can’t prove they are original as photos can be manipulated and put on the Web. You can’t authenticate them unless you get the original files from the photographer.”

He added: “This way of getting information is more trendy…but the information should be verified by conducting a proper investigation.”

Only when it is backed up will it be admissible as court evidence, he said.

… [it is] not inconceivable for someone to falsify their whereabouts on such sites.

“There really is no way of proving who was at the computer, which is the problem with any Internet-based investigation,” he said. “Today, one can update Facebook status or tweet Twitter from any device at any location.”

This is an excellent article on the value of searching  social sites.

Three Dimensions of Note-taking

Published
by
Richard McEachin
on December 21, 2009
in Methods, Notebooks, Private Investigator and The Investigator's Computer
. 0 Comments

I have written previously on taking notes using audio, images, and handwritten notes.  Quite a while back I wrote about video notes using a simple camcorder called the FlipUltra.

Kodak Zi8

Now the Kodak Zi8 seems like a  better pocket-sized point-and-shoot video camera.  The digital image stabilization provides better video than the Flip. It has some hardware and software advantages over the Flip. It needs SD or SDHC memory cards which I see as an advantage even if it makes the Zi8 cost more.

FireFox Pdf It! Addon

Published
by
Richard McEachin
on December 18, 2009
in Communication and Power User Tips
. 0 Comments

Pdf It! is more than PDF

The Pdf It! extension is designed for FireFox running on Windows, Mac OS X, or Linux. The Pdf It! menu item appears in the Tools menu as well as context menu.

The Pdf It! extension features are as follows:

  • Convert current page(Whole Page or Visible Part) to Image(PNG or JPEG)
  • Add title to generated image (Firefox 3 only)
  • Specify the color/position/font size for title
  • Apply up to 16 filters while converting page to Image

ImageVenue

I don’t have much use for the PDF function of this addon (based on an online service) . The PDF function does not provide a full colour rendition of the Web page. It is the ability to create a JPEG of a web page that can be emailed or put up on a site like ImageVenue.

If you use ImageVenue, then you only need to send a link to the image, which must be either JPEG or JPG with a maximum size of 3 meg. For example, an image of our web page  is easier to send as a link than as an image file. Of course this is not secure from outside viewing but it is handy for some things.

Gasopa & BYO Image Search

Published
by
Richard McEachin
on December 16, 2009
in Search Engines
. 0 Comments

Gazopa allows you to upload an image from your computer, enter an image URL, search for keywords, or even draw one yourself. The similarity is based on a color and shape match. This  actually works on occasion.

In my experience, Gazopa is much better in matching pictures than BYO Image Search which searches for color palette similarity.

Photoshop Fakery & Disasters

Published
by
Richard McEachin
on December 14, 2009
in News, News Media and Private Investigator
. 0 Comments

I’m naturally skeptical, especially of what is reported in the news. The Toronto Star keeps putting a bodiless hand in a picture of the Mississauga Mayor, Hazel McCallion, and her son.

Photoshop

This Photoshop disaster hasn’t gone unnoticed, but it highlights the issue of how Investigators and Researchers use such pictures and how they cite collected images.

I don’t have the technical skills to verify the authenticity of every image I collect and use in reports, but I can, and do, report the source of the image and the date it was collected. For example, in this case, several versions of this image are in the public domain. If I use the image in a report, I must state its source and the date collected, as it may later be revealed as a fake or altered image.

TinEye

I also use TinEye on such an image to see if an alternative version exists and to see where else the image might have appeared. For example, using TinEye on the cropped Toronto Star image I get a reference to the obviously Photoshopped image with the bodiless hand.

TinEye for CI

Published
by
Richard McEachin
on December 11, 2009
in Competitive Intelligence and Search Strategies
. 0 Comments

I have written about Tineye before.

For Competitive Intelligence research, I use TinEye  to search for images used by the target company to find where they are buying advertising space and to find affiliated sites.

Internet Detective 105 - Paid Monitoring Services

Published
by
Richard McEachin
on December 9, 2009
in How to Become a Professional Private Investigator, Methods, Private Investigator, Search Engines, Search Strategies and Social Sites
. 2 Comments

Social Media Monitoring

As an Investigator, you must realise that even the Vatican uses social media. Some forms of social media are taking on some of the characteristics of email. This information rich environment is something that Investigators and Researchers must understand. To be effective, one must also understand the tools available to conduct thorough research of the social media content.

One must also be able to create accurate budgets for this type of research. To set-up, optimise, and monitor research feeds that cover multiple social media and news sites can take many hours. These services allow one to monitor the social media space for new data or derogatory content. One particular strength of these services is that they search Blog comments, and can track comments and posts of individual contributors. While these services are aimed at PR agencies, they also offer significant utility for the Investigator, but they can be very expensive tools to use.

Techrigy

Techrigy (pronounced tek-err-jee) offers a free account that gets you up to 5 Search Words/Phrases, and store up to 1000 results. This is a great way to learn how to use the system.

Radian6

Unfortunately Radian6 is expensive — you pay just to have it in your toolbox, and then pay more for each social media research project you undertake. These costs must be understood at the outset and budgeted into the costs of the Investigation.

Filtrbox

Unfortunately, at Filtrbox their annual fee for individuals appears to be $1,000USD.

Backtype

Backtype lets you search comments that mention a brand, company, or topic, but it also lets you search comments left by a particular person.

Attaain

AttaainCI costs $150 per month for unlimited searching and monitoring. It’s less sophisticated than Radian 6 and Filtrbox which rate Blog comments from positive to negative. This is aimed at the Competitive Intelligence professional rather than the PR agency.

Internet Detective 104 — Forums, Boards, & Social Sites

Published
by
Richard McEachin
on December 7, 2009
in How to Become a Professional Private Investigator, Methods, Private Investigator, Search Engines, Search Strategies and Social Sites
. 0 Comments

Searching Boards, Forums, and Social Media sites can be a hit and miss affair using the large search engines. Google does an excellent job, but it is not the only game in town.

BoardTracker

BoardTracker – searches across 37,000 forums representing more than 63 million threads. Set up your own custom alerts using RSS or use the site’s search function.

SocialMention

SocialMention – this will find your search term in many different blogs and social outlets.  It will tell you how many times a keyword was used, the time frame, and let you subscribe to an RSS feed for that term or export the information as a CSV file.

Internet Detective 103 - Monitoring Changes

Published
by
Richard McEachin
on December 4, 2009
in How to Become a Professional Private Investigator, Methods, Private Investigator, Search Engines and Search Strategies
. 0 Comments

In Real-time Search Engine,  I looked at a Meta search engine called Colecta that is useful for real-time monitoring certain types of sites. Now I will look at monitoring changes in sites that interest you.

Copernic Tracker

Copernic Tracker – automatically looks for new content on Web pages, forums, and Social sites. When a change is detected, our Web site tracking software can notify you by sending an email, including a copy of the Web page with the changes highlighted, or by displaying a desktop alert.

WatchThatPage

WatchThatPage is a service that enables you to automatically collect new information from your favorite pages on the Internet. You select which pages to monitor, and WatchThatPage will find which pages have changed, and collect all the new content for you. The new information is presented to you in an email and/or a personal web page. You can specify when the changes will be collected, so they are fresh when you want to read them. The service is free!

Internet Detective 102 — Pipes

Published
by
Richard McEachin
on December 2, 2009
in How to Become a Professional Private Investigator, Methods, Private Investigator, Search Engines and Search Strategies
. 0 Comments

Yahoo Pipes  is an interactive feed aggregator and manipulator. Using Pipes, you can create feeds that are more powerful, useful and relevant.

Yahoo Pipes is a free online service that lets you remix popular feed types and create data mashups using a visual editor. A Web mashup is a Web application that combines data from more than one Web data source into a single integrated Web application. Yahoo Pipes combines several different data sources but is generally not sufficient to create a useful application, it is a data mashup tool rather than a complete mashup editor.

How-to videos abound to act as tutorials on using Pipes. The best I found was here. You might also read Working with Yahoo! Pipes, No Programming Required.