v6.2 Release: Mobile Forensics Upgrade
I like to be able to use these weekly article dumps for little summaries of what's going on in my work life, and I think this is a perfect opportunity to acknowledge our latest product update at Magnet Forensics. We just pushed out v6.2 of Internet Evidence Finder and we're incredibly proud of the work we've done. Like any release we have, we pour our hearts into making sure it's a few big steps forward. We've done our best to listen to customers and work with them to address any bugs, but we're always trying to push the boundaries in our features.
Some of the new offerings in v6.2 of Internet Evidence Finder include:
- Dynamic App Finder: We now offer a solution for recovering mobile chat applications that we may not have otherwise supported. This is a great discovery tool and has proved to be very powerful even in our early tests. Read more about it here. v6.2's secret weapon!
- Chat Threading: Visualize chat threads within our software as they look in their native applications. If you're looking at a Skype conversation between two or more people, it will show up just like it does from within Skype. A lot less jumping between records to piece together a conversation.
- L2T CSV Support: L2T CSV files can now be loaded directly into our timeline viewer.
- Case Merging: Combine multiple IEF cases together or pull in data from TLN/L2T CSV files.
- More Artifacts: v6.2 is no different than previous releases when it comes to adding new artifacts!
- AVI carving
- Hushmail
- TOR chat
- Flash cookies
- Offline gmail
- Additional Chrome support
- ... and more.
- In praise of micromanagement: I'm still very early on in my career, so it's difficult for me to have an opinion on this article and back it up. It's a bit controversial, so of course I want to take the other side and disagree with it.There's that, and I have some discomfort when it comes to Apple so I like to turn off when I see articles on Apple or Steve Jobs. Regardless, I thought that there was an interesting perspective in this piece to share, and maybe even if I can't see it right now, others would benefit from reading through it. Is there a place for micromanagement? Can it be done right? Are people like Steve Jobs just an exception to an otherwise good rule?
- The Myth of the Rockstar Programmer: Scott Hanselman says that rockstar programmers don't exist--rockstar teams do. I completely agree. When your company is so small that you essentially don't have teams, this might not hold. Maybe you have three developers and each one is a rockstar in their own right. That's probably a it different. More often than not, you're not working with one or two people developing a product for a company. It's not about having one rockstar with all the programming super-powers take charge on the team. It's about creating a team where everyone has their own strengths and weaknesses and then organizing them to operate at full efficiency. Teams. Not individuals.
- Strengthen and Sustain Culture with Storytelling: This is an article that I can really align myself with. Nancy Duarte writes about something that's often lost when small startups are transitioning into small businesses. It's entirely possible some companies don't even make it out of the start up phase because this thing is already going south. Storytelling. It's important to be able to share stories with people as you bring them on board to your company. They need to know where the company has been and how it's gotten to where it is. New hires need to feel like their part of the family as they are brought on board, and without conveying your company's mission and values properly you start to lose that alignment.
- Ignoring Your Test Suite: Another programming article here, but this post by Jesse Taber has some deeper lessons to be learned, in my opinion. The article talks about something not all programmers do, but should: write code that tests their code. This lets developers catch problems early on (because catching a problem now might cost a bit of time, but catching the problem later could be devastating). Running code tests regularly is a process that allows you to ensure the foundation of your software product is structurally sound. But what happens when you have flaky tests? What happens when you introduce a new failure and don't bother to fix it? After all, you have 3000 tests, and you know why test ABC is failing anyway. Don't put processes in place just for the sake of having them. Everything you do should be done for a reason, because your business doesn't have time for anything else. Don't enable poor habits. If you're noticing problems in your process, identify why they are happening and look to get them fixed. Maybe you need to adjust your process because it doesn't fit anymore.
- Cameron Sapp – Recognizing The New Guy: This one is from me. I wrote up a little recognition piece about a colleague and teammate, Cam Sapp. I want to be able to write more recognition posts, but I started with Cam. He's been a great addition to our team both from a technical and work culture perspective. All of Magnet is glad to have him on board.
- Don't Work For Your Boss, Work For Your Company: I thought that Ilya Pozin had written something great when I cam across this article. Hierarchies in the workplace can often cause disconnect and disengage employees. So why do we have them? I'm not against hierarchies--I think they serve a purpose. However, I think necessary measures need to be put in place to ensure that hierarchies aren't detracting from the company's goals. In this article, Ilya says to not work for your boss. Your goals at work should not be to satisfy individuals or only do things for your boss so you can get your promotion. Align yourself to the company values and the mission of the company. You'll remain engaged and happy to do the work you're doing. In the end, if you're not happy doing work that's aligned with your company's mission, vision, and values, you might be in the wrong place.
- Creativity and the Role of the Leader: This article discusses where ideas come from and how leaders fit in to the grand scheme of things. The traditional mindset is that ideas come from the top and then are pushed down to employees to carry out the work necessary for bringing the idea to fruition. However, it's increasingly more common where ideas are actually generated by employees, and it's the responsibility of the leader for nurturing idea creation and ensuring that ideas that are aligned with the company's mission can succeed.
- Will Your Firm Endure?: In this article by Tim Williams, I took away two key points. In order for your business to be absolutely sure it can endure, everyone needs to be viewed as replaceable. I don't mean in the sense where we can trade John for Joe and not care because we don't value human qualities, I mean strictly from the skills and responsibility aspect. There shouldn't be instanced in your business where if an individual were to disappear one day your company wouldn't be able to carry on. The next is acknowledging strengths and weaknesses. When people have some obvious strengths, they have weak areas too. There's nothing wrong with that. It's normal. Make sure your teams are constructed of people with complementary skills.
- Dynamic Programming with Python and C#: Another article from me, and another programming related post. This my follow up to a post about C# and Python integration that seems to have been received really well. It was a cool little experiment for me to take Python and C# and have them working together in my favourite IDE, but on top of that, I was actually able to learn a bit about C#'s "dynamic" keyword which was new for me. If you're familiar with either of C# or Python I recommend checking it out. There's some pretty cool stuff you can do, and I've only scratched the surface.
- To Find Success, Forget Your Priorities: Claire Diaz-Ortiz says that priorities are too general. We all have priorities, but how many of us are seeing ourselves achieve what we'd like? Claire suggests forgetting your priorities and breaking them down into goals you can achieve. By having conrete action plans, you can execute them properly.
- Personality Tests: Modern-Day Phrenology: Ron Baker shares his perspective on why personality tests don't have a place at work. He goes as far as calling them meaningless, but I believe his main argument is that simply siloing people into personality types is pointless. To that end, I agree. I thought this article had great timing because I've been discussing personality tests with our HR manager at work. I came across this article right before doing a personality test with her and we decided a few things. Firstly, if the results of the test don't make sense, then don't go any further with it. This means that either the test you're using is flawed or perhaps you don't understand the test. Regardless, how can you take action on something you don't understand? We both agreed that simply identifying traits was useless on it's own, so I think we agreed with Ron on this one, but we weren't stopping there. The basic act of identifying personality traits had us sparking conversations about how our personalities were different and how acknowledging these differences could influence our interactions. Essentially, it was hard to just silo ourselves into a particular personality type without thinking about and acting on what we were observing. In the end, identifying personality types and sticking someone into some cookie-cutter process for it means nothing. The tests are all about ganining insight and understanding so that we can choose where to go from there.
- How Open Should a Startup CEO Be with Staff?: Coming from a startup, this was another interesting article. Mark Suster writes a semi-controversial perspective about CEO transparency. The norm is that expecting CEO's to share every bit of details with the employees achieved perfect transparency and makes everything better. Mark says this definitely isn't the case and provides some excellent examples where total transparency came back to bite. It's all about balance. Transparency is great,but total transparency is often too much for most employees to handle on a day-to-day basis.
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