Last week I attended the IABPA conference in Portland, Oregon and it was quite a busy one for me. The organizers and hosts from the Oregon State Police – Pam Bordner, Nici Vance, John Amish, Dan Alessi, and others [I know I missed some…] did a great job.

I had the opportunity to present two 2-hour workshops on HemoSpat and I think they went quite well. It was the first time I’d presented them, so I ended up having too much material and was a bit rushed, but overall I think the attendees got a good feel for the software. I’ll know better for next time how to set things up time-wise. I have to thank Jason the IT guy for setting up all the computers and projector, as well as installing additional software.

The conference was also a great chance to interact with some of my clients and very valuable for direct feedback from people such as Norm Reeves [BPA Consulting], Ross Gardner [Bevel, Gardner, & Associates], Michael Maloney [Bevel, Gardner, & Associates], Silke Brodbeck [Blutspureninstitut], Ken Jones [Portland Police Bureau], Ray Kusumi [Washington State Patrol], E. Toomer, and K. Griffey.

Some of the talk highlights for me were the exchanges about the Phil Spector case by Lynne Herold [L.A. County Sheriff’s Department], Stuart James [James and Associates Forensic Consultants, Inc.], and Jim Pex [Pex Forensic Consulting, Inc.], the case presentation by Mark Reynolds [Western Australia Police] on the Andrew Mallard case, Paul Kish’s [Forensic Consultant & Associates] talk about preparing for expert testimony, and Scott Hlady’s [Ontario Provincial Police] talk about conducting BPA investigations in remote communities.

All-in-all a very good conference and as usual it was great to see old friends and make new ones. I look forward to seeing everyone in Lisbon, Portugal and Atlantic City, New Jersey, USA in 2010!

FORident Software is pleased to announce the release of HemoSpat v1.3 for Mac OS X 10.5 [Intel], Windows XP, and Windows Vista. We’ve added the ability to rotate your images 90°, a window for displaying some EXIF information – such as when the photo was taken, the resolution, and whether the flash fired or not – from your original image file, and improved the quick stain entry window.

There are several other changes and fixes as well. For a complete list of changes, please see the release notes.

We look forward to hearing any feedback from you!

With the impeding arrival of both Mac OS 10.6 and Windows 7, we have decided to begin phasing out support for Mac OS X 10.4 and Windows 2000. So, as of version 1.3 of HemoSpat – to be released Q4 this year – Mac OS X 10.4 and Windows 2000 will not be supported. [Note: HemoSpat v1.3 may actually still run on Windows 2000, we just won’t be supporting it. It definitely will not run on Mac OS X 10.4.]

The reason for this is for each release of HemoSpat we have to test across all versions of the OSes we are supporting. Currently that includes Mac OS X 10.4 PPC, Mac OS 10.4 Intel, Mac OS 10.5 Intel, Windows 2000, Windows XP, and Windows Vista. When we eventually add Mac OS 10.6 and Windows 7, the testing time for each release goes through the roof! Phasing out the older versions will allow us to focus our work on the main product.

The 2 February 2009 print edition of the Ottawa Business Journal has an article on FORident Software in it called “Blood on the lab floor”.

It is now available on their website here.