Dayton Technology Landscape Conference
Technology First is a local IT Trade Group, and their second annual "Technology Landscape Conference" was yesterday, so I dutifully (duty = I'm dating their intern) attended.
Ok, so there was some more duty... one of the companies presenting was ExpeData, a Dayton, Ohio (which is "local" for us folk) company who has a digital writing capture technology. We've been working with them for a few months to find some suitable applications and to discuss some security issues and requirements. It's a fairly interesting technology, although I have some trouble finding its killer-app.
Another interesting company whose presentation I attended was Persistent Surveillance Systems -- these guys have a 190+ MegaPixel camera array that they fly over the Cincinnati area (among others), taking pictures about once per second. When they hear about a crime, typically a murder, after the fact, they can go back and assign analysts to review the captured images to track people in the vicinity. Their software allows analysts to assign colored tracks and markers to people, vehicles, and anything else of interest -- they initially track suspects, then go back and track anyone they interacted with, anyone nearby (possible witnesses/accomplices), and whatnot. The large pixel view of the city and long video times allow them to watch people drive all the way to their destination -- a home, hideout, friends' house, or whatever -- where they can then work with police to get a warrant and follow up as appropriate. Their metadata is even good enough that they can apparently cross reference locations to find that, for example, the getaway driver from murder A may have lived next door to the suspect from murder B, which may help detectives tie together previously unrelated crimes.