“Well Frank, looks like my algorithm’s better than yours.”

We’re sitting here working on some layouts with images the client sent over, and we’re wishing we worked for CSI Miami. Not the people who make the show, but the actual crime investigators themselves.

Why so?

Is it the magic pistols that nail a crack lord every shot, while their henchmen blaze away with 6000 round-per-minute Gatling guns and only hit one cop at the end of each season?

Is it having workmates who operate in abbatoir-like conditions, up to their armpits in decomposed gore, in immaculate white pants and high heels?

Or is it the way the office is lit up in primary colors of LSD-trip intensity? Though that could explain all the sunglasses indoors.

Nope, none of those.  It’s their image-sharpening software.  We want a copy of ‘Adobe Crime Scene’, or whatever it’s called, the all-purpose still and video clarity enhancer.

All over the world, designers spend most of their time explaining to clients that an 8k .gif file copied from a web site isn’t going to cut it as a full-screen image.

Nobody believes us, because they’ve all seen Horatio ask the image guy: “What if you apply the sharpening algorithm?” And presto! The pixels shrink down and the bad guy comes into view.

Interestingly, the idea of doing this never seems to occur to image guy until Horatio asks him to. Maybe Horatio has the only software key because they spent too much money on white pants.

You can even turn the photo subject around and see what’s on his back, using the ‘Make it 3D’ button.

We particularly love the little Kraftwerk-style bleeping noise the computer makes as it sharpens: the sound of processors working up a sweat.

Adobe Crime Scene would save us a fortune. We could shoot events and ads on cheap security cameras, recorded on VHS tape, and fix ‘em up in post. We’ll let you know when it comes on the market, until then it’s boring old broadcast cameras for your event.

They won’t let Barack Obama use his Blackberry when he becomes President.

You have to feel for the guy. He’s put a lot of effort into becoming President, and his current Blackberry habits suggest he likes communications gadgetry.

I’m sure he was expecting to be rewarded with access to an Aladdin’s cave of top-secret gizmos, devices light years ahead of the ones us mere mortals fiddle with in airport lounges (and what did business people do in airports before they had things with buttons on them? Play charades? Think?).

A couple of weeks ago we reviewed Adobe Crime Scene, the futuristic image sharpener that turns security-cam to HD, available only to CSI’s Horatio Caine and his white-panted staff. President Obama will need a copy of that, if only for the kids to play with.

But most of all, Obama has earned the right to a Jack Bauer Phone.

You’ve seen it on 24.  Despite its handy compact size, the Jack Bauer Phone sucks bandwidth out of the sky like a jet engine.

Graphics? It can view complex building schematics, including live blinking terrorist trackers, on a screen the size of a matchbox.

Best of all, it has amazing ‘patching’ facilities. What’s patching? God knows, but it beats email attachments.  You just ring up the faithful Chloe and ask her to ‘patch through’ the warehouse security camera from an unknown address across town. Or patch through the instrument readouts from the jet fighters with the nuclear missiles.

The only drawback of patching is that it’s forbidden by Chloe’s small-minded office supervisors, probably because of the bandwidth bills the last time she patched ‘the satellite network’ through to Jack as he clung upside down to the axles of the terrorists’ moving truck.

I don’t know about you, but whenever I try downloading building schematics and satellite networks all day while shooting heaps of people, my batteries tend to go flat. You’ve probably found the same. Jack uses some sort of plutonium battery that goes the full 24 hours.

That’s the stuff President Obama should have! Instead, all his correspondence has to be secure and available ‘for the official record’.

Obama will know what this means. As a lawyer, he would have watched older law firm partners ask their secretary to print out entire web sites so they can read them. Your parents may do the same. You can picture young Obama trying to show them how to read the screen.

“That’s not the way we do things here, son.”

Sacrifices of public office, indeed.

“Well Frank, looks like my algorithm’s better than yours.”

We’re sitting here working on some layouts with images the client sent over, and we’re wishing we worked for CSI Miami. Not the people who make the show, but the actual crime investigators themselves.

Why so?

Is it the magic pistols that nail a crack lord every shot, while their henchmen blaze away with 6000 round-per-minute Gatling guns and only hit one cop at the end of each season?

Is it having workmates who operate in abbatoir-like conditions, up to their armpits in decomposed gore, in immaculate white pants and high heels?

Or is it the way the office is lit up in primary colors of LSD-trip intensity? Though that could explain all the sunglasses indoors.

Nope, none of those.  It’s their image-sharpening software.  We want a copy of ‘Adobe Crime Scene’, or whatever it’s called, the all-purpose still and video clarity enhancer.

All over the world, designers spend most of their time explaining to clients that an 8k .gif file copied from a web site isn’t going to cut it as a full-screen image.

Nobody believes us, because they’ve all seen Horatio ask the image guy: “What if you apply the sharpening algorithm?” And presto! The pixels shrink down and the bad guy comes into view.

Interestingly, the idea of doing this never seems to occur to image guy until Horatio asks him to. Maybe Horatio has the only software key because they spent too much money on white pants.

You can even turn the photo subject around and see what’s on his back, using the ‘Make it 3D’ button.

We particularly love the little Kraftwerk-style bleeping noise the computer makes as it sharpens: the sound of processors working up a sweat.

Adobe Crime Scene would save us a fortune. We could shoot events and ads on cheap security cameras, recorded on VHS tape, and fix ‘em up in post. We’ll let you know when it comes on the market, until then it’s boring old broadcast cameras for your event.