July 2003  Volume 2, Issue 7   


VAI is defining a new industry that is very demanding and requires constant attention and involvement to meet the diverse needs of our client base. We have heard quite a range of opinions regarding our technologies over the past few years. Fortunately, most of the feedback has been positive. We thought we would share with you several excerpts from some of our clients regarding the VisuaLinks and DIG products:

  VisuaLinks is awesome!
VisuaLinks is saving us time and money
You make a solid product to be proud of...

DIG is indispensable
DIG is changing the way we do business
DIG does a lot more than we expected

We would also really like to share with you what our clients have said about our competitors and other competing systems in the marketplace, but we will save that for another day. Be assured that we listen to all feedback generated and try to incorporate as much as possible into our development schedule.

Our technology suite is comprehensive and incorporates a considerable amount of unique functionality. Although we strive to do everything we can to ensure our systems work flawlessly, there will, no doubt, be circumstances and situations that can't be tested in our facilities. We can't emphasize enough that you should use the Issue Report Form on our Support Site to report bugs, inconsistencies, or enhancements. Once we know about an issue, we can decide what resources to apply and what priority to assign it in order to resolve it.

As an analogy, think of providing feedback to a car manufacturer on the functionality and performance of a car you bought. For the most part, modern cars work fairly reliably. However, there are cases where components may break or cause safety problems under certain circumstances. Any safety issues with a vehicle are usually handled in a recall and the car is outfitted with special parts. This is analogous to our development cycle - where any major errors encountered in the software are fixed through a software patch. Our recent 2.0 patch is proof that we are addressing these types of problems. We are also scheduling one more 2.0 patch before version 2.1 is released later this summer.

Continued on VAI News page
Welcome to the new and improved LinkLetter. To keep pace with the changes and improvements to our VisuaLinks and DIG systems, the format of the LinkLetter has changed. We've added more content and a couple new columns so that we can keep our readers "in the loop" about our products. As you are aware, VisuaLinks strives not only to address the "technology" side of analysis, but strongly emphasizes the "methodologies" necessary to make everything work properly.

This format change will better accommodate the layout of the articles, so starting this month the LinkLetter sports a new look.

Each LinkLetter page now has a new navigation bar at the top and bottom, replacing the list of links that used to reside in the upper, left-corner of each page:

Both navigation bars provide links to all of the pages in the newsletter.
The format of the articles has changed as well, with the new layout displaying most of the articles in a single column making it easier to read and follow. Finally, our Awesome Production Team (APT), as we affectionately call our web/editorial/graphics staff, touched up the graphics a bit, giving the newsletter just a touch more polish.

We hope these changes will make your newsletter browsing experience a bit easier. As always, we encourage your feedback. Feel free to tell us if you like, or don't like, our new look.

This month's VisuaLinks News brings you a number of articles. We discuss our recent maintenance release, describe the VisuaLinks Summarize feature and provide an in-depth discussion of Temporal Patterns. This month's Link Chart looks at the patterns detected in a hypothetical domestic terrorism incident.
 Complete Article  Did You Know?
 Feature of the Month   Link Chart of the Month

DIG has become an integral component for many law enforcement agencies. A key customer is the Philadelphia/Camden High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area (P/C HIDTA). In this month's DIG News, we look at our extensive involvement with the P/C HIDTA. We also reveal some little-known, and highly valuable, tips for using DIG.
 Complete Article  Did You Know?

Busy, busy, busy! That's what our staff seems to be these days. Someone is always winging his or her way to interesting places: San Diego, San Francisco, and Washington DC. This month's VAI News section reviews the past and future activities of our well-traveled staff.
 Complete Article  Employment Opportunities
 Upcoming Events     
From a Federal Law Enforcement Specialist:

"The model we created was for domestic security and the relationships were truly unbelievable and 100% previously unknown. The results were a surprise to everyone. Also, we managed to run against production data, not back ups or copies. VisuaLinks is an awesome system. Best thing I can say about your competition is that it looks pretty and people like pretty things. However, it certainly is not functional for the type of analysis that we are doing."

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