Black Widow Project

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This is the class wiki for CIS 450 (Spring 2007) and the Black Widow Project. Students will be designing a web site focused on the Blanche Taylor Moore "Black Widow" killings.

test

Contents

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The Case

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The Crime

Blanche Taylor Moore of Burlington, North Carolina was convicted on November 15, 1990 of killing a former boyfriend and attempting to kill her current spouse by arsenic poisoning. Exhumed bodies of her mother-in-law, father, and first husband also showed that arsenic was involved in -if not the cause of- their deaths. Moore currently sits on death row in North Carolina.

timeline of case

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Arsenic

Blanche Taylor Moore used arsenic to poison <a href="">her victims</a>. She purchased an insect poison containing sodium arsenic (Anti-Ant), and mixed this colorless, odorless poison into homemade foods such as potato soup and banana pudding which she then served to her victims at home and in the hospital.

Since 1989, the US Environmental Protection Agency has banned over-the-counter ant poisons containing arsenic.

Symptoms of arsenic poisoning include headaches, lightheadedness, violent stomach pains, vomiting, dry, tight, hoarse throat, diarrhea, tenesmus (inability to pass waste), convulsions and cramps, red/sparkly eyes, delirium, multiple organ failure (kidney, liver, lungs, skin), garlic smell to breath and tissue fluid.

Immediate symptoms can be mistaken for gastroenteritis, food poisoning, or flu. Long-term symptoms can resemble Guillan-Barre Syndrome (a autoimmune disorder in which the body's own immune system attacks the nervous system in the arms and legs).

One of the tell-tale signs used as evidence in many arsenic poisoning cases is the appearance of Mees' lines on fingernails. Blanche's victim <a href="">Raymond Reid</a> had these lines on his fingernails when his body was exhumed. <a href="">Photographs of these lines</a> were introduced as evidence in her trial. Mees' lines are horizontal, discolored lines on the fingernails that indicate the instances of poisoning by heavy metals such as arsenic.

If detected early, arsenic poisoning can be countered with chelating agents such as Dimercaprol or Succimer. These are chemicals which bind to heavy metals such as arsenic and help escort the metal out of the body in the subject's urine.

If arsenic poisoning is not persistent, a living person can rid itself of the metal in a number of weeks. However, if arsenic poisoning is persistent and not detected early, death is a likely outcome. For the rare victim (such as Blanche Moore's final victim, her husband Dwight Moore</a>) who escapes death, it is common to experience serious nerve damage that makes complete recovery unlikely. These individuals might be left with weakness in the feet and hands and persistent numbness and pain.


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Relevant Links

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Project Information

Students will design a web site to include trial documents, photographs, interactive maps, timelines, etc. The site will be maintained into the future by the Burlington Times-News.

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Project Requirements

Site must fit into 800-pixel screen width, and will be framed by Times-News sidebars and content. Site must be able to be viewed by sight-impaired (i.e. must have text navigation option, alt tags, etc). Site must work in both Firefox family of browsers and Internet Explorer on Windows, Macintosh, and Unix/Linux platforms.

Look-and-feel should be clean, uncluttered, simple. Site will eventually be framed on top and right sides by advertising or other newspaper content. Site should be able to be added to easily in the future (scalable, expandable). Minimize horizontal and vertical scrolling.

Thematic keywords: crime, detective, fingerprint, magnifying glass, black and white, typewriter font, coffee mug, spider.

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Project Roles

  • Project Manager: organizes project tasks, keeps project schedule and budget, ensures team members are completing their timecards, interfaces with client, writes (compiles) client reports, writes test plans to fit requirements, organizes and hosts client testing sessions, works to integrate feedback about site into revisions
  • Web Developer/Graphics Specialist: designs all graphics, modifies existing graphics, comes up with graphical vision for site
  • Web Developer/Page Layout Specialist: creates web pages, implements graphic vision and navigational structure into site design
  • Web Developer/Navigation Specialist: designs and implements navigational structure based on graphical vision, information architecture, and page layout vision
  • Web Developer/Information Architect: organizes information into categories, writes copy for site, helps organize navigational structure and page layout
  • Web Developer/Integration Specialist: integrates all page layout, navigation, graphics, and information into final iterations of site. Responsible for sanity check, high-level testing of integrated site, and has final responsibility for producing a "shipping" version.
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Project Contacts

  • Megan Conklin, Elon University
  • James Moffat, Burlington Times-News
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Site Item Inventory

  • Paper Documents
  • Photographs
  • Maps
  • Photo Gallery
  • Timeline
  • About Arsenic
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Site Graphics

February 7, 2007

I was playing around with Charles' courtroom idea, which I think is fabulous, but I looked and looked and I just don't know how we'd do this image. So then I thought about doing something with a judge's desk. Then I thought, hey what about a random cluttered desk?

random desk cluttered with case stuff

each area marked on the desk would be a hotspot

We can retake this picture; it only took about 5 minutes to set up. Thoughts?

Updates: February 15, 2007 Attempt #2 of the cluttered desk - this one isn't very high quality, but maybe it won't need to be shrunk so much. I don't like how washed out the yellow is of the Post It notes.

I still owe you a judge shot, too, so I am going to reshoot this, and add the judge desk shot too.

Updates: February 16, 2007 Attempt #3, judge's desk (large) What do you think??

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Time Cards

Students should keep a weekly timecard and submit to the Project Manager (ksmith29) as he requests.

Send Me (Kyle Smith) Timecards before class on Tuesday as discussed.

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Deliverable #1

Kyle- Background Information, Charting Photos and Documents

Kelly- Arsenic Information, Newspaper Articles, Timeline

Eric- Put together overlay with links and hotspots

Charles- Main Page, Click on hot spot for each category, send to different page with links

Matt- Work on different model plus help Charles.

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Iteration #1

done

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Iteration #2

Delivered 3/15/2007

Kyle- Work on text for Blanche File

Kelly- Legal and Media page, captions and photo groupings for Photo page

Eric- New iFrame and graphs for Photo page

Charles- Photo page

Matt- Fix timeline, evidence page

Paul- File conversion, picture resizing

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