Chris Boese's Weblog

Chat room texts and community help find murder suspect

This comes from the New York Daily News, but it deals with the case in Kansas where a young woman was killed when her baby was cut from her womb, allegedly by a woman who had been faking a pregnancy.

What is so stunning to me is how the members of this rat terrier chat room noted that one of their own had been killed in a horrible way, and they also were aware that another group member had set up a rat terrier-related meeting with the victim the exact day of the murder. And that both women had talked of their pregnancies online.

Here's the tricky part: the chat room members had to get past the one member's pseudonym. Several members tracked down that info and called the police with the tip.

What I understand, but something non-Internet people may not know, is that these online communities are not only tightly-knit, they pay attention to each other, care about each other. For many online participants, the people they become close to online often know them better and are more nurturing and care about them with more attentiveness often than the participants' own family and face-to-face friends.

It is something I found in my dissertation research, and while some people may find this puzzling, I do not. I've experienced these intense online friendships myself, some now sustained for eight years.

I hypothesize that the reason for this intensity is the focused communication channel. Our face-to-face experiences are more diffuse, yet also more self-centered. Online, all communication, from a wide variety of sources, many of which involve multi-tasking and multi-threading, all in the end come through a narrow channel: THE SCREEN.

Our eyes are trained on the screen through the act of reading texts. Chat room texts take enormous concentration. Television, which people often have on as well, doesn't take nearly the concentration as processing texts online. It is even more difficult for people to maintain the kind of self-awareness and self-centeredness they may have in face-to-face encounters, where you are aware if you're having a bad hair day, of the pimple on your chin, of the gut overflowing out of your jeans. Online, your self-presentation also flows through the same narrow channel of the screen.

That's all I have to say on this topic right now, as I'm sort of thinking out loud. I spent many years studying gender in chat texts, and later in a very close online community and culture for my dissertation, and although I experienced this contrast (especially when attending face-to-face meetings of online friends), I neglected to explore this particular angle in my diss.

Chris

Link: New York Daily News - Home - Web search for rat terrier ends in murder.

Web search for rat terrier ends in murder

BY MAKI BECKER
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER

A chilling exchange on an Internet chat board for rat terrier owners shows how a crazed Kansas woman who allegedly ripped the baby out of a pregnant dog breeder set up the meeting.

Other exchanges show how the board members figured out what must have happened and pointed cops to the suspect.

The first message in the tragic chain was posted Wednesday at 4:22 p.m., by a woman calling herself Darlene Fischer, with the screen name "fischer4kids" - but who was really accused killer Lisa Montgomery, authorities have said. The note was the bait to trap victim Bobbie Jo Stinnett.

"I was recommended to you by [name withheld by the Daily News] and have been unable to reach you by either phone or E-mail," the message read. "Please get in touch with me soon as we are considering the purchase of one of your puppies and would like to ask you a few questions."

Stinnett replied with a cheerful message at 7:44 p.m.:

"Darlene, I've E-mailed you with the directions so we can meet. I do so hope that the E-mail reaches you. Great chatting with you on messenger. And do look forward to chatting with you tomorrow a.m.

"Thanks [name withheld], and talk to you soon, Darlene!

"Have a great evening

"Bobbie"

Montgomery had been on the chat board often, using her own name and posting photos of her own rat terrier puppies and seeking mates for her own breeding projects.

Early Friday morning, as frantic news reports aired about the horrific baby snatching, the regulars on the Ratter Chatter site realized the victim was one of their own.

And then they realized that "Darlene" would have met Bobbie Jo on the day she was killed, and that the woman had arranged the deadly meeting through their chat board.

They also recalled that both Stinnett and Montgomery had discussed their pregnancies on the chat site.

Montgomery, who was not pregnant, was claiming as recently as last week that she was due in days.

"Darlene Fischer was supposed to meet her on [Thursday]," wrote one poster.

One chatter figured out that the Internet address for Fischer traced back to Kansas - where the baby was eventually recovered at Montgomery's home.

By 8 a.m., several members had called the police with the information they had gathered.

Police said the tips and a sighting of the suspect's car led them quickly to Montgomery.

By the time it was over, the pain was palpable in the messages. "We just saw a murder plan in front of us and it makes me so sad," wrote one poster.

[...]

Originally published on December 19, 2004

New CNN.com column: Invasion of the podcasting people?

I'm still pretty skeptical and not totally addicted to podcasting, but I thought it was worth a look-see.

CNN.com - Invasion of the podcasting people? - Dec 8, 2004

Invasion of the podcasting people?

By Christine Boese CNN Headline News Wednesday, December 8, 2004 Posted: 12:29 PM EST (1729 GMT)

(CNN) -- If you've seen the classic camp remake "Invasion of the Body Snatchers," you know what "pod people" do when they find a human who has not been replaced with an identical alien born of a pod: point and screech open-mouthed at the non-pod person.

That may be how some are feeling these days with the infiltration of MP3 players into mainstream consumer culture -- like outsiders as iPod people walk around with their earbuds, apparently hearing voices from some alien mothership.

Podcasts are like radio broadcasts for MP3 players, but that's about where the similarity ends.

So let me say right off that I'm not trying to "sell" anything. "Podcasting" is becoming a bit of an overused buzzword in some circles, while others haven't heard the first thing about it. It is a movement worth watching, but I'm more of a critical early adopter than a "trend of the week" bandwagon-type.

Podcasting gets its hipster name from the Apple iPod, but it has no direct connection to Apple. You can get podcasts on any player, or just through your computer, if you are set up for it.

[...]

continue reading here...

Forbes: Princeton Review says Rensselaer is "America's Most Connected Campus"

I am slow picking this up, but it is allowed, because I am an alum. So there!

I'll never forget discovering the "Church of Computers" (a converted monastery or something) with big stained glass windows and 24-hour access to stuff that blew this humanities person's mind. I touched the computers and I think I just exploded. I'd been a newspaper photographer without enough memory on a Classic Mac to even run Photoshop, and the odd poet in my Arkansas MFA program who kept my thesis manuscript in a master word processing document. I went to Rensselaer in hopes of doing a multimedia/Internet dissertation, and ended up doing the first one to be accepted at the school in 1998. I have no idea how I got so lucky.

The "Church of Computers" at RPI blew my mind in other ways too. Sure, PCs were hard to find on a campus of UNIX workstations in 1993, so I had to teach myself enough UNIX to be dangerous (and manage a basic writing class with file-sharing, discussion groups, and chat with cobbled together software on UNIX... what a trip!).

But I will never forget waking up at dawn on an Easter morning and thinking, "I have 24-hour computer access!" and going up to the "church" (it was never empty... RPI students are workaholics) and playing with Fractal Design's "Painter" for the first time, making huge abstract art pieces that felt inspired by the day and the mood of the place, pieces I still treasure an am amazed by.

Link: Forbes.com:

Special Report

America's Most Connected Campuses

David M. Ewalt, 10.22.04, 6:00 AM ET.

Here's the Princeton Review link.

It wasn't so long ago when a "connected campus" meant that every dorm room had its own phone line. But in order to remain competitive nowadays, a college has to support wireless networking, provide high-speed connections to classrooms or even stream video of its classes over the Internet. Today's students depend on technology to live, work and play, and today's colleges have to provide the right tools in order to attract the best applicants. This second annual edition of The Princeton Review's 25 Most Connected Campuses examines the technological capabilities of the country's best schools and tells you which campuses are on the cutting edge.

Here's the list:

The Top Ten

1. Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
2. Bryant University
3. DePauw University
4. Temple University
5. University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill
6. Cornell University
7. Duquesne University
8. The Catholic University of America
9. University of Pennsylvania
10. University of Georgia

And here's a link to the story about the top 25:

Link: Forbes.com: The 25 Most Connected Campuses.

Education

The 25 Most Connected Campuses

David M. Ewalt, 10.22.04, 6:00 AM ET

NEW YORK - Google's first data center was in Larry Page's Stanford dorm room, while Michael Dell got his start selling PCs from his room at the University of Texas. Shawn Fanning created Napster so he could share music with fellow Northeastern University students. And Apple Computer co-founders Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak got their start selling UC Berkeley students a gizmo that let them make free phone calls.

College campuses have always been hotbeds of technological innovation and experimentation. But today, as a generation of students raised on the Internet take over the classrooms, technology is more important than ever. In order to be competitive and attract the best students, a school needs to offer the best infrastructure possible. It's no longer enough to have a high-speed network on campus; you've got to have wireless, you've got to stream video of classes over the web, or you've got to give every new student a brand new laptop.

In order to track which schools are leading the race to the cutting edge, The Princeton Review conducts an annual survey of collegiate computing capabilities, technology policies and coursework. The result is America's Most Connected Campuses, a list of the most wired--and, increasingly, wireless--schools in the country, measuring infrastructure available to students.

This year's winner, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, brings a bit of technological nirvana to the sleepy town of Troy, N.Y. Every student is required to own a laptop, and the school offers students discounted IBM (nyse: IBM - news - people ) notebooks, preloaded with appropriate software. Once equipped with the right hardware, students can get online just about everywhere, with Ethernet jacks and wireless networks in classrooms, lounges and labs. They can even download class notes or watch classes over a streaming video feed, never leaving their dorm room.

The laptop program was still in planning stages when I was there, but I got to work on a similar program when I was at Clemson. There are both pros and cons... I've got a CNN.com column on the subject, but really, I'm still stewing and thinking about the whole business, having worked with computer-assisted teaching now for so many years.

It is good to step back and reflect. I don't regret being an early adopter from 1990 on, but I don't see problems being addressed in electronic classrooms now. Instead, I just see more faculty (who wouldn't have been caught dead touching computers in the early 1990s) warming over the same enthusiasms from 1993-94, only with web sites, although the software for the web is less functional, just as your bank's web interfaces is a pitiful shadow of the powerhouse that is Quicken.

In addition, some new problems are appearing with student attention factors, plagiarism (on a level no one even imagines yet), and here's a biggie that can't be measured by assessment nutcases: levels and richness of the learning experience. Something is still missing in a big way... but I can't put my finger on exactly what it is. I don't know if I will return to teaching until I figure it out.

To determine the rankings for America's Most Connected Campuses, The Princeton Review solicited data from 357 top colleges and universities around the country, asking them twenty questions about the technological sophistication of their campuses. Only the top 25 schools received ranks, but the data on all 357 campuses is available by clicking here. (Click here for the complete methodology.)

To refine its ratings and reflect the importance of new emerging technologies, the Review made several changes to last year's survey, adding questions ranging from whether a school offers network access in dorm lounges to if it has a computer ethics policy in place.

As a result of those changes--and of new initiatives and programs underway at the surveyed campuses--the rankings have changed radically since last year. Only four schools in 2003's top 25 (Bryant University, The University of South Dakota, Hofstra University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill) remain on the list.

That is sure interesting. While I can go and read the criteria, what I'd like is an article detailing exactly why the changed methodologies made such a difference, and what criteria changes were key.