I continue to be impressed with the ability of the internet to A) be incredibly helpful or B) be an enormous pain in the ass, depending on the circumstances.
Here’s one of the helpful stories, from today’s Columbus Dispatch. It’s about Kevin and Noah John, who drove from Shelby to Columbus for the Youngstown State game Sept. 1. It didn’t turn out to be such a hot day for them — their tickets were among those that were voided at the last second to make room for the alumni marching band, and they lost their digital camera, after they had the chance to let 10-year-old Noah pose for a picture with Brutus Buckeye.
A Columbus woman, Michelle Montgomery, found the camera that day, noticed the picture of the Johns with Brutus and came up with an idea. Rather than trust the camera to the Ohio Stadium lost and found folks, she took it home and uploaded the shot on her computer. She then emailed it to 14 friends and asked them to pass it on to their friends if they didn’t already know the folks in the picture.
It took just 48 hours to match the camera with its owner.
I cited a couple of examples of similar things a few weeks ago, when Pittsburgh was struck by Bacn and iJustine’s cell-phone bill video all in the same week. Even my Podcamp friends, who are much more experienced with this stuff than is Uncle Crappy, seemed to be impressed with the speed at which those two internet hurricanes spread; this is a miracle of a smaller scale, but it’s no less impressive to me.
Think about this: would this have been possible 20 years ago? Could Montgomery have located a nameless father and son even if she had a year? My mind is officially boggled.
Uncle Crappy 
I was in the BACN session when we talked about it for the first time as a group and Justine had that cam thing on her noodle. It was un-be-friggin-lievable at how fast it spread across the web when her minions caught on. Jesse had to stop a couple times to answer questions from her chat room. It was surreal.
Makes me wish I had a laptop with me but I’m just not cool enough. But I did get to sign the I LOVE You Tube!
LikeLike
I’ve been thinking about your blog entry and the story you referenced…it was a fabulous example of how the internet helps us. Remember about seven years ago when all the talk was “6 degrees of separation?” …there you go. Kudos to the woman for putting those pictures on-line and thank God she didn’t give the camera to OSU instead. How did the Dispatch get wind of the story?
U.C., you have surpassed any knowledge I have of the internet. Renee Z’s famous quote “you had me at hello,” well, you lost me at podcamp. Do I want to know all of these things? Is it important? My answer is a, “yes.” ONLY, because of my young children who are going to know way more about the computer (than me) very soon and I have to understand in order to protect them.
I do hope all of your hard work puts you one step forward in your quest to achieve total internet domination.
In the meantime, go Bucks!
LikeLike