You have no idea how much power you have in that smartphone of yours. Or that tablet, PC, laptop or mobile device. In fact, anything that gives you a connection to the Internet gives you power. And what do we do with that kind of power? We look at videos of cats, binge-read Wikipedia posts and Google for the answers to all our college assignments.

But then, there are cases in some corner of the Internet where the online community did some good. The kind of good that you can be proud, or thankful for. We are going to take a look at these instances in this post.

In brief, lives were saved via Facebook, a group of kitchen employees who tampered with food were ousted by strangers, and the death of a hit-and-run victim was avenged. I’ll just let the stories do the talking.

1. You’re a life saver, Facebook friends!

Peter Casaru was a regular 59-year-old Facebooker who jokes in his statuses a lot. But friends took his status seriously when they saw his request for someone to call for an ambulance for him. He had woken up with a life-threatening spinal spasm that had paralyzed him from the waist down and had taken an hour to crawl (blind, as he had misplaced his glasses) to his computer to ask for help. His phone battery was dead and he lived alone. The authorities arrived within 20 minutes, and saved Peter’s life.

In a separate case, a 16-year old boy from Oxford sent a private message to a friend in Maryland about his plan to kill himself. The girl told her mother, who informed the British embassy in Washington DC. UK cops were alerted and in the middle of the night and with only the few bits of info they could get from the girl, authorities managed to narrow possible addresses down to 8 houses. Officers were dispatched to all homes, and they found the boy in a drug overdose but still alive, and got him to hospital in time to save his life.

2. Lettuce help keep the kitchen clean

We can never be sure of what happens behind the kitchen doors at food outlets but these days there are culprits who give us a behind-the-scenes look at the atrocities that were committed. "This is the lettuce you eat at Burger King" was one such example. A snap of two shoes adding ‘spices’ (see stepping in) to two trays of lettuce was released and circulated in 4chan (of all places) on July 16, 2012.

In less than 10 minutes, one 4chan user tracked down the location of the photo, based on its Exif data to Mayfield Heights, Ohio. The address of the branch was identified by another user in 12 minutes, and Fox 8 news caught whiff of the stinky issue in another 5 minutes. The next morning, the offending employees – there were three – were fired and Burger King released a statement to assure its patrons that they have found and terminated the workers involved. No news about what they did with the tampered lettuce though.

3. The human-powered take down

The Human Flesh Search (HFS) Engine is a phenomenon prevalent in China which operates on voluntary crowdsourcing and the pooling of localized information via blogs and forums to facilitate real-life offline investigations. It’s a form of citizen-powered sleuthing, to say the least.

A hit-and-run inside a Chinese university left one woman dead and another with a broken leg. The drunk driver sped off to drop his girlfriend at her dorm. When security guards arrested him, he dared them to sue him, saying "My dad is Li Gang!". When the news hit the Web, users were quick to identify Li Gang as the deputy director of a police department in the district, which would explain his son’s, Li Qiming’s brazen attitude.

Offline, efforts to suppress reports of the incident were swift, and interviews with the dead woman’s family members were kept off the news. Online, however, "My father is Li Gang" turned viral, evolving into a catchphrase used to evade responsibility for one’s actions. It was also the title to a poetry contest which received 6000 submissions. The Internet was not backing down.

Possibly due to public pressure, Li was sentenced to six years in jail from drunken driving and vehicular manslaughter. He was also ordered to pay compensation to the families of both victims. Justice came six months after the accident but without intervention from the Internet, there may not be justice at all.

4. Diagnosis of rare disease

It’s not uncommon to find doting parents sharing bits and pieces of their children’s lives; emergencies are no exceptions. And for these two mothers, it’s a good thing they did.

Cerys Owens had been worried about the seizures her son, Evan had been having since he was 3 weeks old. She posted a video of his seizures on Facebook, asking if anyone knows what condition her son has. A friend mentioned that it looked like Reflex Anoxic Seizures (RAS).

RAS could be triggered from pain or even from the simple act of brushing one’s teeth, leading to blackouts or the heart stopping. The diagnosis was confirmed when he was 13 months old (after it was identified via Facebook) and Cerys has been helping to spread awareness of the condition via clips of the seizures her son had.

For Deborah Copaken Kogan, her 4-year-old son came home from class with a fever, a rash and a note saying he probably has a case of strep. When tests came back negative, Leo was sent home. In the next two days, her son’s face would swell beyond recognition and after Deborah updated her Facebook with the latest snap of his swelling, a former neighbor called her and told her to get him to hospital immediately.

She suspects Kawasaki disease, a fatal auto-immune disorder which attacks arteries near the heart, which her own son had. Doctors confirmed the diagnosis and Leo was treated for the rare disease and for complications from it for the next three weeks.

5. Lily and the Giraffe bread

Ok, this one is a bit of a cheat. Even without social media, this exchange between a rep from Sainsbury and 3½ year old Lily Robinson would have happened anyways. But it deserves a spot because we want more heart-warming stories like this to keep coming, don’t we?

Lily wrote a very thoughtful and short, no-nonsense letter to Sainsbury asking them why their bread with giraffe spots was named tiger bread. We have to agree with her suggestion to rename it Giraffe bread (see below), and apparently so did the customer service at Sainsbury.

(Image Source: Cerys Owens)

Here are both their letters, plus a gift card from 27 1/3 (isn’t that cute?) year old Customer Manager, Chris King. That post got over 150,000 facebook likes and Sainsbury made good on their promise to rename the bread. Chris has since left for university to become a teacher and if you want to show your appreciation for what he had done, they’ve got a Facebook fan page for that.

Conclusion

It was not easy to track down these five cases although we’re sure that there are more heart-warming cases, or stories of netizens doing their good for society. And this is why we want you to share your stories with us. Tell us about that story that you have read about and could never forget. The comments space is yours.

Related posts:

1. 5 Amazing Things Internet May Have Ruined
2. 40 People Who Changed the Internet
3. A Trip Down The Internet Memory Lane
4. SOPA: Scaring or Securing the Internet Users?

Have you ever felt worried leaving the Mac with your children? With access to the Internet – the world wide web of unfiltered content and unlimited possibilities – they can virtually do anything unsupervised, from talking to strangers to charging thousands to your credit card, in just a few clicks.

(Image Source: Fotolia)

We can’t actually stop children from using the Mac for learning or entertainment purposes. We can, however, ensure that the Mac is safe for your children with built-in Parental Controls.

Setting Up Parental controls

To set parental controls on Mac, you need to create a separate account for your child, which you can easily do so via System Preferences > Users & Groups. Then, just follow these 3 steps to start enforcing parental controls:

1. Click on the lock at the bottom right of the screen to start making changes.

   

2. Click on the ‘+‘ button to create a new user account, otherwise, you can edit the settings of an existing account by clicking on it.

   

3. Just make sure ‘Enable parental controls’ is checked, then click on the Open Parental Controls button.

   

There are 5 features in Parental Controls which you’ll find very useful to know. Remember, it’s all about limiting what your child has access to, and monitoring their activities on the Mac.

1. Limit Website Access

On the Net, you never know what your child might be seeing. You can choose to allow unrestricted access (definitely not recommended), limit access to certain sites, or allow access to only the authorized few.

If you want to limit access to selected sites, use the Customize button. It lets you choose which websites that have won your approval, or which websites that are definitely not allowed for your children.

2. Limit Applications

If you have important applications on your Mac like Dropbox or Cloud where you store your valuable files, then remember to check Limit Applications before your child accidentally erases your files.

You can specifically customize which application your child will be allowed to open and use.

3. Limit iChat & Mail

You can also limit the people your child can communicate with via the Mac. You can limit Mail or limit iChat to people you know in person or those you don’t mind letting your child chat or email with.

Tip: You can set Mac to alert you via email whenever your child attempts to email somebody who isn’t in the list of allowed contacts.

4. Limit Time

With ‘Time Limits’ you can set how long your children can use your computer (because if you are not going to stop them, who else is?), and also when they can use it. Customize the time limits for weekday and weekend so your child can’t use the Mac too much that they neglect their school work.

You can even set curfews; block access to the Mac after late hours.

5. Keep logs

We can’t always be around to keep tabs, but when your children uses their account to access your computer, you can always check the activities they carried out while using it. Just click on the Logs button.

The log collection will display details of activities, including websites visited, applications used and even with whom they had chatted with.

Conclusion

Parental Controls are essential to help you control, limit and ensure your children’s safe browsing activities while using your Mac. Not only will your files be secure, your children will also be protected from strangers and unwanted sites. The time limitation is also good to inculcate good surfing habits.

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