I love the Internet!

So to make a long story short, some guy was getting weird phone calls from people who thought he owned a particular piece of derelict property in Lower Manhattan. He didn't own the building and was pretty annoyed at the calls; all he could figure was that someone had posted his phone number on the building, and that's why people were bugging him. But he couldn't get into Manhattan to check.

So he posted a request on Metafilter, asking if someone could swing by the building and check for him.

And someone did!

For those not familiar with Metafilter, it's a website where anyone can post a question--on anything--and anyone can answer the question. "Querying the hive mind," is the site's tag-line. For every question, there's someone out there with an answer, and Metafilter aims to bring the two together.

Now, this is what I love about the internet--yeah, sure there may be some pretty weird people lurking about the edges, trolls, and what-have-you, and you can get mired into a lot of trouble, should you not be careful. But on the other hand, it allows people to connect in ways never before possible. And I think that's pretty cool.