What good is the Internet anyway?

From time to time, people who don't use the Internet (gasp!) will ask me why it's such a big deal.  Usually these folks are of an older generation and/or are a little afraid of computers and technology.  My stock answer is that you can find literally anything you want on the Internet, and I try to liken it to the biggest, most up-to-date World Book Encyclopedia that anyone has ever seen.  Sometimes that works, sometimes it doesn't.

Discussions of this nature would be more easily settled if I had a list of great things you can do with the web.  Real world things.  Things people do everyday, over and over, all over the world. I've decided that it's time I constructed such a list.

Starting with this post, I'd like to begin a List Of Great Things To Do On The Web (or LOGTTDOTW for short).  Here's the first entry:

1. You can lookup the owner of a class ring that you find inside an 8-pound bass

BUNA, Texas - The one that didn't get away held an unlikely surprise for a Texas man. The blue-stoned class ring of Joe Richardson, engraved with his name, turned up inside an 8-pound bass 21 years after he lost it while fishing on Lake Sam Rayburn.

"My first reaction was — you gotta be kidding," he said Wednesday.

The fisherman who discovered the tarnished ring inside his catch contacted Richardson on Nov. 28 in Buna, about 100 miles northeast of Houston, after tracking him down with help from the Internet.

I think this is a fantastic use of the Web and will be a big help to fishermen and clumsy graduates everywhere.  Be sure to run and tell Grandma what you've learned here today. 

(Source: MSNBC)