A new iPhone app launched this week, called LocalHero, lets friends help each other by identifying the people in a person's social network who are nearby and have the right skills or interests to assist with any task or need.
While everyone watches Hurricane Irene's next move along the eastern seaboard, hundreds of people from around the US are helping organize relief efforts. The help is arriving not only from geographically diverse regions, but also from diverse religious communities, as a Muslim relief agency stands ready to deploy in the emergency response.
A young woman on a big horse guiding a group of clients on a ride through Glacier National Park likely saved a boy's life while proving that skill, quick-thinking and guts sometimes are the best weapons against a head-on charging bear.
Lucas Jatoba was a Brazilian searching for a way to celebrate his 30th birthday. Since moving to Australia he has fallen in love with the people. So he decided to give 30 present to 30 strangers in Sydney and his friends made a video.
The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Tuesday named 22 new MacArthur Fellows for 2011 who will each receive one half million dollars in no-strings-attached support for their creative endeavors. Among the 'Geniuses' chosen were an architect, a sports medicine researcher, a cellist, a developmental biologist, a radio producer, a neurologist, a conservator, a poet, a technologist, and a public historian.
Candy Chang turned the side of an abandoned house in her neighborhood into a giant chalkboard that invited people to write down what they aspired to do before they died.
Fred Stamm is a formerly homeless amputee whose life was turned around thanks to a chance meeting with a dog and its owner in Severna Park. Chuck Beck was impressed with the man who gently pet and talked to the golden retriever. Afterward, Beck ended up changing the course of Stamm's life.
Gov. Mitch Daniels joined with officials to publicly grieve at a memorial service today on the site of the tragic Indiana State Fair stage collapse that killed five on Saturday. They also praised the reactions of hundreds of ordinary citizens and off-duty rescue workers who rushed to help the victims.
Following the riots in London, crowds of people turned out Wednesday to help clean up the glass and ashes left on the streets of cities across the country. Andrew Bayles' photo of brooms raised in the air has become an internet sensation via Twitter, and used by journalists around the world to underscore the decent citizens, which have come out in full force to outnumber the troublemakers.
Festival goers at a nationalist, right-wing concert in Germany were taken by surprise when souvenir t-shirts they were given had a secret anti-far right message that emerged only after being washed. Once washed, the slogan turned into a message from a group offering help to right-wing extremists break away from the neo-Nazi scene.
Burning Man isn't just about getting crazy on in the Nevada desert anymore. The organization is now taking on urban revitalization, aiming to fix up a run-down area in San Francisco.
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology has taken its revolutionary OpenCourseWare initiative, launched 10 years ago, to another level. Moving beyond the web, the new initiative extends higher education to anyone with a mobile phone. With initial funding from Google, the MIT Center for Mobile Learning was launched yesterday.