FreeRice.com

FreeRice is an online vocabulary game/study tool that donates 10 grains of rice to the UN World Food Fund every time you get a question right. Play and see!

I'm coming late in the game to this one, but it's great for studying for the GRE.

Exactly the kind of amalgamation of education, technology, interactive media, social justice, and advertising that uses the web to its utmost. Can crowdsourcing end world hunger?

As we spend more and more of our time on the web, games like this combine our incentive to play, challenge ourselves, and contribute to a good cause.

Here is a good question in technology and ethics: the use of "ricebots," i.e. computer programs/scripts, that play the game instead of human, can result in faster donation of rice than human play. However, if advertisers are aware of the bot activity, they have less incentive to pay for the rice. In the long run, these bots could damage the reputation and effectiveness of FreeRice, resulting in the addition of a warning to the FAQ section of the site against "ricebots." But if a "ricebot" can feed more people more quickly, is it ultimately more humane, even if it hurts the game in the long run? Moreover, if a ricebot can feed more people AND go undetected, should more undetectable ricebots be deployed?

In any case, brilliant idea by John Breen, partnered with the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University.