Rating: It’s great to see so many ways to do good works online, and The Online Milk Carton Application is no exception. It has slight usability issues, but overall, its function and simplicity makes it one of the best apps on Facebook, in my humble opinion. If even one child is found because someone recognized a kid’s picture, it will have done its job well, and I for one hope it will help a lot more people than that.

After installing the Online Milk Carton, it seemed logical to me to localize the search to neighborhoods near me, as I’d be most likely to recognize a child that went missing in an area close to me. So I changed it to the state I currently live in, Maryland. You can also make the application show you Canadian children, those in the UK, or in several US territories - it appears to draw from the MissingKids.com database.
The application was a little buggy here, and my locale didn’t “stick” until I went back to the first page.

Other problems: instead of telling me what state or area I’m set up to display, the link below “Your profile is set to:” goes to a link to invite my friends, though the link itself is clearly marked. I also thought the yellow background a little garish until I realized that in the box on my page, this bright background would draw attention to that part of my profile, which is a good thing.

These are minor problems though - the application does what it is meant to do: show the latest five missing children in your area on the application page and the last four on your profile.

My heart gives this application five stars, but my intellect wanted to take a star and a half star off for the ads on the locale update page. There probably have to be ads - someone has to pay for the bandwidth/hosting/whatever that is involved in not-for-profit apps. However, the ones I saw were in poor taste given the context.

I’m probably being too nitpicky, so let’s say four stars. After all, there’s a chance that this app will save someone’s life.

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