give them what they (say they) want

I feel guilty about walking past a hungry person and not helping them get some food, but I find it hard to believe that everyone claiming to be hungry in downtown San Francisco is only craving nutritional sustenance. An easy solution: when approached by a "hungry" person, I hand them some actual food! I usually carry a snack with a long shelf life in my backpack: a baggie of nuts, a chocolate bar, some dried fruit. So when I'm approached by someone who says they're hungry, I offer them an actual treat looking just as yummy and nutritious as it was on the shelves of Whole Foods.
The reaction I get to such offers is illuminating. An aggressive beggar in the big Westfield mall downtown literally recoiled at the offer of a bag of grape Clif Blox.. Sorry, buddy, but you need detox, not glucose. And yeah: the homeless community knows exactly where to go for free detox services, and they talk about it with more respect and dread than prison. (How do I know? Because I've talked to people who got sober for good after their 15th or 20th time through Ozanam.)
I'm not saying that I can cure poverty or drug addiction or homelessness with a 300 calorie snack. I'm just saying, here's an ethical way to cope with pleas from which our society should not ignore. Give them what they say they want.

"unsubscribe"

One of the best developments in the web this year: one-click unsubscribe links in promotional emails I must have signed up for at some point. Here's the scenario: I get some email from Random Business. I gave Random Business my email two years ago when I was interested in their random thing; I am no longer interested. I want to unsubscribe.
The old way: I'd follow a link in their email to a login screen. If I didn't remember my username and password, which I probably don't since it's been a while, I have to go through the forgot-my-password link, wait for email to arrive, then at least log in again, go to my preferences, edit my preferences, then click save and verify that I really want to unsubscribe.
The new way: At the bottom of the promotional email, there's a link that says "Click here to unsubscribe." In the very best implementation, I click on that link and get a page which says, "myemail@mysite.com has been unsubscribed from all Random Business mailings."
This was a very simple technology to put together, and could have been done a decade ago. By focusing on an everyday annoyance felt by most email users, someone was able to vastly improve the user experience. I won't quite say this builds brand loyalty (I am, after all, unsubscribing) but it does decrease lingering annoyance.
Companies with one-click unsubscribe, I salute you!