At a press conference held in front of a T. J. Maxx store in San Jose, California, Google announced today a new search tool for lost car keys. The service, an extension of its online query business, joins a large cadre of specialized search engines that find everything from square root of 42 to undisclosed vice-presidential locations.

“This new tool is more than just a glorified key chain,” said Sergey Brin, Technology President for the prominent dot-com business. “It will let you pinpoint the location of any key for your home, car, or company with the click of a button.” The technology works from the main Google home page through the new “I’m Feeling Locked Out” button.

To locate a set of lost keys, Car Key Search Beta needs nothing more than a picture of one of the missing keys. “And for most North American customers, there’s a good chance that we already have that picture on file,” said Deborah del Gato, the lead programmer for the new feature. With this starter image, Google uses its combined collection of Street View and Inside Your House View libraries to digitally scan for the missing item. “Within seconds,” continued del Gato, “your keys will be in hand, and a friendly Google delivery professional will drop by with a page of relevant advertisements. It couldn’t be easier.”

Despite such promises, the software is still considered “beta,” and will remain that way for Google’s traditional three-year test phase. “You might end up finding someone else’s keys,” said Brin. Yet despite some initial hiccups, the company expects to expand the feature over the next few months, “letting web site visitors search for wallets, prescription bottles, campaign promises, or any other small items that are easily lost.”

[Image Credits: Official Google logo; keys from Microsoft Office clip art.]

Facebook announced today its plan to build the world’s largest border fence in an attempt to stem the flow of illegal users into its system. With the third largest population in the world, just behind China and India, Facebook has recently experienced a flood of immigrants into its domain. Industry estimates put the inward migration at nearly 50,000 users a month, mostly from sites left bankrupt from world downward download economy.

“We’ve already started laying down the initial foundations of the fence,” said Mark Zuckerberg, Founder and CEO of the web-based nation-state. “We’re starting along the Facebook-MySpace border, where we’ve experienced the most vulnerability. That should stop people coming in. As for those already here, making their ‘Interests’ and ‘Photos’ public is usually enough encouragement to get them to return on their own.”

Those with a Facebook presence on the edges of the system cheered the news. “It’s about time they did something with these border crossings,” said one user who wished to remain anonymous because he wouldn’t be my friend. “You can’t believe the amount of trash these illegal aliens leave all over my Farmville.”

When complete, border patrol bots will oversee a 24,000-terabyte-long electrified fence. But where some see this as a blessing, others see an ulterior motive. “Facebook is attempting to institutionalize racism by hiding behind this fence,” said a posting on the wall of “The Open Logins Project,” a Facebook group with 1,639 members. “It’s another fascist attempt to keep out those who don’t have the same computational genes as the majority, a plan to oppress those who only want a little freedom.” Pokes to the Open Logins Project went un-poked-back due to the sudden deletion of the group.

Others felt the most popular web site on Earth wasn’t doing enough about undocumented accounts without profile pictures. One user named The Real Paris Hilton blasted Facebook for focusing on the wrong issues. “Studies show that people who engage in highly dynamic social interactions online are susceptible to fluctuations in the contemporaneous milieu,” said Hilton, whose Facebook page warns about rampant identity theft on the site.

Facebook hopes to have the border fence completed and paid for within two years, “if we can sell enough advertising to our members based on their secure profile,” said Zuckerberg. “And if that doesn’t work, we’ll just opt everyone in to the ‘Arizona Immigration’ clause of the privacy policy.”

[Image Credits: Official Facebook logo. Gate image copyright (c) 2008 by Antonio Jiménez Alonso (sxc.hu/Capgros).]

British Petroleum (BP), one of the largest energy companies in the world, announced this week the discovery of one of the greatest oil finds of the twenty-first century. The oil, estimated to number in the billions of barrels, was found intermixed within the waters of the Gulf of Mexico, near the site of one of its former drilling rigs.

“We’ve been pumping oil out of the ground in that area for years,” said Andy Inglis, the head of Exploration and Production for the multinational corporation. “We’ve dug down several miles into the ocean floor, but it never occurred to us to just dip a ladle into the sea. This will save us a lot of trouble since we won’t have to drill for the Texas Tea.”

BP has been under pressure from the Obama Administration in recent weeks after a large oil rig caught fire and sank in gulf waters southeast of Louisiana. It was during a search and rescue operation for members of the rig’s operations team that the company discovered the large region of mid-sea oil.

“It was huge,” said Carl-Henric Svanberg, chairman of BP, during an interview on at least one of the major news programs last Sunday. “And the best part is that it’s getting bigger all the time. At first we thought it was only going to be a few thousand barrels. But it’s so large that it’s lapping onto the American coastline. It’s a win-win for everyone.”

President Obama took time out from his search for Joe Biden to weigh in on the crude oil discovery. “We have been working with British Petroleum’s management team to determine how best to tax this new international resource. It’s a win-win for everyone.”

Some members of the environmental community, however, were displeased at BP’s announcement. “This is an outrage,” said Pierre Petros, president of People United for the Ethical Treatment of Leftover Dinosaur Parts. “It’s bad enough that they are pumping this dwindling resource out of ground. But now they have to contaminate the pure crude with filthy, fish-ridden sea water. Don’t they know that oil and water don’t mix?”

BP has already started processing the oil from the chilly Gulf waters, but also plans to design a new refinery system to handle the special crude. “When salt water mixes with the raw oil, it introduces flavors never before experienced at the pump,” said Svanberg. “It’s like when new spices started coming out of India centuries ago. Don’t be surprised if you see cardamom- and anise-scented fuels showing up at stations by next year.”

[Image Credits: CBS]

In recent years, many larger cities have placed security cameras at key intersections in an effort to increase public safety, eliminate crime, and reduce the burden of large rainy-day funds. Police have found a welcome friend in the images captured by these electronic eyeballs. But with each solved crime comes an increase in threats against the cameras. The US Department of Justice is expanding the Federal Witness Protection Program to prevent some of the most tattle-telling cameras from being busted into a million pieces, or worse.

“These hardworking lenses have helped crack some of the most notorious crimes in modern history,” said Jack Steekey, head of the new Surveillance Surveillance Program. “Their films and tapes mean the difference between some crook heading to jail or letting them walk free. Protecting the telephoto lenses of these all-seeing devices is an honor.”

While the cameras and their hard-disk storage units await trail, the program places them in safe locations where they can’t be intimidated or harmed. They are given new names, new jobs, a new chance at a life of safety. “We just placed a New York street camera in a protected Midwest location. It’s working as a security camera in a retail store, watching merchandise, something really low key and hidden,” said Steekey.

Not everyone is happy with the results. “I got stuck on traffic duty,” said a CCTV camera who wished to keep his model number anonymous. “I was told I’d be protected from the creep I helped put away for twenty years to life. And then I end up snapping license places for everyone going 45-plus in a 35. I’ve been whacked over the head probably 300 times. Sure I’ve got immunity from prosecution, but am I safe?”

Then there are the failures, the dead cameras and busted hard disks that the protection community doesn’t like to talk about. Officials in the Justice Department refused to divulge any numbers, but some industry experts estimate that as many as five hundred cameras per year are found by those they sought to bring to justice. Still others give up hope, opting for shuttercide instead of constantly trying to hide in a world where 2-megapixels means so little.

Despite these hardships, Steekey calls their efforts a success. “In the end it’s all about making sure everyone in all fifty states enjoys the freedoms they hold so dear. These heroic cameras are simply upholding the American ideal of spying on the general population. What could be more freedom-loving than that?”

[Image Credits: Security camera image copyright (c) 2008 by Wojtek Kutyla (sxc.hu/ihedgehog). Gun image copyright (c) 2008 by Teerapong Boongird (sxc.hu/neosiam).]

An engineer for the Illuminati, the secret hand that manipulates global events as part of the New World Order, accidentally left his prototype mind-control phone at a San Jose-area bar while attending a birthday party several days ago. The monolith-like handheld device, with a touch screen surface and a mesmerizing app-centric payment model, was rumored to be the next step in the organization’s attempt at controlling the masses.

“This is really, really bad,” said an unnamed lieutenant from the Illuminati’s North American Networking Center, located under the CERN laboratory in Genève, Switzerland. “Naturally, when things happen, good or bad, we’ve manipulated those events to meet our unspecified, unfathomable, long term goals. But this is just bad. Our puppet Nixon never messed things up this much.”

Engazmodo, a popular online technology and conspiracy website, announced that it had acquired the lost device from a friend of a friend of a thief of a girlfriend of someone who worked at the bar. “It’s certainly the find of a lifetime,” said Raj Peters, the founder and editor of the site that paid $5,000 to obtain the unit. “It confirms everything we’ve ever believed, no matter what that is. We can’t turn the thing on or even figure out what its purpose is, but it still proves all we’ve been publishing for nearly a decade.”

Although the Illuminati had never previously acknowledged even the existence of the prototype technology, nor of its master control over every aspect of daily life, many pundits have expressed growing concern over its line of brain-management systems. Starting with the release of the Illuminati-Pod several years ago, the successful brainwashing program has reached hundreds of millions of citizens of the group’s single worldwide nation.

“These aren’t mind-control devices,” said an unnamed Illuminati spokesman sporting a black mock turtleneck shirt and faded jeans. “Repeat after me: These aren’t mind-control devices.”

“They are mind-control devices,” insisted Mr. Peters. “How else do you explain the constant shift between plastic and metallic back covers? And we’ve had alarming reports that the devices have started to mutate, changing from cute palm-sized devices to things that fill your lap. Shocking.”

Despite its editor’s concerns, Engazmodo has already returned the device to its owners. “Of course we returned it upon request. It’s not like this one phone is going to blow the lid off of centuries of financial and physical dominance of every biped on the earth. For that you’d need some kind of search engine that provided access to the entire Internet. Ha ha. Wake me when that happens.”

[Image Credits: Phone image from official Apple marketing materials. Great Seal image in the public domain.]

A computer failure at one of the largest unsolicited bulk email agencies has exposed confidential information that may seriously damage the reputation of the email spam industry. The breach occurred last Thursday at the computer center for It’s Just Email, Inc., when an employee double-clicked on an attachment that contained a malicious virus. Within minutes, the virus had infected all of the company’s computers, and started sending random pieces of company documents out to most of the email addresses in its system.

“We’ve already received hundreds of complaints from people we’ve never heard of getting emails with some of our internal documents attached,” said John Basmati, president of the company. “It’s an email nightmare that I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy, although I’d be OK inflicting it on millions of nameless computer users.”

“You come to expect a certain amount of privacy and security in your email systems,” said Jennifer Cooper, the company’s chief technology officer. “Then something like this happens and you suddenly lose faith in the medium. An exposure of this magnitude is huge, on the order of having dozens of useless emails coming to every inbox in the world every day for years. Just think about that for a minute. Now you know the nightmare I’m living.”

The extent of the security breach is still being determined, but one major news outlet has posted a portion of a document it received last night from It’s Just Email.

I am Mr. Mark David, sexy auditor of Cheap Viagra Prescriptions at the International Bank of Teeth Whitening. I have important need for help to ask so that you can receive a portion of $12 MILLION that dentist don’t want you to know about. I have contacted you because of your honest, and you will never let down to contact me with account number 2340397. 85% will not copy and paste this, will you? DO NOT DELETE THIS or your lover will break up with you by midnight.

Joyce Everheart of Scottsdale, a female in the key 18-to-34 age advertising demographic, received one of the misdirected messages. “I thought the email looked a little strange. It included all kinds of too-good-to-be-true offers and a mysterious attachment, but there was no information on where to send my credit card numbers, my passwords, or a for-no-logical-reason $500 advance fee. It was scary to think that I might just be able to delete it without first being duped. So I forwarded it to all of my Facebook friends and everyone in my email program just in case.”

The crashed spam server also had a noticeable impact on other Internet sites normally dependent on high levels of message content. Social networking favorite Twitter saw a dramatic decrease in its tweet volume within an hour of the spam outage. “We were like, ‘Where’d all the fake SEO marketing and health care experts go?’” said Biz Stone, Creative Director for the company. “The spam was just gone. It’s actually a pretty big problem since all we have to depend on now is Ashton Kutcher.”

Mr. Basmati thinks it might be weeks before their systems fully recover from the damage. “It’s crazy. We can’t even send out a single email, at least not ones with meaningful content.” But he is optimistic for his company and the future of email marketing, and hopes that the public will assist them. “We are asking everyone to send us their usernames and passwords for any system that they communicate with by email. We promise to ensure the privacy of these accounts, and will do everything we can to restore your trust in us. You have hector23200234@gmail.com’s word on it.”

[Image Credits: Copyright (c) 2008 by Matt Mets (cibomahto.com) under a Creative Commons license.]

Cell phones are an amazing technology. One small handheld device has the ability, from nearly anywhere in the world and across unthinkable distances, to cut you off in mid-conversation. For reasons like this, plus issues of national security, I’ve avoided getting a cell phone. So I was more than a little apprehensive when my preteen son wanted his own phone. You yourself might be having this same anxiety, and he’s not even your kid!

My son had been asking me for a cell phone for quite some time, at least since the eighteenth century, providing many convincing proofs as to its usefulness, including facts such as, “Everyone has a phone but me,” and “I guess you don’t really love me anymore.” Still, this was a big decision, and instead of simply acquiescing to his childish demands, I needed to spend some time researching cell phones and calling plans. Then I could acquiesce to his childish demands like a good parent should.

My research began with a thorough examination of the cell phone system, in that I took an educated guess of how it all works. Cell phones transmit the human voice through a “cellular network,” a distributed system of eighty-foot-tall radio towers that evolved over billions of years from simpler single-celled towers. These cells are placed strategically throughout the world, often disguised to blend in with the surrounding scenery; you probably even have one in your kitchen, near the Cuisinart.

During a call, a cell phone converts the caller’s voice into millions of digital bits which are passed to the nearest cell, where all but the choicest and tastiest bits are discarded. The remaining ten percent or so are sent to “the network,” a CBS TV station in central Nebraska. The call is then linked to the callee; the network connects to the target cell tower, the cell tower connects to the cell phone, the cell phone connects to the ear-bone.

All cell phone providers use this type of system. Regardless of which vendor is used, each call gets routed to the destination network in seamless and billable ways. So the selection of a cell phone company boils down to two simple considerations: (1) which provider offers the best coverage and features for the most reasonable cost based on a customer’s calling habits and financial situation, and (2) which provider’s contract promises the quickest return of a customer’s first-born.

Selecting a phone is a little more involved. There are dozens of phones on the market, and the selection changes three times per day. Especially popular are so-called “smart phones,” which include advanced features for managing a schedule, browsing the Internet, taking pictures, hacking into top-secret military installations, uploading videos to YouTube, and so on. Even the standard “stupid phones” include easy-to-use features that—and mind you, this is all without you needing to configure anything complicated—allow the phone to receive calls from unidentified numbers at 2:00 a.m.

In addition to selecting a phone, there is also the issue of “texting,” the ability to send short type-written messages to other phones that bear no resemblance to the English language (the messages, not the phones). All kids, including Baptists, text things to their friends all the time. It can be a little unnerving when you see a bunch of youngsters tapping mindlessly on their phones, especially when there are better ways for them to spend their days, such as tapping mindlessly on their portable game systems.

Households interested in using more than one phone should consider a “family plan,” so named because Vinnie, a member of the provider’s family, visits periodically to make sure the monthly payments are up to date. These plans also include a set number of monthly calling minutes that all phones on the contract share. Additional minutes are charged directly to the customer’s second mortgage.

In the end, I decided to get phones for the whole family. My son’s new phone includes a touchscreen, a flip-out keyboard, hundreds of family calling minutes, unlimited texting, and a can opener. It was a little pricey, but the costs are clearly outweighed by the sense of safety. As a loving parent, I can now take comfort in knowing that, in an emergency, my precious offspring will be able to text his friends about it.

[Image Credits: Pocketknife image with logo copyright (c) 2009 by Simon A. Eugster via WikiMedia Commons; cell phone from official Nokia 6275 promotional image.]

Apart from being a severe fire hazard, your local bookstore is a great place to find information on things you would like to learn how to do. For example, let’s say you wanted to understand the features of the digital SLR camera that you received for Christmas. Your local book shop has dozens of works on photography techniques for both beginning and intermediate shutterbugs. By picking up one or two books on the subject, you will discover—and if the author is really good, it might take just a few days—that you can return the camera for a full refund before it’s too late.

So when my wife wanted to start her own blog, I made a special trip to the bookstore to find her an introductory text on how to create a quality site. Let me tell you, it’s not an easy book to find. I scanned the shelves for probably twenty minutes. And then one book caught my eye: How to Use Your New Digital SLR Camera. And incorrectly shelved right next to that one was The Huffington Post Complete Guide to Blogging. Written by Arianna Huffington and the editors of “The Huffington Post” blog—one of the most popular show-off blogs on the Internet—the book introduces readers to the world of blogging in three convenient sections:

1. The Nuts and Bolts of Blogging
2. George W. Bush is a Weenie
3. Resources for Getting Rid of Weenies like George W. Bush

I’m not saying that the book was overtly political. I’m saying that it was overtly political and light on details about blogging. Of the book’s 230 pages, only about 80 pages deal with the actual craft of building a blog, give or take 80 pages. The rest of the book documents how “The Huffington Post” blog came to be, replete with sample writings by famous members of its “HuffPost” community.

For those interested in a political book that makes passing references to Internet-based content management systems—and if your bookseller is all out of Electronic Socialism for Dummies—this might be just the book for you. The sample blog entries explaining how Republicans want poor kids to die (page 223), or how Ms. Huffington suffered greatly as her BlackBerry committed suicide in the Mediterranean Sea (page 143), will certainly provide the essential skills required for blog-centric ideologues.

I am certainly glad that there is no Huffington Post Complete Guide to Heart Surgery, because any doctor entrusted with such a book would only get about one-third the way into the procedure before being forced to read about the history of Arianna Huffington’s elective sinus surgery.

In all fairness, the book does provide some relevant content about starting and maintaining a blog. And although it is somewhat dated, the text also introduces the basic tools and vocabulary needed to be a left-wing congressional lobbyist. And a so-so blogger, assuming that you will be writing journalistic articles covering current events. Otherwise you’re hosed.

Unfortunately, the bookstore didn’t have much else available on blogging, apart from geek books discussing the internals of blogging systems. As much as I love my local bookstore, I might have to take my search online. It shouldn’t be too hard to find what I need, just as soon as I can figure out how to start the web browser on this digital camera.

Verdict: 2 Out of 5 Stars

Humorality.com’s Review of The Huffington Post Complete Guide to Blogging, ISBN: 978-1-4391-0500-9

At a Treasury Department press briefing today, Secretary Timothy Geithner announced that Google will begin management of the Internal Revenue Service’s tax collection operation starting on January 1. The company, founded by former Stanford University students Lawrence Page and Sergey Brin, will assume all core operations of the government bureau, including collecting taxes, scheduling audits, and calling delinquent taxpayers at 3:00am.

“Google, with its ‘Don’t Be Evil’ motto, is a perfect match for the IRS,” said the Treasury Secretary. After order was restored, Sergey Brin introduced the new advertising-sponsored “Google 1040″ tax model.

“The goal is to present the most relevant business opportunities to each taxpayer based on their specific financial situation,” said Mr. Brin. “For example, if your taxes go up by fifteen percent or more from the previous year, Google 1040 might display an advertisement for ‘Lieberman-Limbaugh 2012,’ whereas if your taxes go down by the same amount, you would see ‘Obama-Lieberman 2012′ instead.”

The text-only advertising model will extend to all aspects of tax processing, from Schedule A to Form 9984, even though nobody knows what it’s for. A fair system for selecting relevant ads would ensure, according to Secretary Geithner, “that TurboTax always appears first in the list.”

Larry Page discussed some of the more user-friendly aspects of the change. “We’re excited to introduce the ‘I’m Feeling Lucky’ feature to the core set of tax forms. Instead of filling out all of the line items, taxpayers can, through a simple button press, schedule an audit and possible fines of up to $100,000, or 25 years in prison. Doing your taxes has never been this simple.” Mr. Page demonstrated the new system by typing “Fox News” into the “Taxpayer Search” field. The audit begins next Wednesday.

President Obama, flying aboard Air Force One on his way to an impromptu basketball game in Philadelphia, praised the partnership. “This association marks a big step forward in the synergy between the public and private sectors. The changes won’t be immediately, and we may continue to see unemployment in the 20-percent range before—all right, very funny. Who put my popularity numbers into the teleprompter?”

Despite the positive reaction from the Administration, some in the business sector were concerned about the Google-IRS relationship. Steve Ballmer, a long-time employee at Microsoft in Redmond, Washington, said that the merger “reeks of antitrust monopolistic greed.” And many in the Linux community warned that fanatical elements may try to turn the Google move into a church-state issue, “which would be awesome,” said one programmer.

Congress can override the Executive Order that established the partnership. However, a recently-discovered virus on the Windows systems on Capital Hill has prevented details of Google’s plan from reaching lawmakers. “But we’re not really worried about it,” said Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. “It’s not like Google wants access to every piece of data in government computers.”

[Image Credits: IRS, Google]

God filed suit in federal court today against several dozen scientist engaged in what the Eternal Father calls “piracy of legally protected DNA lifeware.” At issue are the cloning efforts of several research laboratories around the United States who are alleged to have engaged in the illegal copying and distribution of previously licensed DNA.

“We don’t sell DNA; we license it,” declared the Holy Spirit, God’s official spokespirit. “Every life form has a non-exclusive, non-transferable right to his, her, or its own DNA product. The license agreement issued and signed at germination or fertilization is very clear in this matter.”

Today’s filing represents the first time that an omnipotent deity has sought legal enforcement of patent rights. “But it won’t be the last time,” declared Mr. Spirit. “My client will aggressively pursue anyone who clones heavenly materials without a proper licensing agreement.”

Most pundits were not surprised at the legal action, since it was only a week ago that a lawyer for Dr. Hyung Wojihowski, one of the defendants, raised doubts about the Lord’s patent claims. “We categorically reject God’s claims of DNA ownership, and ask him to provide evidence that he developed the technology first,” said attorney James Hartgrove. In a related story, Mr. Hartgrove was found dead in his home several days later, the result of widespread mutations throughout all his body’s cells. The death has been ruled a suicide.

A three-judge panel has imposed a cloning injunction until the case can be fully reviewed. But some of the researchers will continue on with their projects despite the ban. “Of course I will keep working,” said Heinrich Greggson, PhD, a researcher focusing on the cloning of sushi-grade tuna. “I’m certainly impressed with the quality of the DNA he produced. But let’s face it; the man’s past his prime. He’s in management now, and managers only care about the bottom line. That’s why he’s suing. What happened to his quest for knowledge?”

It could be years before the results of the suit are fully adjudicated. Until then, the Creator of All Things is leaving the door open for negotiation. In a released statement, the I AM said, “Behold, I stand at the door and knock, with a contract in hand. I was willing to give my son so that people, including these scientists, might gain eternal life. Is it asking too much of them to offer me ten percent of their royalties in return?”

[Image Credits: "Hello Dolly" image copyright (c) 2008 by Chris Gin.]