Hey, do you ever feel sorry for The Woz? After all, it's sort of a natural reaction; here's the other Steve, the other cofounder of Apple, and indeed, the guy who built the frickin' computer in the first place, right? And while Jobs is back in the saddle and riding the company they started to freaky new levels of insanely great technology and boundless innovation, Woz is largely out of that particular infinite loop. Oh, sure, he joined the board of directors of Danger, Inc. last year, and even emerged from his mild-mannered "fifth grade teacher" secret identity long enough to start up Wheels of Zeus, so he's not exactly sitting around eating Pringles and watching that Saved by the Bell kid on Pet Star... but neither is he in on Captain Jobs's grand scheme for world domination.

Or is he? The New York Times reports that the W.o.Z. of Wheels of Zeus is finally ready to talk about his top secret project: technology to "keep track of stuff," as he himself puts it. Apparently inspired by several lost dogs, Woz and his team of seventeen employees have slapped together a nifty little wafer that fits nicely on a collar (or a child-- or, we suppose, a child's collar) and allows the wearer to be tracked as he/she/it roams the earth. The tags are cheap, convenient, and versatile; they will reportedly "be able to generate alerts, notifying the owner by phone or email message when a child arrives at school, a dog leaves the yard, or a car leaves the parking lot." In other words, yes, people, Woz has invented the Spider-Tracer. (By the way, this is first time we've encountered the phrase "wayward bichon frisé," but with any luck, it won't be the last.)

Just a harmless little product to keep tabs on the household pets, right? Oh, you poor naïve fools. Can't you see how this technology can be used to track the movements of every living soul on the face of the planet? Why, we wouldn't be at all surprised to hear that Jobs himself commissioned this project and plans to have the wafers surgically implanted in the skull bases of everyone on earth once Phase III of his world takeover plans come to fruition in 2007. And thus will Jobs become Big Brother-- and you can bet he's smart enough to make sure he'll have rounded up all the hammer-tossin' blonde chicks by then, too. On the plus side, if you ever get lost on your way to the Re-education Center, you can be sure that the black helicopters will find you tout de suite.