*Update*We’ve updated the fake articles with today’s date and have made it easy for anyone to use this as a prank on office workers. “How to” at the end of the article.

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I work in Indianapolis and have a coworker who is obsessed with all things Apple, especially the iPhone. He’s ready. He’s got Indy Apple stores and AT&T locations on speed dial and is set for the biggest release since the iPod itself. This Friday at 6:00 p.m. was to be the beginning of his best weekend ever…. until…

A group of us at work decided to spoof an article in Indy’s most prominent local paper: the Indianapolis Star. What we did was scrape the website, pasted some of our own content into it, and changed DNS settings such that any browsing on our local network at work would reroute IndyStar.com to our fake site that was made to look exactly like the real thing. We even did the same thing for Apple.com so that we could mock up Apple’s site “crashing” due to heavy traffic in response to the unfortunate news of the iPhone being delayed.

Click on the images below to see how it looked. The first is the actual fake article that was displayed when the front page story was clicked on, and the second is the homepage with the title story about the iPhone delay. We could only let the joke run for so long (a couple hours). This guy was/is determined to get an iPhone and was considering purchasing a ticket to New York to avoid the supposed disaster of the iPhone being delayed for Indianapolis. And we’re not that mean.

See below for the text of our fake press release:

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Hi everyone! We’ve sold Computers.net (long story which I’ll share soon) and have moved all our previous content to our new site here: TechConsumer. More coming soon… If you have any questions, feel free to email us:

TechConsumer at gmail dot com.

*Update* Check out the About page for more details.

Publishers hate Google. So much so, in fact, that the CEO of Macmillan Publishers stole two of Google’s laptop. He did it to make a point. He is upset that Google is making digital copies of books in hopes of making information more accessible to you and me.

No, they are not giving those copies away. Once a person finds something of interest in a book, they are shown where they can purchase or check out said book. But the publisher is mad because Google is a threat to his business. Publishers are the candle makers, and Google just brought out the light bulb.

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I was surprised to hear that Jericho will be back on the air. All it takes to save a television program, apparently, is a whole lot of peanuts. The first thought that went through my head was to send the honey roasted variety to Fox. How much will it take to bring back Firefly and Arrested Development? I’ll be more than happy to buy the first jar.

But Jericho coming back raises some interesting points. Fans have begged networks to keep or bring back shows in the past, usually to no avail. Unless DVD sales, or reruns, are surprisingly strong (as in the case of Family Guy), programs don’t get a second chance. Firefly, arguably the best sci-fi series in the last decade, only lasted 12 episodes. This in spite of a massive movement to bring it back. Arrested Development, another fantastic television series went down, even though there were coordinated efforts from fans to keep it on the air. What has changed? Why did the peanuts work?

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There are rumors afloat that Amazon may be purchasing Netflix. One source has the purchase price at around $1.5 billion while another pins it at $2.1 billion. As a result, Netflix shares are up 5 percent today. The online video rental/download/purchase market is still in its infancy even if crowded with the likes of Apple, Blockbuster, Netflix, Amazon, and even Wal-Mart. And those are just the big boys playing in that space.

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There has been quite a lot of press lately about Google’s new Street View service. Street View allows you to pick a street and see it how it really is. This isn’t a satellite image, but rather pictures taken right on the street. So for example, here is a picture of the Bellagio in Las Vegas, taken right from the strip.

Great service, right? You can now plan a trip and not only get driving directions, but see what color the gas station is where you have to turn right. Or you can virtually visit places you’ve been before. A stroll down memory lane without leaving your chair.

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