I just managed to completely freak myself out by glancing at my first grader's calendar, because exactly who authorized the last day of school to be in less than THREE WEEKS AWAY? Oh god, summer break's almost here. Sun, fun, and many hours of "YOU GUYS NEED TO PIPE DOWN I'M TRYING TO WORK!!!"

If this summer's anything like last year, we'll manage to figure out a precarious balance between activities and downtime and deadlines -- and I'm sure in addition to the wholesome outdoors and sunshine, my boys will be getting some screen time. They're not quite at the Internet-using age yet, but if your kids will be doing more than their usual amount of web surfing this summer, I've got 5 handy (and free!) Google tools specifically aimed at helping parents keep their kids safe while they're online.

Google Maps and Google Street View have been known to capture all sorts of oddball images, but evidence of a spectacularly grisly murder was a first. A Reddit user recently called attention to an image taken by an aerial Google Maps camera in the Netherlands, which shows what appeared to be the dramatic scene of a crime. In the shot, a shadowy figure seems to be dragging a corpse down a pier and over the edge, leaving a gruesome smear of blood behind the body. You can barely make out the shape of a human body, with the "head" on the right and the "feet" on the left. A body-shaped smudge to the right implies that the corpse left a large bloodstain before someone flipped it over.

Horrible, right? The image was captured in 2009, but Dutch cops could still prosecute if they found any remaining evidence, since there's no statute of limitations for murder. While the debate raged on over what, exactly, the photo depicted -- one Dutch citizen came forward and confessed.

I was too busy hosting brunch and raiding my kids' Easter baskets to notice what yesterday's Google doodle was, but apparently it was INCREDIBLY controversial. The anti-religious leftists in Mountain View had the gall to not only choose a doodle that had nothing to do with colorful eggs, chocolate bunnies, or Jesus H. Christ himself -- they honored a big old lefty instead by celebrating would have been the 86th birthday of Latino civil rights leader Cesar Chávez.

Clearly this was a political statement from those sneaky liberals. Why else celebrate the lesser-known birthday of a progressive icon when they could be reminding us all that it was EASTER?

It's sad Internet times, friends. Beloved RSS feed Google Reader, AKA LOLcat-aggregate, is tragically in the process of slowly dying. RIP. For those of you who don't know about Google Reader, let me tell you -- you're lucky. You now don't have to go through a depressing withdrawal following its death, but also -- you missed out, guys. Google Reader organizes all of the blogs and websites you check on a daily basis into neat, easy-to-navigate lists, so you don't have to go through the laborious task of going to each site individually. It's time management at its finest and, full disclosure, a god-send for someone whose job it is to find interesting things on the Internet to write about. I think I may need to take the day off when it becomes official.

But wait. What's this? There are other RSS feeds? Oh, happy day! Come, friends in mourning. Let's rebuild. And for those of you who never used Google Reader to begin with, you may want to tag along. You're in for a real treat.

With today's technology, it's no wonder so many people get caught cheating. There's text messages that can reveal a person's philandering ways. Emails, too. And let's not forget about Facebook or Twitter either -- two social networking sites that could easily offer clues as to whether or not someone is having an affair. But one piece of technology I bet you'd never, ever in a million years think would bust you would be Google Maps Street View. I mean, what are the odds someone would find you on the street at a very specific moment in time holding hands with someone you shouldn't be holding hands with? Slim. But it isn't totally unheard of -- this actually just happened!

I don't know about you, but when someone tells me not to Google something, I immediately do it. It's a sickness, I swear to God. Because I can't think of a single instance where whatever I discovered online after being explicitly warned against looking for it didn't live up to my awful expectations. In other words, when people tell you not to Google something, they usually have a damn good reason. So why am I sharing this roundup post of things you shouldn't google, knowing full well that some of you are going to Google them anyway, and I will be the one to blame for your subsequent discomfort? Because I am a very, very, very bad person, that's why.

Keep reading ... IF YOU DARE.

Self-driving cars cannot get here fast enough. Well, at least in my world. Some days I feel like I spend hours in the car -- carting kids around, running errands, making appointments, etc. That’s a lot of time spent sitting and not doing a whole lot of anything except watching the road and singing along badly to Adele until your two small children beg you to stop because their ears hurt.

That’s time that could be spent doing something productive, or even just fun. Heck, if cars could drive themselves, you could theoretically wave goodbye to your kids from your driveway as they head off to school. Although that idea freaks me out, because I love technology, but I love my kids more and sometimes computers glitch.

iPhone owners -- you can exhale now. Google Maps is back. After a tumultuous relationship with Apple Maps -- and many (many) wrong turns -- the map app everybody knows and loves is once again available for the iPhone. And word on the street is it does not disappoint. Like, you know that overwhelming panicky feeling you have the instant you realize you're lost? Yeah, that will never happen again.