…recently begat this much more popular viral video, which eventually turned into a hit song at Apple’s (APPL) iTunes:

But here’s the full backstory, via the “Auto-Tune the News” guys behind the whole thing. They told their tale at Google’s (GOOG) Zeitgeist conference this week, impressing at least one high-profile attendee.

And if you’re a little uneasy about the notion of hipster Brooklyn kids turning someone else’s real-life crime story into a novelty song, I hear you. But the Auto-Tune dudes say they split their iTunes sales with unintentional star Antoine Dodson. So we’re all good. Right?

Speaking Tuesday at the Google Zeitgeist conference in Scottsdale, Ariz., Mr. Schmidt said Google hoped to at least get access to Facebook users’ contact lists so that people can grow their social network on Google. He said, without elaborating, that Google’s products would incorporate more social-networking elements later this year.

“The best thing that would happen is for Facebook to open up its data,” Mr. Schmidt said. “Failing that, there are other ways to get that information.” He declined to be specific.

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That’s the conclusion Citigroup’s (C) Mark Mahaney reached after taking Microsoft’s (MSFT) new search engine for a spin and comparing it to Google’s (GOOG) and Yahoo’s (YHOO). The result: Google still delivers better results most of the time. In 71 percent of searches, Google either supplied the most relevant answer or tied with other engines. Bing did that 46 percent of the time.

But it’s worth checking out the results of Mahaney’s test to see exactly how the search engines stack up. For one thing, as he notes, Bing’s results are getting better as it matures–it’s only been live for about a month–and as it adds bells and whistles (for instance, it is catering to vanities of certain bloggers by including their Twitter stream in search results).

And Bing also performs better for at least two kinds of searches: Health and travel. So if you need to book a trip, or if you pick up a rash on that trip, you might want to think about Binging before you Google.

First, Mahaney’s methodology:

Over the past two weeks, we conducted 200 queries across the three major Search engines–Google, Yahoo! and Bing. Most of the queries we picked came from Google Zeitgeist, Microsoft’s xRank and Yahoo! Buzz, along with some personal queries. These queries spanned multiple categories, including Entertainment, Health, Local, News, Retail, Sports, Travel and Other. After conducting the same query across all three Search sites, we picked a winner based on: 1) relevancy of the organic search results; and 2) robustness of the search experience, which included factors such as image and video inclusion, Search Assist, and Site Breakout.

And his results. Overall relevancy (click to enlarge):

Relevancy by topic (click to enlarge):