Head on over to teachparentstech.org and you’ll find a little Web form, shrouded in faux brown paper, where you can assemble your virtual tech-support care package.

After selecting to whom it should be addressed, you can pick from about 50 very short videos to attach to the message that the form creates. The videos feature fresh-faced Googlers in brightly colored shirts using plain English and screen-capture video to explain how to do things like resize a photo, use Google chat, get driving directions or find the nearest pizza place.

And the tech subjects seem to be pretty expertly selected as well (we’ve been asked to help our parents on more than a few of these specific problems).

After selecting a salutation, the videos you want to send and an appropriate closing remark, the form spits out a page that can be forwarded to the email of the desired tech noob.

We spoke with Jason Toff, a product marketing manager at Google and the informal leader of teachparentstech. He said that the project was built on the 20 percent time Google gives some staff members to work on separate projects outside of their assignments, and that it was really born out of a need found among his youngish Googley colleagues.

“The idea of parents needing tech support around the holidays really resonated with our core group of about six people. We just sent some emails out to some internal list serves expecting to get a lukewarm response, and over 50 people responded wanting to be in videos explaining some simple tech,” Toff said during our phone call.

Toff said there weren’t any other plans to build out additional products on the teachparentstech domain right now, but he’s hoping to see how this first thing goes and learn from it.

The site went live as of about 9:30 PT this morning and by noon had sent out over 3,000 virtual care packages.

The one pro tip we got from Toff was that if you care to see all the videos available, maybe to do a power-training session, you can head to teachparentstech.org/watch where all the available videos are displayed together.

Now, if only Google would buy up santagr.am and santatracker.com, our very Google holiday would be complete.

And some memos are “confidential”–meaning there’s no real expectation that they’ll stay within the family.

You’d assume that Eric Schmidt’s memo to “Googlers” announcing big raises falls in the latter category. If that’s all Googlers, that’s some 23,300 people, so that’s pretty much the same thing as issuing a press release, right?

But Google thinks otherwise, says CNNMoney’s David Goldman. He reports that the company has fired an engineer who passed the information along to Business Insider yesterday:

Within hours, Google notified its staff that it had terminated the leaker, several sources told CNNMoney. A Google spokesman declined to comment on the issue, or on the memo.

I’ve gone ahead and asked Google for comment as well, but I’m not hopeful. (UPDATE: I can see the future! No comment from Google.) In the absence of one, I’ll speculate that Google was freaked out that the “leak” would cause it problems with Wall Street and/or the SEC.

But again, if that’s the case, that makes no sense–you can’t hand out big fat checks to 23,300 people and keep it quiet indefinitely.

And since the point of the raises is to keep Googlers happy in a hot job market–and presumably, to help recruit new Googlers–you’d think Google would want the “confidential” memo distributed. Right?

I gather that some of you agree with Google on this one. Since the company won’t talk, feel free to make their case for them in the comments below.

“We’ll be focusing on early stage investments across a diverse range of industries, including consumer Internet, software, clean-tech, bio-tech, health care and, no doubt, other areas we haven’t thought of yet,” Managing Partners Rich Miner and Bill Maris explained in a blog post. “Central to our effort will be our fellow Googlers, whom we view as a critically important resource to help educate us about potential investments areas and evaluate specific companies.”

Presumably, then, the scope of the fund’s investments will be as diverse and, ahem, fascinating as the whims of Google’s leadership. Which isn’t always a good thing. That said, Google Ventures may do much to help the company innovate itself out of this downturn and perhaps even spot and engulf the next Google (GOOG) killer before it has a chance to live up to its namesake. As Google Ventures explains in its FAQ, it’s not above engulfing a company it’s incubated. “Acquisitions by Google of portfolio companies are possible, but this is not the goal or focus of our investment activities. Our focus is building great companies and generating long term financial return.”

Obviously. But for Google, right?

[Image Credit: Ignorance Is Futile!]

“We’ll be focusing on early stage investments across a diverse range of industries, including consumer Internet, software, clean-tech, bio-tech, health care and, no doubt, other areas we haven’t thought of yet,” Managing Partners Rich Miner and Bill Maris explained in a blog post. “Central to our effort will be our fellow Googlers, whom we view as a critically important resource to help educate us about potential investments areas and evaluate specific companies.”

Presumably, then, the scope of the fund’s investments will be as diverse and, ahem, fascinating as the whims of Google’s leadership. Which isn’t always a good thing. That said, Google Ventures may do much to help the company innovate itself out of this downturn and perhaps even spot and engulf the next Google (GOOG) killer before it has a chance to live up to its namesake. As Google Ventures explains in its FAQ, it’s not above engulfing a company it’s incubated. “Acquisitions by Google of portfolio companies are possible, but this is not the goal or focus of our investment activities. Our focus is building great companies and generating long term financial return.”

Obviously. But for Google, right?

[Image Credit: Ignorance Is Futile!]