This is a free service by the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster.
How it works:
Register your laptop. You will be provided a unique id, and a specific "home" or "start" page address for your internet browser.
When you (or a thief) connect to the internet, you are first connected to this website, where your IP address is recorded, along with the date and time. After 1 second, you're redirected to www.google.com. (i.e. it appears that your start page is google, not this website).
If your laptop is stolen, report it to the police, and then contact me. I'll flag your id, and if/when your laptop connects to the internet, the IP address will be recorded.
We'll get the approximate location of your laptop (e.g., Portland, Oregon) and it's current Internet Service Provider (e.g., Cox). Given this info, there's a decent chance your laptop can be recovered.
This is still an experiment. It's functional but not yet shiny.