Happy New Year, China!

In 2006 the first day of the Chinese Lunar New Year is January 29, 2006, the year of the Dog. I wish all chinese people a happy and prosperous new year!



Beautiful Goog doodle! This one is pretty clear; there's a dog in the logo because the year 2006 in China is the year of the Dog, as I said before. He also got a paper in his mouth with some chinese character on it. It's difficult to see what charachter it is as I'm not chinese myself, but it is either '狗', wich means 2006, or '戌', wich means dog. And finally, some fireworks at the right to celebrate the event.
Google is linking to these page results.

New year in China always falls on a different date, every year. As you now know, New Year 2006 was today, on the 29th of January. Next year, Chinese's New Year 2007 will fall on the 18th of February.

As Wikipedia explains:

The day of the second new moon after the day on which the winter solstice occurs, unless there is an intercalary eleventh or twelfth month in the lead-up to the New Year—in such a case, the New Year falls on the day of the third new moon after the solstice.

During the years at Google I have collected the previous Google doodles celebrating Lunar New Year:
2001

The year of the Snake

2002
I wonder why they haven't done it that year...
The year of the Horse

2003

The year of the Goat

2004

The year of the Monkey

2005

The year of the Rooster

Mozart

It's Mozart's turn!
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was born exactly 250 years ago.
That's what Google is celebrating today, for the first time!

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (born Johann Chrysostom Wolfgang Theophilus Mozart) (January 27, 1756 – December 5, 1791) is among the most significant and enduringly popular composers of European classical music. His enormous output includes works that are widely acknowledged as pinnacles of symphonic, chamber, piano, operatic, and choral music. Many of his works are part of the standard concert repertory and are widely recognized as masterpieces of the classical style.

Google came up with this beautiful Google Doodle:



The yellow 'o' of Google's got the wig of Mozart. The 'g' represents the G clef (A clef is a symbol used in musical notation that assigns notes to lines and spaces on the musical staff).
Some details about the G clef:

The G clef is composed of a spiral in the approximate form of a capital letter G, overlaid on a stretched letter S. It assigns the note G to a line on the staff, determined by the curl of the "G" symbol. It is normally placed on the staff with the spiral originating from the second line; this usage of the G clef is so common that the name treble clef is often used as a synonym, but the G clef can be placed on other lines: in the baroque period, for example, the G clef was sometimes placed on the first line of the staff for music with a high range, known today as the French clef.

Unfortunately, I'm not into notes, so I want be able to tell you them, though, the notes on the Google doodle probably represents one of Mozart's work.

Martin Luther King, Jr. Day

Today is Martin Luther King, Jr. Day!

Here's the Google doodle:


And, it is linking to these page results: http://www.google.com/search?q=Martin+Luther+King+Jr.+Day

The Google doodle has a quote included in it; "I have a dream".
And that dream is...

I have a dream that one day little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.

And that pretty much explains today's Google doodle!

In 2005, Google celebrated this day for the first time, and it looked like this:



Did you notice?
Something you need to know, anyway, this is for tomorrow ;)

Google in Braille

Today Google has changed his logo into Braille writing, to be honest I was very surprised this morning when going on Google.



I don't think this one needs to be explained, it's just obvious. The only weird thing I could make up is that the first G is written diffently from the second g. Why? Obvious again, because first one is in capital letters.

The Google doodle is linking to these page results ("louis braille birthdate").

Some Google functions
Writing "birthday" next to a famous person gives often directly the date of birth of that person. Though, "dob" (Date Of Birth) could as well be used. And if you really are interested in what I just said, you could use "Date of Death" as well, though, here "dod" doesn't work.

Louis Braille - Wikipedia
Louis Braille (January 4, 1809–January 6, 1852) was the inventor of the Braille writing system for the blind.
Read more

That's it for now. Stay tuned ;)

Happy New Year 2006

We will start this blog by wishing everybody a Happy New Year 2006! The year 2005 might not be as good as was expected for some, but 2006 will fix that problem ;)
So what is this blog about? Pretty obvious, no? Google Doodles, yes of course!
Our mission is to understand all the new Google Doodles, and to simply show them off on this blog.
Ever saw a Google Doodle that... just didn't make sense? Thinking like "What?! I don't get it!", "Does that have anything to do with [insert special day]?".
We are sure you do!
We're not planning on putting the Google Doodles from the previous years on this blog, and it would take too long, and again I'm not sure I've got them all.
Now to start it off, here's the first Google doodle on our blog, and the first Google doodle of the year 2006:



Well, what a coincidence! I don't really get the Google doodle ;)
Those branches mean the 'g' of Google, and at the same time, the number '6' for the year 2006. But why branches, and mountains, and that beaver?
The most probable explaination for this is to start a new year, without much pollution, but a year where we care about the nature.
Though, I'm a bit disappointed.
As one of our crew members, Randy Johnston, said to Google:

Personally, I find the 2006 logo for Google to be extremely unappealing. Better luck next year.

And that's how we're going to end our very first blog news ;)