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| Source: http://www.google.com/logos/2010/flintstones10-hp.jpg |
50th Anniversary of the Flintstones
Happy 12th Birthday Google
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| Happy 12th Birthday Google by Wayne Thiebaud Image used with permission of VAGA NY Source: http://www.google.com/logos/2010/googbday10-hp.jpg |
115th Birthday of Juan de la Cierva
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| Source: http://www.google.com/logos/2010/delacierva-hp.gif |
De la Cierva was born in Murcia, Spain to a wealthy family. After several successful experiments with aviation as a boy, he eventually earned a civil engineering degree. He moved to England in 1925, where with the support of Scottish industrialist James G. Weir, he established the Cierva Autogiro Company.
At the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War, De la Cierva supported the forces of Francisco Franco, helping the rebels to obtain the De Havilland DH-89 'Dragon Rapide' which flew General Franco from the Canary Islands to Spanish Morocco. His brother was killed by the Republican army in Paracuellos del Jarama. [Read more on Wikipedia]
140th Anniversary of Rome
Today the Google Logo has one of it’s changes on and it’s to celebrate 140 years of Rome the Capital of Italy.
The 20th September 1870 the “Bersaglieri Troupes” entered the City of Rome through Porta Pia, under the command of General Luigi Cadorna. Actually they broke through a breach in the “Mura Aureliane”, near Porta Pia.
At this point Pope Pio or Pius IX declared himself prisoner of The Vatican, and Rome became part of the Reign of Italy and was declared Capital. The day before Capital was Florence.
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| Source: http://www.google.com/logos/2010/rome10-hp.gif |
The 20th September 1870 the “Bersaglieri Troupes” entered the City of Rome through Porta Pia, under the command of General Luigi Cadorna. Actually they broke through a breach in the “Mura Aureliane”, near Porta Pia.
At this point Pope Pio or Pius IX declared himself prisoner of The Vatican, and Rome became part of the Reign of Italy and was declared Capital. The day before Capital was Florence.
Kicking off Oktoberfest on orkut
Today is the kick-off ceremony of Oktoberfest, a traditional German celebration of food, drink, music, dance, and culture that has become so popular that it has spread all around the world.
The world’s largest Oktoberfest celebration takes place in Munich, Germany during the last few weeks of September and beginning of October, and regularly commands millions of visitors.
Even if you’re not able to make it to Munich this year or participate in any of the local celebrations going on near you, Orkut wanted to offer you this special doodle to help you get into the spirit:
The world’s largest Oktoberfest celebration takes place in Munich, Germany during the last few weeks of September and beginning of October, and regularly commands millions of visitors.
Even if you’re not able to make it to Munich this year or participate in any of the local celebrations going on near you, Orkut wanted to offer you this special doodle to help you get into the spirit:
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| Source: https://static1.orkut.com/img/doodle/orkut_doodle_oktoberfest_a_v6.gif |
Agatha Christie's 120th Birthday
Today’s Google logo (or Google Doodle, as the company calls its everchanging logo) is one of the most elaborate we’ve seen: It’s a murder scene with one of Google’s o’s depicting a lady lying dead in the middle of a room full of other characters.
But who’s the murderer: the butler, the elegantly attired woman, the gentleman, or the stable boy? There’s only one person who can find out: Agatha Christie’s fictional detective Hercule Poirot, represented by the capital G in the image, sporting his famous bow tie and mustache.
The logo is, of course, a tribute to the famous crime writer, Dame Agatha Christie, DBE, (15 September 1890 – 12 January 1976), was a British crime writer of novels, short stories and plays. She also wrote romances under the name Mary Westmacott, but she is best remembered for her 80 detective novels—especially those featuring Hercule Poirot and Miss Jane Marple—and her successful West End theatre plays. [Read more on Wikipedia]
But who’s the murderer: the butler, the elegantly attired woman, the gentleman, or the stable boy? There’s only one person who can find out: Agatha Christie’s fictional detective Hercule Poirot, represented by the capital G in the image, sporting his famous bow tie and mustache.
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| Source: http://www.google.com/logos/2010/christie10-hp.jpg |
El Salvador's Independence Day
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| Source: http://www.google.com/logos/2010/elsalvadorind10-hp.gif |
In 1811 and 1814 there were major uprisings against Spanish rule that expressed concern that the independence of the Creoles. Finally, the Central American nations won their independence from Spain on September 15, 1821. From January 5, 1822, the Central American provinces, except the opposition of the elite Salvadoran and Guatemalan intellectuals, joined the Mexican Empire, until March 19, 1823, when Agustín de Iturbide abdicates before Congress and he wrote a book that was secret.
Akatsuka Fujio's Birthday
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| Source: http://www.google.com/logos/2010/akatsuka10-hp.png |
He was born in Rehe, Manchuria, the son of a Japanese military police officer. After World War II, he grew up in Niigata Prefecture and Nara Prefecture. When he was 19, he moved to Tokyo.
While working at a chemical factory, he drew many manga. After that, Tokiwa-so accepted him. He started his career as a shōjo artist, but in 1958, his Nama-chan (ナマちゃん) became a hit, so he became a specialist in comic manga. He won the Shogakukan Manga Award in 1964 for Osomatsu-kun and the Bungeishunjū Manga Award in 1971 for Tensai Bakabon. He is said to have been influenced by Buster Keaton and MAD magazine.
In 1969, Akatsuka established his own company "Fujio Productions Ltd.".
In 2000, he drew manga in braille for the blind.
Many of his manga featured supporting characters who ended up becoming more popular and more associated with their series than the main character, such as Papa (Tensai Bakabon), Iyami, Chibita (Osomatsu-kun), and Nyarome (Mōretsu Atarō).
In April 2002 he was hospitalized for intra-axial hematoma and was said to frequently be in a persistent vegetative state from 2004 until his death. In July 2006, his second wife Machiko, who had been nursing him, suddenly died from a subarachnoid hemorrhage. On August 2nd, 2008, he died of pneumonia at a hospital in Bunkyō, Tokyo. [Read more on Wikipedia]
Discovery of Grotte de Lascaux
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| Source: http://www.google.com/logos/2010/grotte10-hp.gif |
1000th Anniversary of Yaroslavl
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| Source: http://www.google.com/logos/2010/yaroslavl2010-hp.jpg |
At Google, doodling is real work
MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.--They've celebrated Pac-Man's anniversary, Einstein's birthday, the World Cup, the Fourth of July, Persian New Year, the Olympics, U.S. elections, and just about everything in between. Who are they? Google's Doodlers, of course.
A band of artists whose job it is to translate special events into those colorful, whimsical versions of Google's corporate logo, the Doodlers almost certainly have one of the best jobs in the world.
This team's members mix artistic skills with an ability to fit into Google's culture--meaning they can speak engineering and hold their own among the uber-geeks--in order to do the one thing at Google designed specifically to put a smile on people's faces the world over.
After working on a story about Google's creation of a special playable Pac-Man doodle back in May, I arranged for a visit with the Doodlers to witness their process and the creation of an actual doodle. So it was on a sunny Tuesday morning last month, I found myself among the Doodlers in a small conference room at the search giant's headquarters here.
A brief history
A little context first. In 1998, Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin decided to spoof the whole "out of office" idea by putting up a Burning Man logo behind the Google site's corporate logo while the two were at the annual arts festival in the Nevada desert. "While the first doodle was relatively simple," a corporate history of the Doodle recalls, "the idea of decorating the company logo to celebrate notable events was well received by our users."
In 2000, "Larry and Sergey asked current [Google] Webmaster Dennis Hwang, an intern at the time, to produce a doodle for Bastille Day," the history continues. "Pleased with the result, Dennis was then appointed Google's chief doodler and doodles became a regular occurrence on the Google home page."
Today, the team is made up of five people--chief doodler Micheal Lopez and doodlers Susie Sahim, Jennifer Hom, Ryan Germick, and Mike Dutton.
And as part of my visit, they agreed to let me listen to their discussions about--and see their concepts for--future creations, so long as I didn't publish anything before September 4, when one of the new doodles celebrating the discovery of the Buckyball, would run worldwide.
It's notable that the doodle was running globally because just a fraction of the total creations are meant for a world audience. Most of their work is aimed at specific countries and celebrates local events, such as the birthdays of those countries' famed composers, scientists, and artists or national days of independence. Regardless of whether a doodle is meant for the eyes of billions or just a fraction of that, Lopez said, the creative process is basically the same: the team tries to find a way to conceptualize the event and then tries to find the most fun representation of that idea.
Each year, the team creates about 200 doodles, and with each, it tries to instill Google's technology and its culture.
"The company feels pretty good about it. With all our products, we think of the user first, and this is another example where we really enjoy sharing....We get to have a human hand in our company as part of our interaction with users," said Germick, who led the Pac-Man effort.
Checking the facts
With huge audiences viewing the doodles, those on the team know that it's important their work accurately represents the subject matter. Because if they get it wrong, the public will let them know.
For example, said Lopez, when the team put out a doodle commemorating the discovery of DNA, "we actually had drawn the double helix the wrong way...Scientists started writing us... [and] we revised it on the fly."
That's why, Germick said, when working on a doodle celebrating Pi Day--March 14, or 3/14--"I made sure to get a Princeton Ph.D.'s check on my representation of different geometric equations before I pushed [the doodle] out to hundreds of millions of users."
While team members will often have days, or even weeks, to finish their creations, that's not always the case. Hom recalled the day when water vapor was discovered on the moon, and it was decided that the team should get a doodle up that same day. "It looked like we had inside information," Hom said,"but really, we were reading the news."
When the so-called "missing link" fossil, was found in 2009, paleontologists felt it might fill in holes in their understanding of primate evolution, and the news created a splash worldwide. At the time, several of the Doodlers were at an awards ceremony in New York. But this piece of news was considered such geek manna that it was decided on the spot that Google needed to put up a doodle celebrating it. There was no time to lose, Germick said. Within hours, the resulting Doodle was bringing word about the fossil's discovery to untold millions.
Concepts
While the Pac-Man doodle would have made the news any time, it was particularly notable because it was the first example of a special logo that was fully playable and interactive. But over the years, the team has experimented with a number of dynamic doodles. Among them are the celebration of Isaac Newton's birthday in which an apple falls from a tree, a UFO's creation of a series of crop circles, and one that people could click to collect candy wrappers. That one, of course, ran on Halloween.
After about half an hour of sharing the history of Doodles, it was time for the team to get down to business: discussing current projects and giving one other feedback on their progress.
Generally, one person is assigned a specific doodle, and each usually works on two or three at a time. This means that as a team, they can make progress on a lot of doodles at once.
The first concept doodle they discussed while I was in the room was one that was scheduled to--and did--run in Russia on August 19 celebrating the 50th anniversary of the space flight of Belka and Stelka, the two Russian dogs who became the first animals to go into space--and return alive.
Sahim was creating it. Her design, I was told, was inspired by the famed Nintendo franchise, The Legend of Zelda.
At this point, just two days prior to the doodle's publication, Sahim had already gotten the sign-off from a Google marketing manager in Russia, who had reviewed and approved it.
Next up was a doodle celebrating the 205th birthday of Danish ballet dancer and choreographer August Bournoville, which was scheduled to--and did--run on August 21.
Dutton explained that he had wanted to give the doodle a "dreamy feel," a "lost-edge quality," and a sense that the "body mass is fading." In the concept sketch, one could see a chair fading a bit into the background.
Next up was a doodle commemorating Ukraninan Independence Day on August 24, and then one for the 213th birthday of "Frankenstein" creator Mary Shelley on August 30. The Shelley doodle ran in the U.K. that day. In Lopez's conception, the doodle depicted a hallway in Dr. Frankenstein's home to pay homage to Shelley.
I asked why it was important to commemorate Shelley's 213th birthday, rather than one with a rounder number. Lopez said that Google simply likes to celebrate anniversaries and birthdays. "We're not going to wait for a big, round number," Lopez said. "We want to do it now."
Of course, as Germick put it, by celebrating birthdays like Shelley's 213th, it maintains the "element of surprise...We want to be somewhat serendipitous."
Buckyball
After discussing a couple of more potential doodles, it was time to see some early concepts for a doodle celebrating the 25th anniversary of the discovery of buckminsterfullerene, a molecule that, Wikipedia says, is "composed entirely of carbon, in the form of a hollow sphere, ellipsoid, or tube." Spherical fullerenes are known as "Buckyballs" because these compositions have some of the same elements as geodesic domes, which were invented by Buckminster Fuller.
These molecules are commonly used in science, particularly in materials science, nanotechnology, and electronics, according to Wikipedia, yet they are also seen in the design of many different kinds of soccer balls.
That's why, when Hom began drawing her concept for a Buckyball doodle on the whiteboard, she incorporated what looked to everyone like a soccer ball. "Let's just re-use the World Cup doodle," someone joked.
Hom explained that she was thinking of two different ideas for the final design. One was slightly interactive, she said, and would feature a tiny particle rotating in circular motion around the fullerene. "Hopefully, this would spark user interest," she said, "and they'd mouse over it. And when they do, it would zoom in to a gigantic Buckyball. The user's mouse would cause it to rotate and spin."
She said that if that approach wasn't appealing to the team, she had also been conceiving of a static doodle.
I asked about the animation in her interactive idea. Germick said if they went in that direction, they'd "probably try to con an engineer into working with us in their 20 percent time." He was referring to the Google tradition of giving employees 20 percent of their work time to address personal projects.
"Some of the people I'm talking to about animating this are Buckminster Fuller fanatics," Hom said.
Indeed, she said that working on the project had felt like being in school because she felt a lot of pressure to get it right. "If I get it wrong," she said, "then everyone's going to be upset."
[via cnet news]
A band of artists whose job it is to translate special events into those colorful, whimsical versions of Google's corporate logo, the Doodlers almost certainly have one of the best jobs in the world.
This team's members mix artistic skills with an ability to fit into Google's culture--meaning they can speak engineering and hold their own among the uber-geeks--in order to do the one thing at Google designed specifically to put a smile on people's faces the world over.
After working on a story about Google's creation of a special playable Pac-Man doodle back in May, I arranged for a visit with the Doodlers to witness their process and the creation of an actual doodle. So it was on a sunny Tuesday morning last month, I found myself among the Doodlers in a small conference room at the search giant's headquarters here.
A brief history
A little context first. In 1998, Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin decided to spoof the whole "out of office" idea by putting up a Burning Man logo behind the Google site's corporate logo while the two were at the annual arts festival in the Nevada desert. "While the first doodle was relatively simple," a corporate history of the Doodle recalls, "the idea of decorating the company logo to celebrate notable events was well received by our users."
In 2000, "Larry and Sergey asked current [Google] Webmaster Dennis Hwang, an intern at the time, to produce a doodle for Bastille Day," the history continues. "Pleased with the result, Dennis was then appointed Google's chief doodler and doodles became a regular occurrence on the Google home page."
 |
| The first doodle signaled that Google's co-founders were attending Burning Man. (Credit: Google) |
Today, the team is made up of five people--chief doodler Micheal Lopez and doodlers Susie Sahim, Jennifer Hom, Ryan Germick, and Mike Dutton.
And as part of my visit, they agreed to let me listen to their discussions about--and see their concepts for--future creations, so long as I didn't publish anything before September 4, when one of the new doodles celebrating the discovery of the Buckyball, would run worldwide.
It's notable that the doodle was running globally because just a fraction of the total creations are meant for a world audience. Most of their work is aimed at specific countries and celebrates local events, such as the birthdays of those countries' famed composers, scientists, and artists or national days of independence. Regardless of whether a doodle is meant for the eyes of billions or just a fraction of that, Lopez said, the creative process is basically the same: the team tries to find a way to conceptualize the event and then tries to find the most fun representation of that idea.
Each year, the team creates about 200 doodles, and with each, it tries to instill Google's technology and its culture.
"The company feels pretty good about it. With all our products, we think of the user first, and this is another example where we really enjoy sharing....We get to have a human hand in our company as part of our interaction with users," said Germick, who led the Pac-Man effort.
Checking the facts
With huge audiences viewing the doodles, those on the team know that it's important their work accurately represents the subject matter. Because if they get it wrong, the public will let them know.
For example, said Lopez, when the team put out a doodle commemorating the discovery of DNA, "we actually had drawn the double helix the wrong way...Scientists started writing us... [and] we revised it on the fly."
That's why, Germick said, when working on a doodle celebrating Pi Day--March 14, or 3/14--"I made sure to get a Princeton Ph.D.'s check on my representation of different geometric equations before I pushed [the doodle] out to hundreds of millions of users."
While team members will often have days, or even weeks, to finish their creations, that's not always the case. Hom recalled the day when water vapor was discovered on the moon, and it was decided that the team should get a doodle up that same day. "It looked like we had inside information," Hom said,"but really, we were reading the news."
 |
| When the so-called 'missing link' fossil was found, the team put up this logo within hours. (Credit: Google) |
When the so-called "missing link" fossil, was found in 2009, paleontologists felt it might fill in holes in their understanding of primate evolution, and the news created a splash worldwide. At the time, several of the Doodlers were at an awards ceremony in New York. But this piece of news was considered such geek manna that it was decided on the spot that Google needed to put up a doodle celebrating it. There was no time to lose, Germick said. Within hours, the resulting Doodle was bringing word about the fossil's discovery to untold millions.
Concepts
While the Pac-Man doodle would have made the news any time, it was particularly notable because it was the first example of a special logo that was fully playable and interactive. But over the years, the team has experimented with a number of dynamic doodles. Among them are the celebration of Isaac Newton's birthday in which an apple falls from a tree, a UFO's creation of a series of crop circles, and one that people could click to collect candy wrappers. That one, of course, ran on Halloween.
After about half an hour of sharing the history of Doodles, it was time for the team to get down to business: discussing current projects and giving one other feedback on their progress.
Generally, one person is assigned a specific doodle, and each usually works on two or three at a time. This means that as a team, they can make progress on a lot of doodles at once.
The first concept doodle they discussed while I was in the room was one that was scheduled to--and did--run in Russia on August 19 celebrating the 50th anniversary of the space flight of Belka and Stelka, the two Russian dogs who became the first animals to go into space--and return alive.
Sahim was creating it. Her design, I was told, was inspired by the famed Nintendo franchise, The Legend of Zelda.
At this point, just two days prior to the doodle's publication, Sahim had already gotten the sign-off from a Google marketing manager in Russia, who had reviewed and approved it.
Next up was a doodle celebrating the 205th birthday of Danish ballet dancer and choreographer August Bournoville, which was scheduled to--and did--run on August 21.
 |
| This is one of the doodles--celebrating August Bournoville--that the team discussed during CNET's visit. (Credit: Google) |
Next up was a doodle commemorating Ukraninan Independence Day on August 24, and then one for the 213th birthday of "Frankenstein" creator Mary Shelley on August 30. The Shelley doodle ran in the U.K. that day. In Lopez's conception, the doodle depicted a hallway in Dr. Frankenstein's home to pay homage to Shelley.
I asked why it was important to commemorate Shelley's 213th birthday, rather than one with a rounder number. Lopez said that Google simply likes to celebrate anniversaries and birthdays. "We're not going to wait for a big, round number," Lopez said. "We want to do it now."
Of course, as Germick put it, by celebrating birthdays like Shelley's 213th, it maintains the "element of surprise...We want to be somewhat serendipitous."
Buckyball
After discussing a couple of more potential doodles, it was time to see some early concepts for a doodle celebrating the 25th anniversary of the discovery of buckminsterfullerene, a molecule that, Wikipedia says, is "composed entirely of carbon, in the form of a hollow sphere, ellipsoid, or tube." Spherical fullerenes are known as "Buckyballs" because these compositions have some of the same elements as geodesic domes, which were invented by Buckminster Fuller.
 |
This logo was created to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the discovery of buckminsterfullerene. (Credit: Google) |
That's why, when Hom began drawing her concept for a Buckyball doodle on the whiteboard, she incorporated what looked to everyone like a soccer ball. "Let's just re-use the World Cup doodle," someone joked.
Hom explained that she was thinking of two different ideas for the final design. One was slightly interactive, she said, and would feature a tiny particle rotating in circular motion around the fullerene. "Hopefully, this would spark user interest," she said, "and they'd mouse over it. And when they do, it would zoom in to a gigantic Buckyball. The user's mouse would cause it to rotate and spin."
She said that if that approach wasn't appealing to the team, she had also been conceiving of a static doodle.
I asked about the animation in her interactive idea. Germick said if they went in that direction, they'd "probably try to con an engineer into working with us in their 20 percent time." He was referring to the Google tradition of giving employees 20 percent of their work time to address personal projects.
"Some of the people I'm talking to about animating this are Buckminster Fuller fanatics," Hom said.
Indeed, she said that working on the project had felt like being in school because she felt a lot of pressure to get it right. "If I get it wrong," she said, "then everyone's going to be upset."
[via cnet news]
25th Anniversary of Buckyball
Google has released another interactive animated HTML5 Google Doodle today. Spotted first on Google.co.uk, Google logo is made up of interactive colored balls.
Google Doodles never came without a reason. Most recently, Google Doodle celebrated buckyball's 25th-anniversary by embracing the carbon molecule in its logo. But today's different. Google.co.uk users are treated to a special mystery Google Doodle today -- and there doesn't seem to be any occasion that Google's celebrating.
The new mystery Google Doodle on Google.co.uk replaces the Google logo with a string of tiny circles or balls that disperse upon mouse movement on the page. Move the mouse over the Google Doodle quickly or slowly and the balls/circles making up the Google logo disperse according to momentum -- it's pretty cool.
As with past interactive doodles, Google Doodle supports HTML5. We tried playing with Google Doodle on Google Chrome 6 and beta 7, Firefox 4 beta, and IE8 on Microsoft Windows 7. However, the Google Doodle didn't render at all on IE7 running on Microsoft XP.
Buckminsterfullerene (C60) is a spherical molecule with the formula C60. It was first prepared in 1985 by Harold Kroto, James Heath, Sean O'Brien, Robert Curl and Richard Smalley at Rice University.[1] Kroto, Curl, and Smalley were awarded the 1996 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for their roles in the discovery of buckminsterfullerene and the related class of molecules, the fullerenes. The name is an homage to Richard Buckminster Fuller, whose geodesic domes it resembles. Buckminsterfullerene was the first fullerene molecule discovered and it is also the most common in terms of natural occurrence, as it can be found in small quantities in soot. [Read more on Wikipedia]
Google Doodles never came without a reason. Most recently, Google Doodle celebrated buckyball's 25th-anniversary by embracing the carbon molecule in its logo. But today's different. Google.co.uk users are treated to a special mystery Google Doodle today -- and there doesn't seem to be any occasion that Google's celebrating.
The new mystery Google Doodle on Google.co.uk replaces the Google logo with a string of tiny circles or balls that disperse upon mouse movement on the page. Move the mouse over the Google Doodle quickly or slowly and the balls/circles making up the Google logo disperse according to momentum -- it's pretty cool.
 |
| Source: http://www.google.com/logos/2010/buckyball10-hp.gif |
Buckminsterfullerene (C60) is a spherical molecule with the formula C60. It was first prepared in 1985 by Harold Kroto, James Heath, Sean O'Brien, Robert Curl and Richard Smalley at Rice University.[1] Kroto, Curl, and Smalley were awarded the 1996 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for their roles in the discovery of buckminsterfullerene and the related class of molecules, the fullerenes. The name is an homage to Richard Buckminster Fuller, whose geodesic domes it resembles. Buckminsterfullerene was the first fullerene molecule discovered and it is also the most common in terms of natural occurrence, as it can be found in small quantities in soot. [Read more on Wikipedia]
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