Google Doodles

[Kelda]

heee! Multiple today!!

[Fran]

Ina Garten's Thanksgiving Recipes from Google

Perfect Roast Turkey w/ Herb & Apple Stuffing

[Fran]

Pumpkin Banana Mousse Tart

[Fran]

Smashed Sweet Potatoes

Popovers

Roasted Brussels Sprouts

Cranberry Fruit Conserve

[Penthesilea]

65. Birthday of Pippi Longstocking

[Sason]

Pippi Långstrump!!!!

I had no idea it was her birthday today....


When you click the doodle on the Swedish page, there are links that say "Congrats Pippi, you're now retired!" 

[Fran]

From SearchEngineLand.com:

The Google Rosa Parks Logo

Dec 1, 2010 at 8:12am ET by Barry Schwartz

Google is remembering the historic day when Rosa Parks refused to listen to the bus driver when she was told to give up her seat for a white passenger. Today, 55 years ago, was that day in Montgomery, Alabama. Although she wasn’t the first to make such a statement, her action on that day initiated the Montgomery Bus Boycott.

Rosa Parks is well known as a African American civil rights activist and was called by the U.S. Congress “the first lady of civil rights”, and “the mother of the freedom movement”. So, although today is not her birthday – Google decided to remember the anniversary of the day she refused to move with this logo:

There are some people who are upset with Google that they did not post a red ribbon today, in addition to the Rosa Parks logo, to commemorate World AIDS Day. Yahoo has a special ribbon logo but Google has no mention of it on their home page.

Here is the static Yahoo logo:

[Sason]

Too bad, that doodle doesn't show on the Swedish Google page. 

[Penthesilea]

Dec 6th, Nikolaus Day

[Fran]

A Holiday Card From Google
Five Artists, 250 Hours, Six Months to Create the Search Engine's 'Doodle'

By KATHERINE ROSMAN
Mountain View, Calif.

Set to be unveiled at 9 a.m. eastern time Thursday, Google's 2010 holiday doodle has 17 interactive images that approximate the logo's letters and colors.

For Micheal Lopez, creating this year's holiday card came down to the wire. The design took five artists about 250 hours. It will be opened by hundreds of millions of people. You're on the list.

Mr. Lopez is in charge of what Google Inc. calls its "doodles," the illustrations that occasionally adorn the search engine's logo in the U.S. and abroad. Doodles appear throughout the year to commemorate holidays, pop-culture touchstones, civic milestones and scientific achievements. The holiday doodle—its most ambitious one yet—will go up on its home page Thursday morning at 9 a.m. eastern time. It will remain on the site for 2½ days.

"We want to end the year with a bang," says Mr. Lopez, whose title is chief doodler.

For Google, the goal is to burnish its brand image and engage the legions of people who conduct more than a billion searches a day, without offending any of them. Google estimates it has created more than 900 doodles since 1998, with 270 of them running in 2010. Some appear globally, and others are tailored for local markets outside the U.S., such as Kenya Independence Day.

In the past, holiday doodles have used gift bows and snowmen to celebrate the season. But since becoming chief doodler 18 months ago, Mr. Lopez, 30-years-old, has upped the ante creatively and technologically. This year marked the first video doodle, videogame doodle and hologram doodle.

On what would have been John Lennon's 70th birthday in October, the former Beatle's glasses were the "Os," and clicking on the logo launched a 30-second video with an "Imagine" soundtrack.

Mr. Lopez's concept for the doodle is a representation of the Google logo through 17 interactive portraits of holiday scenes from around the world. For months, Mr. Lopez had envisioned unveiling it in stages over three days, ending on Christmas.

But when executives and others at Google saw the nearly completed doodle last week, they made a key change: the entire doodle needed to go online in one posting. Suddenly, after working for six months, Mr. Lopez and his team were racing to finish.

Discussions about the holiday doodle started back in July. Mr. Lopez met with his team of four artists, who include a recent Rhode Island School of Design graduate and children's book illustrator. They batted around a few ideas, then decided the illustrations of celebrations should focus on food, dance, architecture and textile.

Mr. Lopez divvied up the 17 scenes among his staff, personally taking responsibility for six. As the team met over the following months to discuss regular doodles, artists would give updates on the status of their holiday sketches. Jennifer Hom, who was assigned Italy, drew Venetian gondolas on the wipe board, with the curve of a bridge feeding into a "G."

In mid-December, the doodle team met one morning in a conference room on campus here to weigh in on the illustrations. Some were just being conceived; others were well in progress. A red drawing of three Indian women dancing, with henna accents framing the scene, was projected from a computer onto a wall. Mr. Lopez shared a concept for southern Africa, imagining a solitary man in tribal dress and sandals. "I wanted to keep the shape of the actual body very geometric."

"It's odd for it to be a single person," another artist said.

"Maybe it should be a family. That's more holiday-like," Mr. Lopez agreed.

"If they're really a family, there needs to be a kid playing Game Boy," someone called out.

As the meeting ended, Mr. Lopez was rushed but jocular. His team had about 100 more hours of work to devote to the project—not including the hours Google programmers would put into writing the code and building the interactive infrastructure. But he predicted they might wrap it up even a week before Christmas. "I think we're in good shape," he said.

But last week, some at Google raised concern about how much time people spend on their computer Christmas Day. Many people would miss the completed doodle, they worried.

"I thought, 'Is my mom going to be available to play this on Christmas Day?' " says Mr. Lopez. "The answer is, no, she'll be making me food!" So the team worked past Wednesday afternoon to re-engineer the next day's doodle.

Read more: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704774604576035500936272100.html#ixzz18wbQH5zF