Posts by Michel Wester

Michel Wester is the owner of the Dutch website WebSonic.nl, started in 2004. WebSonic mainly focuses on news about Google, Twitter, and Facebook. Next to the news the site has a lot of tips for PC users and starting web developers. -- More articles and bio from Michel Wester
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St. Patrick’s Day 2013 celebrated with animated Google Doodle

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This Sunday St. Patrick’s Day is celebrated in different countries including the UK and Canada, Australia, and the United States. Like in previous years Google will celebrate this day with a special doodle and this year for the first time Google will celebrate Saint Patrick’s Day with a simple animated doodle. In the logo you can see five kids, one boy and four girls who are dancing and jumping.

You cannot do anything with the doodle, it’s just the animation on the homepage of the search engine. Google is celebrating St. Patrick’s Day since 2000 which an exception in 2003 when no doodle was placed. In 2009 the winner of the Doodle 4 Google was used and in 2011 there were two doodles, the first logo celebrating the day was later replaced and reused in 2012. Also YouTube celebrated St. Patrick’s Day one time, this was in 2009 and Orkut celebrated the day in 2010. All the doodles used in the previous years by Google can be seen here.

A video of the doodle you can expect tomorrow below.

Douglas Adams Google Doodle, Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

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A new animated doodle globally on the homepage from Google to celebrate the birthday of Douglas Adams, a well-known British writer, humorist and dramatist. Douglas is best known the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy which started on BBC radio in 1978. The first episode aired in 1978 on BBC Radio 4. The series originally consisted of six episodes and quickly managed to gather a huge fan base which lead that the series was repeated on the radio twice in 1978. In 1980, new episodes were made ​​and there was a Christmas special bringing the number of episodes at twelve.

Between 1979 and 1984, the story was released in a quite extended and edited version as a book series. In total there are five published books. The books are often described as a trilogy in five parts. This is because later, after the third book had been published, two additional books were published. Because of the popularity of the series on the radio a television series was created consisting of six episodes. The series was directed by Alan J. W. Bell and the first episode was aired in January 1981. There would come a second season but because of an argument  between Douglas Adams and the BBC this second season was never produced. (more…)

Miriam Makeba Google logo, South African singer best known for Pata Pata

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Maybe you know the song Pata Pata and if not you probably will recognize the song when you hear it, it was a worldwide hit in 1967 after it was wrote ten years earlier. The singer of the song was the South African Miriam Makeba who Google honours globally on Monday with a static logo. Miriam Makeba, also called Mama Africa  and a civil rights activist was born on March 4, 1932 in Johannesburg and would have turned 81 years on Monday. Her mother was a Swazi sangoma and her father was a Xhosa. The Xhosa are a people living in south-east South Africa, Nelson Mandela is the most famous Xhosa.

When Miriam Makeba was just eighteen days old her mother was arrested for selling Umqombothi, an African homemade beer. She received a sentence of six months and so Miriam  lived her first six months in jail. Her father died when she was only six years old. She started early with singing, Makeba joined the choir of the Kilmerton Training Institute in Pretoria where she studied for eight years. At the age of seventeen she gave birth to her first child, Bongi Makeba, a baby girl. Unfortunately shortly afterwards she was diagnosed with breast cancer and the father of the child, James Kubay left her and their daughter soon after.
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Do The Harlem Shake on YouTube – Easter Egg

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YouTube has a new fun Easter Egg inspired by the poplar internet meme The Harlem Shake. As you might know the Harlem Shake is very popular at the moment with thousands of videos on YouTube with even videos from Google, Facebook, Microsoft and Intel. The Easter Egg on YouTube works pretty much the same with instead of dancing people dancing elements on the site.

“The Harlem Shake is an Internet meme in the form of a video of various groups of people performing a comedy sketch accompanied by a short excerpt from the song “Harlem Shake”. As a meme, the video was replicated by many people, using the same concept, and this rapidly led to it becoming viral in early February 2013, with thousands of “Harlem Shake” videos being made and uploaded to YouTube every day at the height of its popularity.”

You try this yourself by typing ‘Do The Harlem Shake’ in the search field on YouTube (it doesn’t work on Google) or click here. At first the  YouTube logo starts dancing alone  with the song Harlem Shake by musician Baauer in the background. After 15 seconds ‘the cut’ takes place, the beat kicks in and all elements including images, titles, descriptions and buttons are dancing. You can stop the Easter Egg at anytime with the pause button next to the searchfield on the left.

 

Nicolaus Copernicus Google Doodle (Animated)

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Lately Google is posting more and more animated and interactive doodles for all sort of events. Last week you could see a doodle to celebrate the birthday of George Ferris combined with Valentines Day and last Friday Google posted briefly a doodle because of the passing Asteroid 2012 DA14. This logo was taken offline after a few hours because of the meteor that hit Russia.

The latest animated doodle is to honour Nicolaus Copernicus, a Renaissance mathematician and astronomer who formulated a comprehensive heliocentric model which placed the Sun, rather than the Earth, at the center of the universe. The astronomical model is used in the logo by Google with the sun in the middle and several planets including Earth and the Moon turning around the sun. (more…)

Google Logo Asteroid 2012 DA14 Pulled Because Of Russian Meteor

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Today Google placed a animated doodle on several homepages of the search engine because of the Asteroid 2012 DA14 that will pass Earth in less than one hour (19:25 UTC). 2012 DA14 is a near-Earth asteroid with an estimated diameter of 50 meters that was discovered on February 23, 2012. Luckily we have nothing to fear tonight because the asteroid will pass at 27,700 km from Earth. In the animated version from Google the second letter ‘G’ is suddenly jumping aside because of the falling Asteroid 2012 DA14.

But were we have nothing to fear tonight people in Chelyabinsk in Russia this morning were not so lucky. They were surprised by a meteorite which caused a big explosion. More than thousand people were injured by flying glass because of the explosion. After putting the doodle live Google pulled the logo a few hours later, I can not say for certain yet but probably this is because of the Russian Meteor.

Update

Google responded to ABC News (via Search Engine Land) with the following statement:

“Out of respect for those injured in the extraordinary meteor shower in Russia earlier today, we have removed today’s doodle from the Google homepage,” a Google spokesperson told ABC News. “The doodle was created to mark Asteroid 2012 DA14 passing Earth.”

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George Ferris Google Logo – Spinning Ferris Wheels

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In 2010 Google combined Valentines Day with the Winter Olympic Games on the homepage and this year Google is doing this again but this time the doodle honours George Ferris. George Ferris created the original Ferris Wheel for the 1893 Chicago World’s Columbian Exposition. He was an American engineer born February 14, 1859 in Galesburg, Illinois.

The Ferris Wheel he  created had 36 cars, each fitted with 40 revolving chairs and able to accommodate up to 60 people, giving a total capacity of 2,160. When the fair opened, it carried some 38,000 passengers daily, taking 20 minutes to complete two revolutions, the first involving six stops to allow passengers to exit and enter and the second a nine-minute non-stop rotation, for which the ticket holder paid 50 cents. It carried 2.5 million passengers before it was finally demolished in 1906. (more…)

YouTube Announces Redesign For Channels

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Recently I made a plea here that often companies forget to style their own channel on YouTube because they forget that users actually (can) visit these. But if you are planning to redesign your channel you might want to hold off for now. This is because YouTube announced that there is a redesign coming for the channels that’s more integrated with the new interface introduced last December.

When the new interface was introduced YouTube also introduced the Guide, a new feature at the top left of the website which is always there on every page. The Guide consist of subscriptions and parts like ‘Watch later’, ‘Watch History’, and ‘Playlists’. As of this moment the Guide is not integrated with the channels, after opening a channel the Guide at the left is gone. When someone clicks on a channel from the guide he will see the channel in a plain feed view and not the branded version. The upcoming redesign will fix this so users see the designed version. (more…)

Play the Snake Google Logo made for Chinese New Year (Tahun Baru Imlek, Imlek)

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Google made another great logo that can be seen today on several local homepages of the search engine like Google Taiwan and Google Thailand. Because tomorrow the Chinese New Year is celebrated and 2013 is the year of the snake Google decided to use the classic game Snake and put it on the homepage for users to play with.

Chinese New Year is the most important of the traditional Chinese holidays. In China, it is also known as the Spring Festival, the literal translation of the modern Chinese name. Chinese New Year celebrations traditionally ran from Chinese New Year’s Day itself, the first day of the first month of the Chinese calendar, to the Lantern Festival on the 15th day of the first month, making the festival the longest in the Chinese calendar. You can read more about the celebration of the holiday here on Wikipedia. Snake is a classic video game, the first PC version of Snake was introduced in 1978. Soon after versions for the Commodore PET and Apple II computers followed.
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New Year’s Day 2013 Google Logo

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Good Morning and Happy New Year everyone!

Today on the homepage of Google, like every year on the first since 1999, a doodle to start the new year that lies before us. The logo that you see today is following up the party logo that was placed yesterday for New Year’s Eve. In the logo from yesterday Google highlighted a few logos made in 2012 by putting them all in a living room.

I’ve made a  graphic to highlight all the logos used in the doodle yesterday. For example at the right you can see the Star Trek Enterprise referring to the interactive doodle placed early September. Another logo used is the one for Earth Day from April last year and at the bottom right you can see the synthesizer invented by Robert Moog (also in the top 10 doodles of 2012).

All names used in the doodle combined it makes a really special and interesting party. (more…)

Top 10 Google Doodles 2012

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This year Google made a lot of doodles who were placed globally or just on local homepages of the search engine. In total Google made more than 300 doodles and among these they are some really beautiful, funny and original creations. Below a top 10 of the best doodles the Doodler team created this year. (more…)

All Google Easter Eggs from 2012

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For some years now engineers from Google have been hiding Easter eggs in several products, but until this year there were not a lot. We are currently looking at some of them on our Google+ Page (find the overview here). It really kicked off last year with the ‘Let it snow’ Easter egg, which unfortunately isn’t working anymore, and later ‘Do a barrel roll’, this one is still working at the moment. This year Google has hidden many Easter Eggs in the search engine and some other products , below is the collection of all the Easter eggs from Google from this year. If you have any other Easter eggs that I overlooked please let me know in the comments or on Twitter or Google+! (more…)

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