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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Grimm’s Fairy Tales Google Logo with Little Red Cap (Little Red Riding Hood)

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On Thursday Google honours The Brothers Grimm with a little fairytale on the homepage of the search engine that you will probably know. The animated doodle is about the folk tale Little Red Riding Hood or simply Little Red Cap. The story was first published by Charles Perrault but later the Brothers Grimm made a more friendly and positive version of the tale. Main difference that in the version of Perrault in the end the young girl dies, in the version of the two brothers Little Red Cap survives and lives happily ever after :-) . The story is told by Google in 21 different tiles. (more…)

Give Your YouTube Channel Some Love, Style It!

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I come across a lot of YouTube channels from companies who have made excellent videos but have not given any thought to the way their channel looks to the rest of the world. This is something which is actually quite simple to do and makes a channel looks far more professional than with the default gray background and the ‘John Doe’ picture.

It seems as if companies not always realise that people actually visit their channels via YouTube.com or their videos embedded throughout the web. While some companies take the trouble to upload an profile picture they don’t do anything else, some don’t even have a profile picture (the John Doe one), although the options are limited you can make your own channel look good :-) . (more…)

Thanksgiving Day 2012 logo from Google

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Today only on the American homepage of Google the company placed a special doodle to celebrate Thanksgiving Day. It’s a quite large logo this time but static, last year Google placed an animated turkey on the homepage. As a visitor you could decorate the turkey (see image on the right) and share the result with friends via a link or on Google+, this was the first time Google used a doodle to promote Google+. Google kept the turkey for 48 hours on the homepage and a copy can be found on this page along with all the other logos used since 1998. (more…)

Happy Halloween! Haunted House Doodle From Google

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Happy Halloween! In several countries Google will run a neat and scary interactive doodle for Halloween on the homepage. Last year Google recorded a video outside Google’s headquarters in Mountain View for the Halloween doodle, this year it’s a Haunted House. As you can see in the video below the doodle consists of several effects, clicking on the doors of the haunted house brings up some scary monsters and in the trash can at the left there’s even a black cat. The skeleton next to the door with number 13 is also animated just like the black spider and the black bird.

A working copy but also all the doodles Google placed for Halloween since 1999 plus all the logos from YouTube and Orkut can be found here. Like said above last year Google recorded a video for Halloween and in 2010 Google made a doodle with Scooby Doo. In 2009 Google went just as far by editing the Robots.txt with some special Halloween lines next to the animated logo that year. The logo from 2008 is also special because that one had a Triforce Easter Egg in it which was later removed.

2012

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Google Adds Explanations To The Knowledge Graph

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Google added a nice little feature to the Knowledge Graph, at this moment still only available in the English versions of the search engine. As you know the search engine will show a Knowledge Graph panel at the right when this is relevant to the given search query.  The small feature was added to the ‘People also search for’ section of the panel. For example when you search for the movie ‘Gone with the wind’ Google will show information about the movie at the right with under ‘People also search for’ related queries from other users.

Now you can also see how the search queries in this section are actually connected to your own query by hovering over the thumbnail or the query, you will then see the explanation. (more…)

Winsor McCay Google Doodle: Little Nemo in Google-land

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Maybe you remember that Google earlier this year made a special doodle to honour Gideon Sundback, who invented the zipper. The doodle (video here) used the complete homepage of the search engine something Google doesn’t do very often, before that the last time Google did this was Christmas last year and another great doodle from last year taking over the complete homepage was to honour the first publication of Polish sci-fi author Stanislaw Lem. (more…)

YouTube InVideo Programming To Promote Your Own Channel

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YouTube added a new feature called InVideo Programming for all users and companies who uploaded videos to the video website.  InVideo Programming  lets you easily promote your own channel and a specific video across al your own videos to get extra subscribers and viewers. The new feature can be found by clicking own your own username at the top and then select Settings in the menu. At the left then choose InVideo Programming under Channel settings. (more…)

View Movie Trailers In Search Results Google

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Google has recently added movie trailers to the English version of the search engine. For some time now you can search for movies playing in your own area by for example doing a search like ‘Movies London’. You will then get a list of movies playing in London, behind every movie you can see the duration, the genre and the language it is in. To see more you can click on the link ‘Show more films‘ and by clicking on a title you will see when and where you can go to view the movie.

With the latest update you can also see trailers from the movies. After doing the above search you will also get a button behind every movie to see the trailer directly on the page with the search results. Clicking the button will open a light box with the video coming from YouTube en below the actors, the director and a short synopsis. At the top you can +1 the trailer and share it on G+. (more…)

Google Wallet For Web Content

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Earlier this week Google announced a new feature for pay service Google Wallet called “Google Wallet for web content“. The announcement was published on the Google Commerce blog and the Google Merchant Blog but was later pulled offline probably because someone decided that it was too early to publish.

But of course it was already to late because these articles tend to stay in for example Google Reader even if they are non-existing anymore. Even though now a few days later the blog post is still not published  in the meantime Google did launch a website for Google Wallet for web content.

The new experimental feature is a pay wall to let publishers sell individual pages of a website, for prices ranging from 25 cents to 99 cents. After a user has paid for the article with his Google Wallet account he will have unlimited access to the content, Google even provides an archive service to help users provide perpetual access, even if the original web site ceases to exist. Publishers can offer users a preview of the content so that they can get a glimpse of what they will get after they have paid, this preview is also meant for search engines. Besides this preview of the content publishers can place ads to get an ad impression even if a user doesn’t buy the content. (more…)

Easter Egg Google: Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon

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Google has placed a new Easter Egg in the search engine which is based on the game ‘Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon’. The purpose of the game is that every player has to link an actor in a maximum of six steps to Hollywood actor Kevin Bacon, known for films like Apollo 13, Wild Things, A Few Good Men, Mystic River and X-Men First Class.

The higher the number how farther away the actor is removed from Kevin Bacon, actors who worked directly with Bacon will get a Bacon number of 1. The game itself is based on the theory Six degrees of separation which states that everyone on earth through a network can be connected to each other in six different steps. With the game in Google you can check in how many steps an actor is linked to Kevin Bacon. (more…)

Google Rolling Out Knowledge Graph Carousel More Widely

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In August this year Google announced to be rolling out the Knowledge Graph to countries where English is the main language and at that moment the Knowledge Graph carousel was introduced on Google.com. Google is now rolling out the feature worldwide to all English users of the search engine.

The carousel will show additional lists and collections to a search query above the search results if this is relevant. The list and collections are used when the answer to a query cannot be shown as a single entity (person or thing). (more…)

Star Trek: The Original Series Google Doodle

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Google yesterday placed a very cool doodle because of the 46th Anniversary of Star Trek. Star Trek was created by Gene Roddenberry and the first episode was broadcasted on September 8th 1966, after that 79 episodes followed (although 80 where made) and the show retired on September 2nd 1969. If you are a big fan of The Original Series you can explore space on the homepage and boldly go where no one has gone before.

It’s a interactive doodle with Captain James Tiberius Kirk played in the show by William Shatner at the front behind the console and left to him ‘live long and prosper’ commander Spock. At the right, next to the captain you can see Lieutenant Hikaru Sulu, in the series played by George Takei who later also played in the science fiction show Heroes. I guess the guy at the right is Montgomery Scott (Beam me up, Scotty) and between Scotty and Sula must be Leonard McCoy. (more…)

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