Googlified

Google Hungary has a special logo on their home page to honor musician Béla Bartók.

Béla Viktor János Bartók was a Hungarian composer, pianist and collector of folk music. He is considered one of the greatest composers of the 20th century and was also one of the founders of the field of ethnomusicology, through his analytical study and ethnography of folk music. [Wikipedia]

This is the tenth doodle this month, including the Orkut logo for Easter I posted yesterday.

UPDATE: Turns out that there’s another doodle today, on Google Japan, celebrating the invention parametron by Dr. Eiichi Goto at the University of Tokyo in 1954. [via Google Blogoscoped]

A parametron is essentially a resonant circuit with a nonlinear reactive element which oscillates at half the driving frequency. The oscillation can be made to represent a binary digit by the choice between two stationary phases pi radians apart. [USPTO]

So this would be the 11th doodle this month, and sorry guys, I think I just created a rip in the space-time continuum by linking to a Google Blogoscoped post that has a link to this blog. :)

[via the Google Blogoscoped forum]

Orkut had the above logo on its site yesterday to celebrate Easter.

The above doodle appeared on the Farsi version of Google yesterday to celebrate Norouz, or the Persian New Year.

Nowruz marks the first day of spring and the beginning of the Iranian year as well as the beginning of the Bahá’í year. It is celebrated on the day of the astronomical vernal equinox (start of spring in northern hemisphere), which usually occurs on the March 21 or the previous/following day depending on where it is observed. [Wikipedia]

As stated above, it was the first day of Spring yesterday, and Google celebrated the day with another logo on other Google home pages worldwide. It took me two minutes to noticed there’s something weird on the second “g” on the logo, and another 3 seconds to realized that those are lady bugs. Oh well.

Another holiday celebrated on the first day of Spring is the Mother’s Day of Bahrain, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Oman, Lebanon, Palestine, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Syria, United Arab Emirates, and Yemen, [Wikipedia] which appears on a number of Google home pages.

[thanks to Pascal and Tom]

Google Spain celebrates Valencian holiday Fallas today.

Falles (in Valencian) or Fallas (in Spanish) are a Valencian tradition which celebrates Saint Joseph’s Day in Valencia, Spain. [Wikipedia]

Anyone notice that Google’s been using confetti quite intensely in recent holiday logos?

[thanks to Pedro B. and Pascal]

Today’s St. Patrick’s Day and Google’s celebrating it just like every other years since the company was found (except 1999 and 2003).

Saint Patrick’s Day, is an annual feast day which celebrates Saint Patrick, one of the patron saints of Ireland, and is generally celebrated on March 17. The day is the national holiday of Ireland. [Wikipedia]

Friendly reminder: Don’t forget to wear green today! :)

A few weeks ago Google announced the U.S. edition of Doodle4Google, and now Google’s running another one in Turkey. I am not sure about the details about the contest, but I know that the prize includes a 24-inch Apple iMac.

UPDATE: Deli Profesör in the comment and Pascal from GoogleWatchBlog said that the top 30 winners receives a certificate, and that the top 10 also gets a lava lamp. The overall winner will get an iMac and have his/her winning logo displayed on Google Turkey’s homepage on April 23rd, Children’s Day in Turkey. Thanks. :)

Google today celebrates the birthday of Alexander Graham Bell (born 1847), the inventor of the telephone (though with many disputes).

Alexander Graham Bell was an eminent scientist, inventor and innovator, most often associated with the invention of the telephone. […] In reflection, Bell considered his most famous invention an intrusion on his real work as a scientist and refused to have a telephone in his study.Upon Bell’s death, all telephones throughout the United States “stilled their ringing for a silent minute in tribute to the man whose yearning to communicate made them possible.” [Wikipedia]

[thanks to Pascal]

Google not only celebrated St. David’s Day yesterday, but also ran two more logos to celebrate the March 1st Movement (on Google’s South Korea homepage) and Baba Marta ( on Google’s Bulgaria, Greek, Moldova, and Romania homepages).

The March First Movement, or the Samil Movement, was one of the earliest displays of Korean independence movements during the Japanese occupation of Korea. [Wikipedia]

The name of the holiday is Baba Marta, a Bulgarian tradition related to welcoming the upcoming spring. […] Romanians also have a similar but not identical holiday on March 1, called “Mărţişor“. [Wikipedia]

Today, March 2nd, is the 62nd day this year’s calendar, and we have “304 days remaining until the end of the year.” [Wikipedia] Three weeks to go until Spring Break for me. Whoo-ya!

[thanks to Tom and Pascal]

Another day, another doodle. Today Google UK celebrates St. David’s Day on their homepage with a special logo, like previous years.

Saint David’s Day is the feast day of Saint David, the patron saint of Wales, and falls on 1 March each year. […] Many Welsh people wear one or both of the national emblems of Wales on their lapel to celebrate St. David: the daffodil or the leek on this day. [Wikipedia]

[thanks to Christian, once again]

Woot! Today’s February 29th, the ultra-special, once-every-four-year Leap Day.

February 29 is a date that occurs only every four years, and is called leap day. This day is added to the calendar in leap years as a corrective measure, because the earth does not orbit around the sun in precisely 365.000 days. [Wikipedia]

A similar logo was drawn in 2004 to celebrate Leap Day.

Both logos are just, one word - weird.

[thanks Christian]

Google is all out today to celebrate Valentine’s Day - the special holiday for your special someone.

Valentine’s Day or Saint Valentine’s Day is a holiday celebrated on February 14. In North America and Europe, it is the traditional day on which lovers express their love for each other by sending Valentine’s cards, presenting flowers, or offering confectionery. [Wikipedia]

Other than the logo shown above, Google also changed Google Docs’ theme to pink, matching the holiday’s color, and that the little person in Google Maps is now standing on a heart-shaped thing instead of the green, bubble-shaped thing - too bad, still alone.

And the YouTube logo.

I still prefer to call it Singles Awareness Day, or perhaps, even simpler, February 14th or  the 45th day of the year. :)

I have been saying that Google should hold a Doodle4Google contest in the U.S. since the Jurassic age, and now, haha, there’s finally one. :)

Doodle 4 Google gives U.S. students in grades K-12 the opportunity to design a doodle for the Google homepage. Students will be asked to draw a doodle that best represents the theme “What if…?”

Like previous Doodle4Google contests, winner of this competition will have his/her logo on the Google homepage for one day (in the U.S.). Also, the winner’s school will “receive a $10,000 college scholarship and a technology grant for his or her school.” (Question: What’s the arrangement if the student is home schooled?)

You can find out more about the contest on the Doodle4Google website here.