geekosystem

This might just be for the film geeks out there, but today would have been Saul Bass' 93rd birthday. To celebrate, Google made this video Doodle of their logo in the style of some of Bass' most iconic work. I've decided to celebrate that celebration by posting clips of the work Google is celebrating. Who's Saul Bass? Here, I'll show you.

Today is Carl Sagan's birthday, which, if there were any justice in the world, would be celebrated in the fashion we've become accustomed to for nerds of note -- with a Google Doodle commemorating the day that one of the world's best and brightest science celebrities was expelled from the womb. As there is clearly no justice in the world, though, Sagan's birthday was overlooked by Google's legions of doodlers, who were no doubt exhausted by celebrating Bram Stoker's big 165 yesterday. I don't think we need to tell you why this is clearly unacceptable.

Today marks the beginning of the 2012 London Olympics, and naturally the Internet giant Google honored the event with its very own Google Doodle, as is par for the course for just about any day that is slightly noteworthy. The Doodle is cute, using cartoon characters to represent the usual colors of the Google letters, while they're holding most of the letters outright instead of contorting their bodies to mimic the shape of them. However, depending on how embedded you are in Internet or obscure video game culture, you may feel like there's an Easter egg in the Doodle.

To celebrate the 70th birthday of Bob Moog, inventor of the Moog synthesizer, Google has put a fully functional version of the Minimoog model D along with a four-track recorder as a Doodle. This is definitely one of the more complex Doodles we've seen, but here's some advice to get you started.

There's a lot of charm in today's animated Google Doodle for Valentine's Day. First and foremost it looks great, but there's some more subtle things to like about it. For one thing, it's the first time I've seen Google suggest that there are things you can't do with Google -- search as he might, the protagonist of the video cannot find the gift to win the heart of his lady love. Secondly, the whole thrust of the video is that there is no way to "win" someone's heart at all, and that the best connections are made when people act like themselves and share interests. Lastly, the ending montage of happy couples has a gay wedding. Way to go, Google; you really made me feel the love.

The folks over at Google are becoming ever more ambitious with their famous Google doodles. Today's honors the birthday of Les Paul, often credited as the father of the solid body electric guitar. Paul, who would have been 97 this year, has his birthday marked with a fully-strummable Google logo. Paul's belief that artists would want an instrument like an electric guitar proved remarkably prescient and helped kick-off a revolution in music. In addition to his prowess as an inventor and technical tinkerer, Paul pushed forward some of the styles of playing that would later become standards of rock 'n roll. Google's homage to Paul is not only playable, but recordable as well. Click the little button, play your kickin' jam, and Google will play it back and provide you with a sharable link. If you manage to pull off any face-melting solos, drop them off in our comments section.

If venturing to Google today, one will find a Google Doodle comprised of portholes looking out at gently bobbing waves, celebrating the birthday of Jules Verne, author of noted works Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, A Journey to the Center of the Earth, and Around the World in Eighty Days. Pretty Doodle? Of course--but see that lever to the right of the ocean view? It's manipulatable with a mouse, and allows one to waste away their work hours on a Google Doodle undersea voyage. Be sure not to let go of the lever, or else it'll automatically revert back to the middle and you may not be attacked by the giant squid lurking in the Doodle's depths.

UPDATE: If you're on a newish MacBook and using Chrome as your browser, you can pick up your laptop and move it around, controlling the lever on the Doodle.

(via Google)

If you head to Google's homepage this morning, you may find yourself distracted from your query by the trippy Google logo, which is made of balls that fly away and into the foreground as your mouse approaches. Like Google's playable Pac-Man doodle that had the web awhirl in May, this one is also coded in HTML5, which has led Pocket Lint to speculate -- "rather wildly," as New Scientist Britishly puts it -- that "maybe Google has some big web announcement lined up for its 8 September event in San Francisco and the doodle holds a clue?"