Today, on most of Google's home pages you will find a logo for Alexander Calder's birthday. But did you know Google tried posting the logo last year and failed? In fact, they also posted the logo yesterday (which was today) in Australia and pulled it down for a couple hours and replaced it.
Here is a picture of the Google logo:
But the logo is actually animated and works like a typical mobile. You can twirl it, spin it and so on with your mouse and the logo will smoothly move like a mobile above a baby's crib.
Jered Wierzbicki, Google Software Engineer said this "is Google’s first doodle made entirely using HTML5 canvas, so you need to use a modern browser to interact with it. It runs a physics simulation on the mobile’s geometry, and then does realtime 3D rendering with vector graphics. Only recently have browsers advanced to the point where this is possible." In addition, it has accelerometer features, if your computer and browser supports it.
That being said, it was too ahead of it's time. Last year they tried it and pulled it.
Websonic.nl posted last year at the Google Blogoscoped Forums pictures of the logo and then noticed it went missing. He said, "I just emailed with Google. They say the logo was removed early due to technical challenges. They also said that maybe the logo will be placed again next year."
Second try and Google made it live, but they almost failed again. The logo went offline for a few hours on Google Australia and locations around there while Google put it back up.
Alexander Calder was born 113 years ago today and died on November 11, 1976 in New York at the age of 78. He was an American sculptor and artist most famous for inventing mobile sculptures.
Here is a video of the logo in action, note if you mouse over it for a while, it will let you click on it.
Forum discussion at Google Blogoscoped Forums, Google Web Search Help.
