doodles

At long last, Google's "doodles" are making their way to the Google Search for iPhone app. The topical, witty, and often whimsical takes on Google's logo appear globally and in selected countries to honor holidays and other historically important dates.

There isn't much official news from Google yet. CNET requested more information from Google after we noticed an update to the iTunes app store and updated the app on an iPhone 4.

In the meantime, you can peruse Google's doodles in reverse chronological order here.

I had barely woken this morning when I discovered that someone had spilled last night's dessert all over my MacBook.

Looking a little more closely (it helped to open the eyes a little after a night on the petite sirah), I discovered that it was the Google logo that had been adorned with an ice cream sundae.

Rolling over in my bed--and then rolling over the logo--I discovered that Google was celebrating the 119th anniversary of the first documented ice cream sundae.

Somehow, this didn't seem the most obvious thing to be celebrating, though Google seems to believe … Read more

I worry that our whole world is being systematically systematized.

The more our youngest and brightest minds offer their working souls to the Facebooks and Twitters of this firmament, the more they are asked to define every single human event and emotion by digits.

And yet I still found myself sensing a momentary twitch of the single gray hair between my eyebrows when I heard that Google had been awarded a patent for its doodles.

I suppose there will be some who will say: "But, of course! Google's doodles are unique works of art! Van Gogh would have … Read more

Links from Wednesday's episode of Loaded:

Doodle-4-Google gets the search giant into more privacy trouble because of the possibility of storing children's Social Security numbers

iPad 2 might get a launch date as early as next week

Amazon Prime customers get Instant Streaming video with over 5,000 titles

China launches an official government search engine with Panguso

Mint.com gets new "Get Out of Debt" tools

Yahoo! Video gets rid of user-generated content, so download your uploads before March 14th

I fancy that the only fun place to work at Google these days is the Doodle Department.

And today the members of this elite crew have created an homage to Jules Verne, whose 183rd birthday it would have been today, had he not, well, died in 1905.

Today's doodle has its own delightful Verneacular. You can toggle a little joystick thingy up and down, as you sink toward 20,000 leagues under the sea or rise from it.

Verne actually became a bit of a miseryguts after his nephew, who may not have been all there and ended up … Read more

Google has unveiled a new doodle on its home page today to serve up some interactive Christmas cheer.

Topping the company's home page for the next two-and-a-half days, the new doodle is more ambitious and challenging than past holiday doodles. Most of the Christmas doodles that have graced the site's home page over the past 12 years have been relatively simpler designs that tweaked the familiar Google logo. But the new doodle displays a collection of festive scenes created to suggest that logo in a rather abstract fashion.

At first glance, you may not see the Google logo … Read more

Links from Friday's episode of Loaded:

Amazon invests in Living Social while rumors persist that Google wants to purchase Groupon

eBay purchases local shopping site Milo.com

Google Earth Engine launches with 25 years of archived satellite imagery

Google Doodles are now available on mobile searches

A new version of Rock Band is out for iPad and iPhone

A Pennsylvania couple is awarded $1 in a trespassing case against Google

The Wi-Fi Baby 3G will help you monitor your little ones--and big ones--while you're away

John Lennon would have been 70 today and, one imagines, probably hosting a bed-based political chat show on YouTube.

Google, whose doodles have become increasingly quirky, decided that this was the moment to release its first-ever video doodle. It appears on its home page and when you click on it, the logo plays a delightful movie which is, naturally, also available on YouTube.

On Google's official blog, doodler Mike Dutton explained: "The old saying, 'A picture is worth a thousand words' still rings true, so I hope a moving picture will help me adequately--and simply--thank John for the … Read more

Those who design Google's little Doodles seem to be cerebral types. They try to eschew the mundane for something of a more intellectual flavor. This surely describes the latest--and one of the most charming--in the Doodle gallery.

Perhaps you might have not noted it in your calendar, but today would have been Agatha Christie's 120th birthday. The celebrated British mystery writer made little old ladies seem like the wisest people in the world when she created the Miss Marple series.

And by giving birth to Hercule Poirot, she made Belgium seem like a place that could solve every … Read more