Google celebrates "Hallwoeen" 31st October

Halloween is celebrated every year on October 31 in a number of countries around the world. And like last year, Google is celebrating the event with an interactive doodle.

 The doodle on the Google homepage features a witch flipping through the pages of a book which seems to include information about witchcraft. As you press the play button, the witch appears and starts practicing witchery. In this doodle, there are four different items, including an apple, bone, bottle and skull, available to the witch for performing witchery.

The witch needs two items to do witchery and cast an evil spell. She lets you choose those items and produce spooky results. To add to the atmosphere there is also an eerie sound playing in the background.

Halloween is also called All Hallows' Eve. As it falls on the eve of All Saints' Day, it has a religious significance for some Christians otherwise it is nowadays observed largely as a secular celebration.

Halloween has its origins in the ancient Celtic festival known as Samhain (pronounced "sah-win"). It is a celebration of the end of the harvest season in Gaelic culture. Samhain was a time used by the ancient pagans to take stock of supplies and prepare for winter. The ancient Gaels believed that on October 31, the boundaries between the worlds of the living and the dead overlapped and the deceased would come back to life and cause havoc such as sickness or damaged crops.

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Google Doodle Parachute Birthday..!!

It’s the 216th anniversary of the first parachute jump and Google is celebrating the vent with an innovative, interactive doodle.

Google Doodles are created to celebrate some important event or for the celebration of an achievement. The doodles which are often interactive add an element of fun and thrill to the otherwise colourfully static Google logo.

Today’s doodle, in honour of Andre-Jacques Garnerin highlights his achievement. Andre-Jacques Garnerin invented the frameless parachute and successfully completed his jump on October 22, 1797 at Parc Monceau, Paris. He made his first jump using a silk parachute which was approximately 7 m in diameter. The silk parachute was shaped like an umbrella and initially resembled a closed umbrella when he began his ascent. The closed umbrella had a pole running down its centre and a rope running through a tube in the pole, which connected it to the balloon.  Garnerin rode in a basket attached to the bottom of the parachute. On reaching the desired height, Garnerin severed the rope that connected his parachute to the balloon. He had an uneventful descent.

More than his first parachute jump, Garnerin’s decision to let a female accompany him on one of the flights created much sensation. While initially he was not granted permission for the same, the decision was overruled on the basis that "there was no more scandal in seeing two people of different sexes ascend in a balloon than it is to see them jump into a carriage."

Andre-Jacques Garnerin was appointed as the Official Aeronaut of France. His death was traqgic and untimely. Garnerin was hit by a beam while making a balloon at one of his construction sites in Paris on 18 August 1823.

Today’s Doodle highlights the achievement of this adventurer. You can play the doodle and by clicking the balloon or pressing the right/left keyboard arrow keys, change the direction and help Garnerin land safely at different locations.

To play or To collect Candy : Click here

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15th birthday Google celebrates with pinata doodle..!!

Google is celebrating its 15th birthday with a pinata doodle appearing on its home page.

Users hit a swinging piñata with a stick using the space bar to release sweets and earn points.

The internet search company also announced on its birthday that it had updated its search algorithm to make it more responsive to user requests.

The overhaul came as part of an update called Hummingbird that Google has gradually rolled out in the past month without disclosing the modifications.

The changes could have a major impact on traffic to websites. Hummingbird represents the most dramatic alteration to Google's search engine since it revised the way it indexes websites three years ago as part of a redesign called Caffeine, according to Amit Singhal, a senior vice-president for the company. He estimates that the redesign will affect the analysis of about 90%of the search requests that Google gets.

Any reshuffling of Google's search rankings can have sweeping ramifications because they steer so much of the internet's traffic. Google fields about two out of every three search requests in the US and handles an even larger volume in some parts of Europe. The changes could also drive up the price of Google ads tied to search requests if websites whose rankings are demoted under the new system feel they have to buy the marketing messages to attract traffic.

The search ads and other commercial pitches related to web content account for most of Google's revenue, which is expected to approach $60bn this year.

Google disclosed the existence of the new search formula on Thursday at an event held in the Menlo Park, California, garage where Larry Page and fellow co-founder Sergey Brin started the company 15 years ago.

Google celebrates its birthday on 27 September each year, even though the company was incorporated a few weeks earlier. The company is now based in Mountain View, California, at a sprawling complex located about seven miles from the 1,900-square-foot home where Page and Brin paid $1,700 per month to rent the garage and a bedroom. The co-founders' landlord was Susan Wojcicki, who is now a Google executive and Brin's sister-in-law.

Wojcicki sold the home to Google in 2006 and it is now maintained as a monument to the company's humble beginnings.

Google's renovations to its search engine haven't triggered widespread complaints from other websites yet, suggesting that the revisions haven't resulted in a radical reshuffling in how websites rank in the recommendations. The Caffeine update spurred a loud outcry because it explicitly sought to weed out websites that tried to trick Google's search engine into believing their content was related to common search requests. After Caffeine kicked in, hundreds of websites that consistently won a coveted spot near the top of Google's search results had been relegated to the back pages or exiled completely.

Hummingbird is primarily aimed at giving Google's search engine a better grasp at understanding concepts instead of mere words, Singhal said.

The change needed to be done, Singhal said, because people have become so reliant on Google that they now routinely enter lengthy questions into the search box instead of just a few words related to specific topics.

With the advent of smartphones and Google's voice-recognition technology, people also are increasingly submitting search requests in sequences of spoken sentences that resemble an ongoing conversation. That trend also factored into Google's decision to hatch Hummingbird.

Just as Page and Brin set out to do when they started Google in a garage, "we want to keep getting better at helping you make the most of your life," Singhal said

To play or To collect Candy : Click here

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