Android 404 with Cthulhu

Android seems fully in control of this situation.

Please be patient! We are experiencing a HUGE doughnut break

.

Android encounters the 404 Tentacle Horror

Now this… well, I am more concerned.

It looks like Android has quite an unruly creature to contend with. For the very, very curious, more about the mysterious “mythos” of the tentacles may be found here: Cthulhu, zombies and the Centers For Disease Control.

Disclaimer: I am solely responsible for the content of that link, which, in the interest of full disclosure, leads to the Quora website.

Do not be afraid.

Legends of Logo Design

Murky Origins: An unoriginal work of satire about the origins of the Google Chrome Logo

The Google Chrome browser logo recently changed (March 2011). This set at least one inquiring mind (mine) to ruminating:

Hmmm… I wonder what the story behind the Chrome browser logo REALLY is?

Theory 1

Logo comparison

The ThinkFree company’s ThinkFree Office 3 logo is a strong contender.

ThinkFree management was even rumored to be aggrieved over the flagrant misappropriation of their original design work. (I could find no substantiating evidence of such sentiments.)

Exhibit A

Consider this side-by-side comparison on the left. The similarity is striking.

Exhibit B

The ThinkFree Office 3 set up wizard offers an opportunity for closer inspection. Note that the logo is depicted here without the charcoal bezel shown in Exhibit A, increasing the resemblance to that other distinctive four-colored orb.

ThinkFree Office Logo

Theory 2

Let us refer to this theory as The Pokemon Possibility.

It is actually a hybrid sort of affair, combining elements of the real world, that Simon toy, with the animated sensation, Pokemon*.

Theory Two: The Basic Equation

*I don’t feel comfortable referring to Pokemon as a “virtual world”. Marvelous as it is, it isn’t quite WoW or Second Life.

Theory 3

Let us refer to this theory as The Multi-source Mashup.

Once again, observe the combination of the physical world with the bona fide virtual world. Physical world representation is provided by both the Simon game thing (present as a term of the equation in Theory 2) and a traditional web camera. The virtual world is represented by the round orb of the Firefox logo, and the tangible presence of Google in its most general case, namely, the corporate logo.

Combining the real and virtual worlds

Pokemon has not dropped out of the equation, not by any means. The Pokeball has equal weighting with Simon, as both contribute strongly to the embedded orb within the Chrome design.

Theory 3, Lemma

The lemma to Theory 3 is a multi-source mashup sans Google itself. It contains unknown quantities which will be, of necessity**, left to the reader to investigate.

Mystery lemma

** Necessity is motivated by my inability to figure it out.

Theory 4

Theory 4 is almost certainly the most controversial of all, almost too unsettling for any rational mind to contemplate.

Could the progenitor be…. Windows Vista?

Untitled: Discretion is the better part of valor

Conclusion

No definitive results were obvious.  The ThinkFree design resemblance is the most suggestive in my opinion.

More conjecture is available from this pleasant 2008 era post The Inspiration Behind The Logo Design of Google Chrome from the highly acclaimed Digital Inspiration tech a la carte blog, founded by Amit Agarwal.

Google imagery and logos

Early days

Burning Man Google logo

One of the earlier Google logos was motivated by the annual Burning Man festival. This logo was attributed to Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin.

According to Google,

Google and the revised logo was intended as a comical message to Google users that the founders were “out of office.”  While the first doodle was relatively simple, the idea of decorating the company logo to celebrate notable events was well received by users.

Spring 2008 Doodle

Doodles

These modified versions of the Google logo were called Google doodles.

Google doodles that appeared in the years that followed included a celebration of the arrival of Spring and a Mars Rover landing commemorative image, with two rather cute little blue-ish green aliens sitting on the second “g” of Google.

Google Doodle commemorates the Mars Rover landing

How many doodles has Google done over the years?

The doodle team has created over 300 doodles for Google.com in the United States and over 700 have appeared on international domains.

Google in Braille

Where can I see all the Google doodles that have been done over the years?

All doodles can be found on the Google logos page.

How I can take part?

I love Google and have designed my own doodle. Where can I send my fan logo?  How can Google users and the public tell Google about ideas for future doodles?

You can send your fan logos and requests for doodles to proposals@google.com.

What’s your process for selecting doodles?

Generally, we look for non-denominational doodles that are fun and quirky from a variety of categories, such as those that celebrate the lives of artists and inventors.

Remembering architect Walter Gropius

A rather special, interactive Google doodle was introduced this year, in honor of the 183rd birthday of Jules Verne. It ran for one day last month. The Trend Hunter provided very thorough coverage, for those who are curious.

Doodle 4 Google

Doodle4Google is a yearly contest held for children up to 18 years of age. The deadline for this year’s contest submissions was March 1, 2011. Winners have not yet been announced. More information about the contest requirements and past winners is available on the Doodle4Google history page.

Google Deluxe with Trademark

Google Logo in high resolution with trademark

This is simply Google Fangrrrl fodder. An image of the logo in all it’s trademarked glory.

Fast Flip in the Wild

Finally, I present a Google Labs project observed in the wild!

Location was the ReadWriteWeb’s technical section, called ReadWrite Hack. Subject matter was the intriguing still new start-up company, FluidDB, and their Flimp tool for importing JSON, YAML or CSV data sources into FluidDB. FluidDB, the product, is a new type of database, which ReadWriteWeb says that FluidDB says is a

hosted database with the heart of a wiki

For the very very curious, Flimp is an acronym for FLuiddb IMPorter. I foresee a critical dependency on case sensitivity in this company’s future.

Introducing Fast Flip

Note the pleasing yellow smiley face in the last letter “p”. Fast Flip has been extant for some time, possibly as long as a year. I hadn’t noted it anywhere outside of the Google domain or Google product pages until now.

Google Fast Flip Logo

I thought that Fast Flip was merely the Google version of a slide sharing application. I was incorrect. Apparently there is far more functionality built in, as described by Google:

My Fast Flip Info

Fast Flip personalizes results based on many different signals. These include articles that you have clicked on, liked, or shared. Below you will find a summary of the preferences that Fast Flip has learned for you.

Since this is my first time using Fast Flip, the above was followed by this notification-of-sorts:

Sorry, no preferences have been learned for you yet. Use FastFlip some more and check back here soon!

Emphasis is mine.

Compare one to the other. I am uncertain if the project is named “Fast Flip” or “FastFlip”, given the alternative spellings used by Google, and on the same page. However, there were two instances of “Fast Flip”, actually three if I were to include the meta-data for the page, so I’m inclined to believe that “FastFlip” is a typographical error. Such is allowable. After all, Fast Flip is a Labs project, not a full-fledged Google Product!

Much more information about Google Fast Flip can be obtained from the official Google source, which is not a blogspot Blog this time. Instead, Google chose to use one of their Python answer pages for About Google FastFlip.