Summer time is almost here (and many of our blog readers are already on summer break), so this post is devoted to some lighter fare from our friends at Google.
Google Recipes—This spring Google launched a new feature, Google Recipes. I stumbled across it when I was craving lemon meringue pie. I did a regular Google search for lemon meringue pie, then realized while scanning the recipes that I didn’t have a required ingredient, cream of tartar. I went back to revise my search and what did I see:
I could now filter my results: by ingredients that I did (or did not) have, by cook time and by calories. WOW! I quickly clicked the NO box next to cream of tartar and instantly I had a new list of recipes that did not require me to make a trip to the store. The best part is you don’t have to do anything. If you type search terms into the regular Google search box and it yields results including recipes, the recipe features automatically pops up on the left hand side of the results. I love it! And the lemon meringue pie made without cream of tartar? Delicious.
Google Doodles—I think most Google users are aware that occasionally the folks at Google play around with their logo. Google has named these Google doodles. The first Google doodle appeared in 1998, the year that Google was founded. But doodles were few and far between in the early years.
They are now appearing with much more regularity and are far more complex, and even interactive. Yet I think fewer people see them, because they use the Google toolbar which takes them directly to the requested webpage without a stop at the Google homepage. This is too bad. Some of the Google Doodles are country or region specific. To see all the doodles, including international ones, go to http://www.google.com/logos/. There are also links to the all previous doodles and a brief history of doodles.
My recent favorites are: Martha Graham’s birthday, Jules Verne’s birthday, 160th Anniversary of the first World’s Fair and Robert Bunsen’s birthday. My only complaint about the Google doodle website, is that the interactive doodles are NO LONGER interactive on the site. If you want to see the doodles in action, search YouTube for (as an example): Martha Graham Google Doodle. Enjoy!
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dlj-n0ouPFo&w=560&h=349]