Google Doodles Quiz - Part 3...Composers & Musicians

In this prior post we briefly described Google Doodles and had a quiz.

Now it's time to guess the Composers and Musicians whose birthdays were recognized with a Doodle:

#1

#2

#3

#4

#5

#6  (my personal favorite of the group)

#7

#8

#9

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Answers below:

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#1    Ray Charles
#2    Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (The Nutcracker)
#3    Michael Jackson
#4    Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
#5    Dizzy Gillespie
#6    Igor Stravinsky (Firebird, Rite of Spring)
#7    Luciano Pavarotti
#8    Antonio Vivaldi (The Four Seasons)
#9    Sergei Prokofiev (Peter and the Wolf)
 

Google Doodles Quiz - Part 2...Authors

In this prior post we briefly described Google Doodles and had a quiz.

Now it's time to guess the Authors whose birthdays were recognized with a Doodle:

#1

#2

#3

#4

#5

#6

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Answers below:

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#1    Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (Sherlock Holmes)
#2    Robert Louis Stevenson (Treasure Island)
#3    Antoine de Saint Exupery (The Little Prince)
#4    Jane Austen (Pride & Prejudice)
#5    Beatrix Potter (The Tale of Peter Rabbit)
#6    Hans Christian Andersen (Thumbelina)

Google - Dear Sophie video

We saw some interesting print ads from Germany & Switzerland, but after seeing the video below you have to re-acknowledge that the U.S. still sets the standard for marketing.

In the video, a father creates a Google/Gmail account for his newborn daughter, and is sending her emails as she is growing up (that she presumably will read later).  It's funny, it's personal, and very touching.  I realize that this coming weekend is Mother's Day, but this is too good to wait for Father's Day.

FYI, the music is an instrumental version of Ingrid Michaelson's song "Sort Of".  Lovely.  Enjoy.

Google Doodles - The Quiz! (Part 1...Artists)

Almost everyone uses Google, and eventually notices that the Google logo at the top of the search page changes periodically.  These alternate versions of the Google logo are called Google "Doodles".

In 1998 the founders themselves, Larry and Sergey, were going to attend the Burning Man Festival in Nevada.  They playfuly added a stick figure behind the second letter "o" in the word Google to indicate that they were attending and would be out-of-the-office.  This was the first Doodle.  Here is the official logo and the first Doodle:

The official Google logo 

The first Google "Doodle"

Note:  the official Google logo itself has changed since the company was founded.

About a year later, in 2000, they asked their webmaster  Dennis Hwang (who was an intern at the time!) to produce a Doodle for Bastille Day.  The result was popular, so they made Dennis "chief doodler".  Today, Google has a team of designers, will listen to your suggestions, and holds competitions.  To date they have created over 300 for the U.S. and 700 world wide.

The entire archive of Google Doodles can be found here and descriptions here... but that's not fun.  Se we'll share some in quiz format!

Here are some Doodles that recognized birthdays of famous artists.  Try to guess -- answers at the bottom.

#1

#2

#3

#4

#5

#6  (my personal favorite!)

#7

#8

#9

#10

#11

#12

#13  (technically, this is an architect...)

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Answers below:

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#1    Paul Cezanne
#2    Andy Warhol
#3    Edvard Munch (The Scream)
#4    Vincent van Gogh (Starry Night)
#5    Jackson Pollock
#6    Piet Mondrian
#7    Leonardo da Vinci
#8    Pablo Picasso
#9    M. C. Escher
#10  Norman Rockwell
#11  Marc Chagall
#12  Michaelangelo (Statue of David)
#13  Frank Lloyd Wright (Guggenheim, Falling Water)

Easter Eggs (not chocolate... software)

Don't misunderstand:  I realize Jesus hasn't been born yet this year (Christmas is over a week away) and it sounds like I'm already trying to crucify him (Easter).  I'm not.  The term "easter egg" here refers to a hidden message or function in media that takes an undocumented trick to reveal.  The Hallelujah Chorus in an HP lab machine made me remember these, and of course they can be found on YouTube.

Here are some of the classics from the bit-heads at Microsoft:

It's old (looks really dated now) but was so neat at the time.  Microsoft Word 2.0 (released in 1990 for Windows 3.1 !) crushes the WordPerfect monster.  Yes, there actually was a time where then was a real competitor to Word.

Many easter eggs are a means for the programming team to release steam and feel like they're getting extra credit for all the hard work.  Gotta keep it hidden from the boss, though.  Internet Explorer 4.0 (released in 1997) had a basic easter egg that scrolled their names.

1997 must have been a good year for easter eggs.  In Excel 97 (a.k.a., Version 8.0), the programmers included some frame code from the Microsoft Flight Simulator!  If you fly the right direction you would see a monument with their names scrolling on it (shown in the video).  Check out the process to activate this -- it's insanely random.

Coming into the 21st century, you have to raise your game.  So the programmers releasing Excel 2000 (oddly enough, in late 1999) wrote and hid a knock-off of the classic video game Spy Hunter and paved their names on the road.  Now we're talking.  What a way to immortalize your work.  Bonus points for having to use Excel and Internet Explorer to release the surprise.

Unfortunately, Microsoft has "taken measures to eliminate undocumented features from their products" in recent years, and the easter egg harvest has been lean.  At least we have the Google pranks/hoaxes and Google Doodles (time and context changes to their corporate logo on the search page).

Interestingly, when I was a software development manager at CSC Conculting, sometimes our client partners would ask us up to put something in the program.  Of course, we never wrote an easter egg...