Saturday, August 21, 2004

Google Olympic Logos

Thetis Appeals to Zeus (by Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres, 1811)

I’m sure you have googled over the past week and noticed the Google Summer Olympics doodles. They are depicting different sports, like swimming, archery and weightlifting (and for the first time, Google included the small logo as well for their doodles – sometimes though not in-synch with the large version). Google collects all Athens 2004 Olympic games logos on one page in chronological reverse order.

So who are the three people we see playing sports?

First of all there’s Zeus (aka Jupiter) of ancient Greek mythology, throwing lightning bolts. Zeus was living on Mount Olympus as supreme god of the Olympians, and the Olympics were originally a religous festival in honor of him. A giant Zeus statue sculpted by Pheidias was one of the seven world wonders*.

*The remaining six are: the Pyramids of Egypt, Pharos of Alexandria, the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, the Temple of Artemis, the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus, and the Colossus of Rhodes.

The bearded man holding a trident is Poseidon (Neptune in Roman mythology), the god of the sea, and brother of Zeus. Poseidon wanted to be protector of Athens, but the citizens didn’t like the spring water he offered them (being sea-water, it was salty).

Third in the group is Athena, among other things goddess of war, and patron goddess of Athen. Though she’s active in the Google logos, women weren’t permitted to compete in the ancient Olympics. Athena is daughter of Zeus and half-sister of Hercules, who later on became hero of a popular TV show.

Google Olympic Logos by Philipp Lenssen

Forum RSS

The discussion forum for this blog now has an RSS feed for you to subscribe.

Forum RSS by Philipp Lenssen

SCO Googlebomb

If you type “Bastards” into Google, the SCO Group will be first (they are the ones suing the Linux community). Originally, this Googlebomb was started to connect the phrase Litigious Bastards with their homepage, but now works with with both words on their own.

SCO Googlebomb by Philipp Lenssen

Blogger Past

This is what Pyra’s Blogger.com (now owned by Google) looked like 5 years ago. [Via Anil Dash.]

Blogger Past by Philipp Lenssen

BugMeNot Back

Content unlocker BugMeNot is back live on a new, friendlier host. [Via Waxy.]

BugMeNot Back by Philipp Lenssen

Strange Sounds

Here are three silly things you can do with wave sound recording. On Windows, plug-in a microphone, right-click the desktop, create a new WAV file, and choose “Record” from the context-menu. Now:

Method A) Record yourself speaking with a very slow, deep voice. Afterwards, open the effects menu increase the speed by 100%. Listen.

Method B) Record yourself speaking with a very fast, high voice. Afterwards, decrease the speed by 100%. Listen.

Method C) Speak several words backwards. (Reversing them in a text editor first helps.) Every word must start soft and end abruptly. Afterwards, reverse the wave sound. Listen...

Strange Sounds by Philipp Lenssen

A Portrait of GOOG as a Young Stock

Google’s doing well, as Yahoo! Finance illustrates:

(And believe it or not, I prophetically scribbled “The Great GOOG” on paper a year ago...)

A Portrait of GOOG as a Y ... by Philipp Lenssen

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