Google's Sesame Street Doodles Continue with The Count
Google has been running Sesame Street Google Doodles for the past several days. Today, Google is featuring The Count. They have also featured Big Bird, Cookie Monster and other Sesame Street characters. You can get a shirt with The Count Google Doodle on it at the Sesame Street store free with the purchase of any Sesame Street 40th anniversary items - see here. Unfortunately, the don't appear to be selling the shirts individually, but maybe they will later.
Yesterday, the Sesame Street store was offering a free Big Bird Google Doodle t-shirt with the purchase of a Sesame Street 40th anniversary item. Now the Sesame Street store is offering a free Cookie Monster Google Doodle T-Shirt with every 40th Anniversary item purchased. Looking at the list of clothing available they do not appear to be selling either shirt individually. However, they do have lots of cool shirts, such as the Bert Face shirt.
Google Celebrates Sesame Street's 40th Anniversary
Google has a new doodle today to celebrate Sesame Street's 40th anniversary. Google's Sesame Street doodle does not look the same in every country. Big Bird legs help make the "l" in Google in the U.S. version. The Next Web posted some Google Doodles from other countries.
The Sesame Street store has a 40th anniversary section. You can find 40th anniversary books and DVDs. There's also a 40th Anniversary Corduroy Elmo. The store even carries a shirt with the Big Bird Google doodle. The shirt comes free with every 40th Anniversary item purchased.
Google is celebrating its 11th birthday today. Google has a logo today on Google.com that shows two 1s instead of an "l." ABC News reports that Google celebrates a birthday that falls sometime in September depending on when its employees feel the need for cake.
The corporate history says Google has sometimes marked both Sept. 7 and Sept. 27 -- today -- as its birthday.
Sept. 4 also has been bandied about as a birthday of sorts -- connecting as it does to a fairly mundane event in Google's history. On Sept. 4, 1998, the company filed papers establishing it as a California corporation.
Google gave up on the specifics a few years ago and posted a page saying, "Google opened its doors in September 1998. The exact date when we celebrate our birthday has moved around over the years, depending on when people feel like having cake."
Today must be cake day.
The founders of Google Larry Page and Sergey Brin first met in 1995 and begin working on a search engine in 1996. You can find Google's corporate history here.
Google has a doodle of a UFO today and no one seems to know exactly why. If you click on the logo you are taken to a search results for Unexplained Phenomenon.
Articles here, here and here throw out a few theories for the logo such as boredom, a promotion of a UFO festival or the promotion of District 9. None of these theories seem to be sticking.
TechCrunch reports that Google also tweeted a cryptic tweet today that when deciphered says, "All your o are belong to us." That's a clear reference to an Internet meme that developed from a strange Japanese game that contained poorly written English. No one seems to know why Google decided to do this today.
Search Engine Land reports that Google has issued the following statement about the logo.
"We consider the second 'o' critical to user recognition of our brand and pronunciation of our name. We are actively looking into the mysterious tweet that has appeared on the Google twitter stream and the disappearance of the "o" on the Google homepage. We hope to have an update in the coming weeks."
Ramen bot is a robot that can make Ramen noodles. It is currently employed by a Japanese restaurant in Tokyo. Customers can give the robot specific instructions about how they like their noodles. The customers say the noodles taste similar to that made by a human chef. The bot is puts on show when it isn't making noodles.
PaidContent reports that Oodle is continuing its web classifieds battle against Craiglist by streaming classifieds listing to its Twitter account. PaidContent says Oodle plans to stream as many as 10,000 classified tweets daily.
The company plans to start feeding a stream of listings to its Twitter account, complete with searchable keywords and hashtags; Donato said he expects the stream to average at least 10,000 tweets per day-which the company cleared with Twitter in advance.
Oodle users will also be able to post listings to their own Twitter, Facebook and MySpace streams from a single screen. The idea is that since people are already sharing content and personal information on these networks, sharing a link to the couch, bike or used car they're trying to sell should come just as naturally. The exposure to their network should also increase the likelihood of a sale—since there's an added level of trust when an apartment listing or other sales recommendation comes from a source like a friend-of-a-friend or coworker.
10,000 tweets per day is an enormous amount but people will find the tweets useful if they can ultimately be filtered by interest or location. Oodle blogged about the first phase of Twitter integration here. The post explains how you can automatically share your Oodle classified listings with your Twitter friends.
Note: You can find a list of many other retailers tweeting on Twitter here in the Twitter Store Directory.
The Sunreports that a noodle company named Pot Noodle added a limited edition flavor called Steak And Beckinsale after Kate Beckinsale mentioned wanting a Pot Noodle at Elton John's after Oscars party.
While most celebs were busy showing off their bling, the 36-year-old was lusting for some calorific noodles at Sir Elton John's after show party.
The A-lister, who starred in Pearl Harbour and is married to Hollywood Director Len Wiseman, said: "I am hoping for a Pot Noodle and a cup of tea!"
Pot Noodle Flavour Development Manager, Grahame Walker, said: “We're always on the look out for ideas for new flavours so when Miss Beckinsale announced her love for Pot Noodles we just had to make one in her honour.
That was pretty quick work by the noodle company considering the Oscars was just a few days ago. So far Kate hasn't said anything about the noodles. (via Limelife)
We are still waiting for President Obama to make the important decision of selecting a dog for Malia and Sasha. We learned earlier this month that President Obama had narrowed the decision down to a Labradoodle or a Portuguese Water Dog. He also said they would look at shelters for a puppy. You can learn more about the two hypoallergenic breeds and some of the possible pitfalls with each breed in the Time video below.
Obama: Puppy Search Narrowed to Labradoodle or Portuguese Water Hound
Barack Obama told George Stephanopoulos on ABC's This Week that the family still has not finished its puppy search which Obama says has been "tougher than finding a Commerce Secretary." However, Obama says they have narrowed the search down to either a Labradoodle or a Portuguese water hound. Obama said they are also going to start looking at shelters to see if they can find the right puppy.
You can find some information about Labradoodles here, here and here and you can find some information about Portuguese water hounds here, here and here. They are both medium-sized dog breeds.
This fierce photo from the new Giant magazine layout pretty much says it all: even Sasha Fierce is not immune from the recession, as she was seen buying ramen noodles. Or maybe she just likes Ramen Noodles. Or is on a high-salt diet. In any event, we're pretty much loving the Sasha right now. Plus she has a groovy new black bionic hand. Perhaps they're interchangeable? Or each one has a different superpower?
You can see all the amazing photos by Ellen Von Unworth here.
Here's the video from the photoshoot.
B2Day discusses two classified search tools in a recent post: Vast and Oodle. Vast searches the web for classified listings for credit cards, cars, jobs and singles. Oodle search the Internet for classifieds in numerous categories including local listings. Oodle provides tabs for cars, real estate, rentals, jobs, merchandise, tickets, pets and services. Both of the tools appear to be useful services. Services like Yahoo Classifieds, craigslist and Windows Live Expo are also keyword searchable but unlike Vast or Oodle they only search the classified postings for that specific service.
The Toy Industry Association (TIA) has announced the winners of the
annual T.O.T.Y. (Toy Of The Year) Awards. The Awards were conceived
to honor the best toys developed by the international toy industry
for consumers in the United States.
This year's Toy of the Year is the V.Smile TV Learning System by
VTech Electronics. V.Smile TV also won in the Educational Toy
category. In the Infant/Preschool Category there were two winners:
Fridge Phonics Magnetic Set (LeapFrog Enterprises, Inc.) and
Peek-a-Blocks IncrediBlock (Fisher-Price). Other winners include: Robosapien from Wow Wee Ltd. (Most Innovative Toy of the Year), Aquadoodle by Spin Master Ltd.
(Activity Toy of the Year), VideoNow Color by Hasbro/Tiger (Electronic Entertainment Toy of the Year) and the Schwinn Stingray Bike by Pacific Cycle (Outdoor Toy of the Year). Toys "R" Us won for best toy retailer. A complete list of the winners can be found here.
PaidContent 
The Sun 
Barack Obama 
The Toy Industry Association (TIA) has announced the winners of the
annual T.O.T.Y. (Toy Of The Year) Awards. The Awards were conceived
to honor the best toys developed by the international toy industry
for consumers in the United States.
This year's Toy of the Year is the V.Smile TV Learning System by
VTech Electronics. V.Smile TV also won in the Educational Toy
category. In the Infant/Preschool Category there were two winners:
Fridge Phonics Magnetic Set (LeapFrog Enterprises, Inc.) and
Peek-a-Blocks IncrediBlock (Fisher-Price). Other winners include: Robosapien from Wow Wee Ltd. (Most Innovative Toy of the Year), Aquadoodle by Spin Master Ltd.
(Activity Toy of the Year), VideoNow Color by Hasbro/Tiger (Electronic Entertainment Toy of the Year) and the Schwinn Stingray Bike by Pacific Cycle (Outdoor Toy of the Year). Toys "R" Us won for best toy retailer. A complete list of the winners can be found 
