Today's Google Doodle is a tribute to Brothers Grimm and their famous fairy tales.

Jacob (1785–1863) and Wilhelm Grimm (1786–1859) were German authors and researchers, known for collecting and popularizing European folk tales, including Cinderella, The Frog Prince, Hansel and Gretel.

As for the Doodle itself, it's one of the most elaborate we've seen, telling the entire story of the Red Riding Hood in a series of drawings.

BONUS: The 10 Most Popular Google Doodles of 2012

How do you like today's Doodle? Share your thoughts in the comments.

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Tumblr's New iPad App

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Tumblr unveiled its native app for the iPad on Wednesday, just two days after the blogging platform updated its Android app to support tablets.

Version 3.2.3 of the iOS app is now compatible with both the iPad and iPad mini, and features markdown support as well as a new "Explore" tab. Bloggers can also access a sidebar navigation menu and a circular menu for composing posts.

Like its iPhone counterpart, the long-awaited iPad app lets users manage all their blogs, view and reply to messages, access the camera by swiping the compose button up, and share photos, videos, links and text. It also offers offline support, such as the ability to reblog even when not connected to the Interne…
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More About: Apple Store, Apple iPad, apple, apps, ipad, tumblr, vtap

Gyft is a mobile gift card app that allows customers to buy, store, send and redeem gift cards conveniently from their mobile devices.

More About: Christmas, gift cards, holiday shopping, valleygirltv

YouTube has revealed the most popular trailers of 2012, and video games have come out on top of movies and television.

The two most popular trailers of the year, with 35.2 and 29.6 million views, respectively, are trailers for Call of Duty: Black Ops 2. Two other trailers for the same game hold the eight and tenth positions on the list. Collectively, the four trailers have a whopping 82 million views.

Two highly anticipated 2012 movies, The Dark Knight Rises and Skyfall, sit at third and fourth place, with another Skyfall trailer taking the ninth position.

Three other movie trailers that made the list are for Ted, The Hunger Games and Revolution.

YouTube isn't clear about…
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A tear-jerking viral video, called "2012: What Brought Us Together," is making the rounds online.

Posted to YouTube on Tuesday, the six-minute video is a montage of major moments over the past year, from silly to serious. Set to the music of This Will Destroy You's "The Mighty Rio Grande," It includes clips about Hurricane Sandy, KONY 2012, the Costa Concordia disaster and the suicide of Amanda Todd.

Although the video starts on a melancholy note, its latter half features more lighthearted fare such as NASA's Mars rover landing, the London Olympics and Grumpy Cat.

SEE ALSO:

More About: 2012, viral videos

Marketers will have to wait a little longer to advertise on Facebook's third-party ad network.

A company spokesperson confirmed to Mashable Wednesday that it is halting its mobile-ads test on third-party apps.

"While the results we have seen and the feedback from partners has been positive, our focus is on scaling ads in mobile news feed before ads off of Facebook. We have learned a lot from this test that will be useful in the future," the spokesperson said.

In September, Facebook began working with a number of ad exchanges to serve ads on third-party mobile apps. A mobile ad network -- what could be the social network's equivalent of Google's AdSense -- looked to help Facebook b…
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More About: Facebook, mobile advertising

Starting a business can feel like you're speeding down a winding road without breaks, that is, if you don't have a detailed blueprint. For startup founders and entrepreneurs, brewing up a brilliant idea is just the beginning of a long journey.

After brainstorming comes extensive research, planning and ceaseless decision making. Further down the line comes the execution of your business plan. Organizational and collaboration tool MindMeister has been a huge lifesaver for nearly 1.5 million users since its launch in 2007.

The collaborative online mind mapping software was voted the winner in the productivity category in Mashable's Innovation Index this year -- a new program that celebra…
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More About: Innovation Index, features, mashable, organization, team collaboration, work

Twitter has shaken up its executive ranks, appointing a new chief operating officer and chief financial officer.

The microblogging site named Ali Rowghani its COO, a new role he quietly announced by changing his Twitter profile. Rowghani's LinkedIn profile, however, still lists him as the company's CFO. Before joining Twitter in 2010, he worked at Pixar (including a stint as CFO) for eight years.

Twitter also brought in Mike Gupta to fill Rowghani's former role as CFO. Previously the treasurer and senior vice-president of finance at Zynga, Gupta left after spending one-and-a-half years with the embattled game maker. He also spent eight years as chief treasury officer and senior vice…
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There aren't any batteries or fuel in the $5 revolutionary lamp called the GravityLight.

The ultra-cheap lamp was created as a replacement for expensive and highly polluting kerosene-powered lanterns, which are widely used in developing countries. London-based designers Martin Riddiford and Jim Reeves have been working on the GravityLight as a side project for the four years.

For the 1.5 billion people in the world who live off the electric grid, homemade kerosene lamps are the norm. But, the kerosene can eat up 10% to 20% of a family's household income, according to the designers. Fueling these lamps with kerosene is also extremely dangerous. Men, women and children are regularly exp…
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More About: Social Good, developing countries, indiegogo

Death threats against Jets quarterback Mark Sanchez specified shooting the quarterback at Wednesday's practice. The fan has since apologized.

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Researching your family tree seems as easy as conducting a Google search, but there's actually much more work and fact-checking involved, if you want to do it right.

Ancestry.com is no longer the only option when it comes to searching digital archives, connecting with others and compiling a family tree. A new crop of geneaology sites popping up on the Internet are providing some alternatives. MyHeritage and Archives.com are two useful sites that have great layouts and access to plenty of documents. On these sites you can find census records, scanned birth, marriage and death certificates, family photos and newspaper clippings, and compile these into a beautiful, digital tree.

MyHerit…
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More About: Ancestry.com, genealogy, history

ESPN's Rob Parker apologized on Twitter for insinuating that NFL star Robert Griffin III is a "cornball brother."

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For iPhone users, Google Maps is back. The revamped app, launched last week, is being downloaded in the tens of millions. As a result, iOS6 activations are on the rise. And Apple finally has the breathing room it needs to overhaul its much maligned Maps app, the default on the platform.

But just how much of a hill does Apple still have to climb in order to compete? Quite a steep one. It is three times more likely to lead you on a wild goose chase than its rival, according to a study provided exclusively to Mashable.

To test how Maps stacks up against Google's (and Bing's) offerings, the online workforce company CrowdFlower picked a random 1,000 business listings in the U.S., and anothe…
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More About: Google Maps, apple maps, bing

Max Salzberg, co-founder of Diaspora, has launched a new tool that helps startups manage the process of sending out rewards to their Kickstarter backers.

More About: diaspora, kickstarter, startup

Seems About Right

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Like cats? Of course you do, you're on the Internet. How about international politics? If so, the Tumblr page IR Cats is just the ticket.

More About: Watercooler, cats, gallery, tumblr

Buoyed by the success of last year's first ever Super Bowl stream, the NFL and CBS are teaming up to do the same in 2013. But they aren't stopping there.

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Remember all the way back on Tuesday, when everyone and their artistically-filtered dog was freaking out about Instagram's new privacy policy? How long ago that seems, now that co-founder Kevin Systrom (above) has walked back the notion that your photos are potentially going to be used in ads. We're cool now, right?

Actually, the jury is still out on this one. Systrom's promised rewording of the agreement has yet to arrive, and prominent users are still skeptical. In the meantime, the story so far reads like a textbook case of what startups shouldn't do to get ahead. Here's what we learned:

Turns Out, There Is Some Scrutiny of Your TOS

Nobody reads the Terms of Se…
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More About: instagram, terms of service

Mistletoe tied to a fishing pole. Santa Clause hat. The streets of Santa Barbara. A video camera. Go!

More About: Watercooler, pranks, videos

The team that manages Data.gov is well on its way to making the government data repository open source using a new back-end called the Open Government Platform, officials said during a web discussion Wednesday.

The governments of India and Ghana have already launched beta versions of their data catalogues on the open source platform, said Jeanne Holm who heads the Data.gov team.

Government developers from the U.S. and India built the OGPL jointly. They posted it to the code sharing site GitHub where other nations and developers can adopt it as is or amend it to meet their specific needs.

The Obama administration launched Data.gov in 2009 as part of a slate of open government commitm…
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More About: U.S. government, big data, open source

Former space shuttle technician Andrew Scheer snapped this photo as he said goodbye to launch complex 39 yesterday at Kennedy Space Center. Home to the Apollo program, it was here that some of America's biggest moments in space started.

"I worked as a pad technician for 11 years. When I started, my home was on pad B. It was hard seeing it be torn down," he told Mashable via email. "I always worked on both pads, but pad A became my permanent home in 2007."

SEE ALSO: NASA Employees Share Inspiring Stories You've Never Heard

The lonely launchpad is poetic in a way -- a symbol of the end of an era for NASA. Complex 39A's final mission was on July 8, 2011 with the launch of Atlantis. NA…
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More About: NASA, Space Shuttle Atlantis, SpaceX, space

PS22 Chorus, whose videos attract millions of views, are remembering Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting victims the best way they know how -- with song.

More About: Connecticut, Music, US, newtown, ps22, shooting

A new campaign aimed at ending gun violence in the U.S. released a series of videos that highlight Americans who have lost loved ones from shootings.

More About: US, congress, newtown

The Levo League is the first professional network designed to inspire and enable Generation Y women to build amazing careers.

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Reading a book is a significant investment of time. That's why it's common to ask friends for recommendations when looking for interesting literature. If you haven't said it yourself, you've probably heard someone say the common refrain: "Read any good books lately?"

That method has worked fairly well thus far, but an innovative new web app sources recommendations from the person who knows you best — you.

Simply insert your Twitter handle into BookRx, and seconds later the app produces a list of categories and specific books you might enjoy. The app, which was launched yesterday, is a product of Northwestern University's Knight Lab. Shawn O'Banion, a third-year PhD student, worked wi…
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More About: Entertainment, Social Media, Twitter, apps, books, features

A photo of a crustacean mid-interview with a reporter's microphone has caught the attention of the Internet.

Were they talking about the fish-cal cliff? (Sorry.) An outcry over the lack of claw-friendly mobile devices on the market right now? Is it for or against Instagram -- and what filter is the best for underwater photos? Did it get the new Myspace? Who is in its top eight?

None of those will ever be answered, but you can pretend like they are in a caption contest. The image is from San Diego's local news station, NBC 7.

"One of our reporters snapped the photo and emailed it to the newsroom while she was out in the field," says Michelle Wayland, social media manager at NBC 7.…
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More About: Watercooler, humor, pics

It must be hard to be a billionaire. Apparently there was no easy way to impulse buy things such as yachts, jets and real estate. Until now.

More About: Future Cars, Lifestyle, Tech, startup

With a strong focus on updating privacy rules governing mobile apps, the updates to the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act announced Wednesday tell the story of an agency that views itself as a protector of smartphone and tablet users across the country.

Children are increasingly being born and raised smartphone-or-tablet-in-hand. About 23% of teens own a smartphone, and almost all of them use their device to access the Internet. There's a wealth of children's apps available for myriad devices and platforms. The new Windows Phones have a "kid's corner" setting to protect sensitive data from tiny, wandering fingers. It's a safe bet that a child younger than, say, five years old is mo…
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More About: COPPA, Mobile, Politics, US

Streaming live on Mashable, TerraCycle Inc. founder Tom Szaky will answer questions from readers at 3 p.m. EST (12 p.m. PST) Thursday, Dec. 12. As part of the Young Entrepreneur Council's #StartupLab initiative, a virtual mentorship program, Szaky will appear live via video chat broadcast on this site.

Tom Szaky, 30, is the founder and CEO of TerraCycle, Inc., one of the world's foremost leaders in eco-capitalism, recycling and upcycling. In 2006, Inc Magazine named TerraCycle "The Coolest Little Startup in America." That same year Szaky was named the "Number-One CEO in America Under 30."

Szaky came to the U.S. in 2001 when he matriculated as a Princeton University freshm…
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More About: Business, Live Chat, Startups, yec

Steven Sinofsky, the Microsoft veteran who led the team to create both Windows 7 and Windows 8 and abruptly left the company in November, will begin teaching classes at Harvard Business School in spring 2013.

Sinofsky revealed his new position on Twitter. He said he was excited to return to Harvard, apparently referring to classes he taught in 1999 -- links to which he provided in a subsequent tweet. He also said his title would be "executive in residence" and his duties would include research, writing, teaching classes on product development, planning, collaboration and more.

Excited to return to @harvardhbs to teach again this spring!New perspectives, recharge, share experiences, wri…
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More About: Steve Sinofsky, Windows 8, microsoft

When this big rig flips over in, it deposits a payload not of vegetables or canned goods but...cows! Yup; real life, bonafide bovines. A can't miss video.

More About: Watercooler, cows, viral videos