That site has just received a pretty significant overhaul, and the folks at Google are pretty excited about it.

You can still browse through all of the Doodle, filtered by year and country – just like before. But Google has added deeper interaction with each specific Doodle.

For instance, if I click on that awesome Les Paul Doodle from June, 2011, I am taken to a page when I can interact with the Doodle (read rock out on the guitar) and learn some information behind the Doodle as well.

We’ve always thought it was a little sad that doodles are only available on the homepage for a day. Since we’re firm believers in having too much of a good thing, we set up a gallery of all our previous doodles a while ago. Now on the new site, you can browse, watch or play with over 1000 doodles. Enjoy front-row tickets to a Martha Graham dance, send the first man to space or learn more about why one doodler decided to “cartoonize” Mary Blair.

Google has also added the Doodle Store to the mix, allowing you to order a variety of items stamped with your favorite Google Doodles. This includes T-shirts, coffee mugs, posters, stamps and even skateboards. This holiday season, make sure to snag a Pierre de Fermat-inspired coffee mug for all the math geeks out there.

What’s your favorite Google Doodle From 2011? Let us know in the comments.

Ok, perhaps it is a bit of an exaggeration to assume that this is going to completely put web designers out of work. Website templates have been around for years. It’s just that the potential of Google Apps to infiltrate more and more offices may lead to more widespread use of Google Sites.

Google has just launched a new template gallery for Google Sites, and it is public. Anyone can contribute templates by simply following these steps:

1. Open up the site you want to add to the gallery (the site must be published and you must be an owner to submit the site).

2. Select ‘More actions’, ‘Manage site,’ ‘General’, and chose ‘Publish this site as a template.’

3. Choose a template name, a category, enter a description and click ‘Submit template.’

While anyone can browse the gallery, businesses using Google Apps each have a private area where employees can share site templates with coworkers. Site templates can be used not only to build business websites, but intranets and more.

"The rate that businesses are adopting Google Sites has surpassed our expectations, and templates will make Sites even more useful by dramatically reducing the time it takes to set up collaborative workspaces like employee intranets, project tracking sites, team sites and employee profile pages," says Google Sites product manager Scott Johnston. "Templates let you quickly start a new site with pre-built content, embedded gadgets, page layouts, navigation links, theming and more."

Given that anyone can contribute templates to the gallery, it stands to reason that it will grow quickly and greatly. One knock against site templates has always been that they don’t make for a unique design. These days the chances of having a truly unique design are getting slimmer and slimmer as the web becomes more flooded with content. However, the more templates that are available, the less chances you have of actually coming across different sites that use the same one. Given that this is a Google product, it’s almost certain that it will get many contributions.

Do you think designers should worry about Google Sites? Share your thoughts here.

Related Articles:

> Google Exec: Docs Can Supplant Office In One Year

> API Makes Google Sites More Useful for Business

> Google Launches New Features for Sites

News of Google’s JotSpot purchase haunted the Internet on Halloween in 2006. Then, like the best candies in the trick-or-treat bag, it vanished from public view aside from JotSpot’s existing userbase.

Today, a trip to Google Apps reveals the return of JotSpot. The clever name had to be erased, a sacrifice to the gods of uniform corporate branding. JotSpot goes forward as Google Sites.

The functionality of Google Sites fits in with the other Apps services. Sites has a minimal learning curve, without having to muck about with icky HTML code to create a page. Several templates will get the Sites user up and running.

Through permission controls, access to viewing and editing Sites may be given to a few people or an organization. Any Sites pages may be opened to the world, in true wiki fashion.

With any change to Apps comes the perquisite Microsoft-killer commentary. The NYT Bits Blog called it “a rival to Microsoft’s SharePoint.”