verb [T + adverb or preposition]
to print or show something in a very noticeable way:
Several newspapers splashed colour pictures of the Prince across their front pages.
splash Show phonetics
noun [C]
something or someone bright or very noticeable:
The little girl in her flowery dress provides the only splash of colour in the picture.
make a splash
to become suddenly very successful or very well known:
Jodie Foster made quite a splash in the film 'Taxi Driver'.
轉載
Surfboards decorate the main lobby at a Google office in Santa Monica behind Jillian Silva, left, and Andre Stockton. One of the boards "went on vacation" and told colleagues of its whereabouts by e-mail.
LOS ANGELES - Found: geeks on the beach.
Google has spread out like a beach towel in Santa Monica. What started in 2003 with a few dozen employees has grown into the company's fourth-largest office and fourth-largest engineering center in the United States, with 300-plus employees in three buildings.
"We have the best weather of any office in Google," said Thomas Williams, the engineering director who heads the office. "It's pretty easy to hire engineers from Toronto, New York, Cambridge, the best schools, all over the world."
Like Google's other far-flung outposts, the campus has developed a distinct personality that reflects its surroundings. There's the "Three's Company" theme: Printers and bathrooms are named after characters on the ABC sitcom, which was set near the Santa Monica beach; the library has a signed John Ritter script as well as original bubble gum trading cards from the show; and employees dine in the Regal Beagle Cafe.
Homage is paid to the Santa Monica Pier with the Hot Dog on a Stick kitchen and an arcade stocked with a ring toss, Tip-a-Troll, Skee-Ball and a fun-house mirror. Other traditions include Tuesday volleyball games and Thursday beach walks, ideal for working off the free ice cream.
And the Santa Monica office was the launch pad for what has become a feature in the lobby of every Google office around the world: a running digital scroll of what people are searching for on the Web. A "potty mouth" program screens out anything offensive.
Many of the perks are much the same as those at Google's headquarters in Silicon Valley. Engineers chow on free food (on a rooftop deck, weather permitting) and pursue pet projects. Every Tuesday afternoon, tea with sandwiches and cakes is served. Every other Thursday afternoon, there is a gathering called "Thank God It's Almost Friday." And there are chair and table massages, video games and technical brain teasers posted in the restrooms.
In 2003, Google spent $102 million for Santa Monica-based online ad start-up Applied Semantics, which helped launch AdSense, a program through which advertisers bid on specific keywords. The following year, Google bought Pasadena-based Picasa, which makes photo management software.
Those two acquisitions jump-started the Santa Monica expansion, which Douglas Merrill, Google's vice president of engineering and chief information officer, said was further stoked by the region's entertainment and media industries and a steady flow of top technical talent from local universities.
Google is known for its freewheeling culture, which was on display in Santa Monica when the surfboard behind the reception desk in the main lobby went missing. Managers received a note from an unidentified prankster using the e-mail address surfboard@google.com: "Hey everyone, just wanted to let you guys know I went on vacation." Attached was a photo of the surfboard lounging in a hammock just blocks away in another Google building.
The Santa Monica staff is eclectic. There's an Academy Award winner for technical achievement, a former Jet Propulsion Lab employee who worked on NASA's Cassini spacecraft and an experimental poet.
Many say this is the work environment they've long sought. Senior software engineer Rob Konigsberg, 38, appreciates the caliber of the work and the company of his terrier mix, Maggie, who guards his office door and accompanies him on daily walks.
"You spend more time here but you like where you are," said Konigsberg, who has worked for Google three years. "It doesn't feel like coming to work. You do the stuff you would be doing at home anyway."
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