Google Doodle lets you play guitar, honors Les Paul 96th birthday

Google's Thursday homepage doodle is celebrating what would have been the 96th birthday of musician Les Paul with a playable guitar logo.

For the next 24 hours, the logo on Google.com will be replaced with the strings of a guitar that will play a tune as you strum them with your mouse. In the U.S., users can click the black "compose" button and record a 30-second track. Clicking the button again will display a link to share the song you've just created.

Google said it was inspired to include the record button because Paul, in addition to his guitar work, also "experimented in his garage with innovative recording techniques like multitracking and tape delay," Alexander Chen, a designer (and musician) with Google's Creative Lab, wrote in a blog post.

The doodle, meanwhile, was created by Google engineers Kristopher Hom and Joey Hurst as well as doodle team lead Ryan Germick. They used a combination of JavaScript, HTML5 Canvas (used in modern browsers to draw the guitar strings), CSS, Flash (for sound), and tools like the Google Font API, goo.gl and App Engine, Chen said.

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Google doodle celebrates Pac-Man 30th anniversary

Google does a great job paying homage to holidays and other special events with their Google doodles, but this one may take the cake. In celebration of the 30th anniversay of Pac-Man, the Google logo has been transformed into a fully-playable game of Pac-Man. Seriously, just hit up the main Google Search page and wait for it to load up!

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