Everybody Googles these days.

Let's face it: Google is the world's most popular search engine."Googling" has become synonymous with "searching," when it comes to finding something on the Internet.

For those of you more serious Googlers, you probably know that the multi-bajillion dollar company also makes it a priority to give employees a chance to be creative and explore their field in the hopes that allowing innovation will lead to "the next big thing." The culture of innovation has kept Google at the forefront of technology, and allowed the company to create and explore many advances not necessarily restricted to Internet searches.

One creative thing in particular Google is known for is it's doodles. For dates of note, such as celebrity birthdays, holidays or anniversaries of historical events, Google replaces it's logo on www.google.com with an image manipulating the common logo with something related to the significant date. Google even hosts regular competitions for children to design doodles.

The most fascinating recent doodle was one celebrating Les Paul's 96th birthday. On Thursday, Google posted a doodle of a guitar to celebrate the famed musician and guitar-maker. Not only was the guitar cool to look at, it was playable. By scrolling your cursor over the strings of the guitar, you were able to play songs--and even record them and send them to friends.

The doodle gained so much popularity that Google decided to put it up for another day (most doodles only last 24 hours). Because it was so popular, Google has given it a permanent home here. Definitely check it out and play with it. It's a fun diversion, even if you don't consider yourself to be particularly musically inclined.

Also popular, celebrities (and regular folk like us) have been making videos of their recordings and posting them on YouTube.

Here are some examples. If you want more, I suggest searching on YouTube. There are many to choose from, some better than others. It's pretty neat to hear how well people have been able to master a little Internet "game" so quickly.






--Danielle Capriato
DCapriato@News-Herald.com