Olympic Google doodles get interactive, plus our top 5 faves
The 12th Google doodle of the London 2012 Olympics is our favorite type--the interactive doodle! It celebrates the track and field sport of hurdling just in time for the women’s 100-meter hurdles final that will take place Tuesday evening. The men’s and women’s 400-meter hurdle final are scheduled for Wednesday evening.
Google’s arm chair version of hurdling will not leave you breathless, but you might need to practice to get your time down. You move forward by tapping the forward and backward arrows as quickly as you can. The spacebar lets you jump. When you complete the race you have the option of starting over, or sharing your score on your Google plus account.
A colleague and former hurdler just mentioned that Google even got the number of steps between each hurdle right--it’s three, always three.
We failed miserably on our first attempt of the game, knocking down almost every hurdle in our way. But the eighth time around our time was down to 17.8 seconds. Take that, Lolo Jones!
Google has been honoring the 2012 London Olympics with a new doodle each day of the games, and while we appreciate the gesture, we’ve been hoping Google would step up its Olympic doodle game. The doodles have been a bit static for our taste. But it looks like that’s been Google’s plan all along.
As Mashable discovered, Wednesday’s Google doodle will let users play a basketball game to celebrate the men’s quarterfinal basketball game.
Looking for some other Google fun to while away the time? Here are five of our favorite interactive Google doodles and Easter eggs.
1. The Les Paul Guitar Google doodle: A 2011 classic! In honor of Les Paul’s 96th birthday, Google created this playable guitar logo that let users record their compositions. Google reported that in just two days, users had recorded 40 million songs. Play.
2. Zerg Rush Easter egg: Google Zerg Rush Easter egg and prepare to defend your search result from an assault by the multi-colored Os. You cannot win, but you can waste lots of time trying!
3. Google Pac-Man: The classic game, in the Google doodle spot. Play.
4. The Alan Turing Brain Teaser: For Alan Turing’s 100th birthday, Google created a live action Turing machine with 12 interactive programming puzzles. Google said it spent more time working on this Google doodle than any other one before. Play.
5. The playable Moog Synthesizer: In honor of Robert Moog’s 78th birthday, Google made a playable Moog Synthesizer. Like the real thing, it’s complicated to play and awesome. Play.
ALSO:
London Olympics: Five Twitter feeds you don’t want to miss
Zerg rush Easter Egg and other great time wasters from Google
London Olympics: Surreal pictures from the tweeting staionary cams
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