Yes, I’m one of those who were awestruck when the Guitar showed up as soon as I fired up my browser (Google being my homepage). And, when I ran my mouse pointer over it, it played tunes. This is one of the best Doodles by Google. Upon discovering that it could be played via the keyboard too, I started figuring out the notes and went on to try some music (and down went my productivity in office for the rest of the day).

Google Doodle – a revised version of the Google homepage logo – is the highest honor, this search engine gives to a significant date. Well, June 9, does manage to take the doodle to a new level. On this day in 1915 Lester William Polsfuss was born. He is better known as Les Paul, the guitarist, song writer, and most importantly for understanding the doodle – the inventor of the original solid-body electric guitar.

Google has used the power of HTML5, CSS , JavaScript to create a working guitar you can play with your keyboard or mouse. Although, it’s not pure HTML5, and it uses Flash for the sound.

Since, I liked it so much, I thought if I could bring it to my-home-on-the-web. And, thanks to one of my friends, Pawan Singh for figuring it out. So, here it is, the awesome Google Guitar Doodle, preserved here forever – at the disposal of all (including myself) who want to play around with it’s tunes anytime they want.

To add it to your own site or blog, you just need to embed the following code snippet.

<iframe src="http://www.vinayswastik.com/wp-content/uploads/google-guitar/google-guitar.htm" name="google-guitar-doodle" scrolling="no" frameborder="no" align="center" height = "280px" width = "520px"></iframe>

Disclaimer: The code for the same is created and owned by Google. You may modify it according to your wish, but you cannot re-distribute it as your own.

Welcome to Google Buzz

Our very own King Google brings in one more fabulous service. Recently, the Gmail account holders must have come across the new social-media service by Google – Google Buzz. I’m here to share my thoughts about it, and later in the post, I’ll be telling some ways to customize it and use it. I’ll also share a trick, which can help you to opt-out from the email updates of buzz, which may have started to clutter-up your inbox.

According to my belief, Google Buzz is is ready to set benchmark in terms of Social Media Marketing. I bet that Google is trying to incorporate a large number of people for Google Buzz. It has already taken a giant leap by inviting the existing Gmail users as part of the Buzz Community, which is a very good start for them. It is better than other social media in a way that it is backed by G-power such as Picassa for photo uploads, Youtube for videos, and what more..

Google introduces "Google Buzz" - A social media service

There is already a debate sparked between the various webmasters about comparing Buzz Vs Twitter. According to me, it is too fast to reach to a conclusion now, but after 6 months or so, the picture would be clearer. Previously, when Google launched (Gmail + GoogleTalk), people were skeptic about it being able to compete with other services, chiefly (Yahoo Mail + messenger). Today, Gmail has overpowered Yahoo mail and Google Talk is used more than Y! messenger now.

Now, here are some of the features I would want to share:

1. Formatting Text in Google Buzz

   This is usually known to most out there, it’s the same as that in GoogleTalk:

   • Wrap text in asterisks for bold text (*Vinay* becomes Vinay).
   • Wrap text in underscores for italics (_Vinay_ becomes Vinay).
   • Wrap text in hyphens for strike-through (-Politics- becomes Politics).

2. Permalink to a specific Buzz Post

   

   How to get permalinks of a post on Buzz

   Every post you make on Buzz has it’s own, unique web-page. You can go to that page by clicking on the small arrow on the right side of the post, and selecting “Link to this post” You can share this link anywhere, for example – IM, emails, linking back through another page, etc. Here is a permalink to a one of my buzzes made yesterday.

3. @ Replies on Buzz

   

   Sending @ replies on Buzz

   Are you bored of sending emails, or consider it too-old fashioned? Then you can think of buzzing with twitter-style @ replies. You can start a buzz with an @ sign, and a drop-down menu comes to auto-complete it for you, choosing from your contacts. The Buzzes you send out will appear on their time-lines (they must have Buzz enabled).

4. Get rid of Buzz updates cluttering your Inbox

   Like me, most of you must be annoyed of emails from Google Buzz. When anyone comments something on one of your Buzz posts, an email lands in your Gmail inbox. If you want to turn-off these emails, but you still want to use buzz, then try out the following steps:

   

   Gmail Filter settings to avoid Buzz Emails

   • Go to Gmail Settings and click on “Filters“
   • Create a new Filter (by clicking the link).
   • Check for a field named “Has the words“
   • Enter “label:buzz” there (without quotes)
   • Click Next. Ignore the warning that will appear.
   • Make “Skip the inbox” as the choice for filter action and save the filter.

The reason behind this is the recent PageRank (PR in short)update by Google. My twitter profile acquired a PageRank of 4 (on a 10 point scale), in the PageRank update of 30th October 2009. This time, the PR update came amidst a lot of  conjectures on various webmaster discussion forums that the PR system is discontinued by Google.

Vinay Swastik's Twitter profile gets a Google PageRank-4

I hope that this blog of mine would also get a PR in the next update. It has been 15 days only since I registered the vinayswastik.com domain, so I wasn’t expecting PR so early on this domain.

What is PageRank?

There is a ranking system used by Google to rank the web pages based on their relative popularity on web. This is known as PageRank. This was originally started as a project at Stanford University. Google acquired it as trademark in 2005, though the patent still resides with Stanford.

According to the definition given by Stanford -

PageRank is a link analysis algorithm that assigns a numerical weighting (on a 10 or 100 point scale) to each element of a hyperlinked set of documents (or simply, a web page) , such as the World Wide Web, with the purpose of “measuring” its relative importance within the set.

In PageRank, more the number better is the rank, e.g. PageRank 8/10 is better than PageRank 2/10

The actual calculations of PR system are pretty complex (couldn’t have expected any better by Stanford) and can be found on Wikipedia.

The homepage of Google.com stands at PR-10, Official website of Indian Government also holds PR-10, twitter homepage has been assigned as PR-9. The popularity of a web page is reflected in it’s PageRank.

Hopefully, I’ll continue to improve my PageRank and keep on climbing to higher PR.

Final Effect Obtained

I’ve written it myself in such a way that even a person who has not used Photoshop in past, will be able to understand this tutorial, and produce this effect. You can add your creativity with this tutorial to get better Graphics.

So, let’s start our work. As I’ve already told, this one is easy. You can accomplish this in 8-easy-to-perform steps.

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Step I) Open a new image in Photoshop. I used the size to be “500 x 125” pixels.

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Step II) Fill the background with Black Color. For this, firstly, select the Foreground color as Black, then select the Paint Bucket Tool. Now click anywhere in the image to fill it.

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Step III) It’s time to write our text on the image. Click the ‘Horizontal Text Type Tool’ and click on the image. A cursor will blink, where you can write the text. (Don’t worry if nothing appears. The text color is black by default, which is same as background color. Just type what you want, and we will fix this later).

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Step IV) Change the font color to ‘White’ from the ‘set text color’ box (see screenshot). You can adjust the Font Style and Font Size also. I recommend using simple fonts like ‘Monotype Corsiva’ in this effect.

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Step V) Now go to “Layer || Flatten Image” or press “Ctrl+Shift+E” to merge the text layer and the background layer.

Step VI) Now, go to “Filter || Stylize || Wind” and choose “From the Right” direction and press OK. Again go to “Filter || Stylize || Wind” and choose “From the Left” direction and press OK.

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Step VII) Now choose the option “Image || Rotate Canvas || 90° CW” Repeat Step VI now. You will get the following result.

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Step VIII) Make the image normal by “Image || Rotate Canvas || 90° CCW”

Step IX) Choose the option “Filter || Stylize || Glowing Edges” A dialog box will open up. You can see three sliders here. Adjust them as you wish. I used these settings :

• Edge Width – 1
• Edge Brightness – 9
• Smoothness – 5

Press OK when satisfied. You will get something like this.

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Step X) Time to give the final effects. Choose “Image || Mode || Grayscale” (Choose ‘discard’ if a message pops-up). After that, choose “Image || Mode || Indexed Color”

Step XI) Go to “Image || Mode || Color Table” and select ‘Black Body’ from the drop-down menu. Voila!! Magic happens.

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Step XII) Finally, choose the “Image || Mode || RGB Color” option. You are done. Now, you can save the image in any format you wish.