The Google Doodle today is an animation in honor of Frank Zamboni’s 112th birthday and his hockey arena fixture the Zamboni ice surface smoothing machine. Warning to Google Doodle collectors – it does not appear universally on Google search engine URLs. Goto google.ca for a currently appearing Doodle. But what the Doodle does do is HTML5 and Canvas to create not just a neato animation but also a game of cleaning the ice with the Zamboni.

Skaters come on and scratch up the ice which you have to clean up dragging your mouse to lead the Zamboni to the tarnished parts of the ice surface. The faster, the more points you earn. As the little critter ice skaters cut up more of the ice and leave more litter – the more complicated your Zamboni routine.

The game is fun to play and illustrates what Canvas+HTML5+Javascript can do in a pinch. [the code is small]. I suspect it might have been developed with Google’s kid gaming tool – Blockly but so far no confirmation. However it does not run universally[not on my IE9 or Android Chrome browsers].Given the sad state of both Canvas and animation in terms of universal cross platform usage, anything helps.