Adding hidden items in Web sites is what separates good developers from great ones. Below I've compiled a list of 10 of my personal favorites from the past few years. If you have any of your own feel free to share them in the comments.
1. The Konami code. The infamous code sequence that appears in many video games old and new (↑ ↑ ↓ ↓ ← → ← → B A) has a place on the Internet too. Two sites that we know of take advantage of this to yield humorous results. The first, and most recent, is Google Reader. Inputting the code graces your feed source menu with one of the ninjas found in the newly skinnable sharing pages. This trick also works on GameSpot.com. Entering in the code and hitting enter at the end will take you to the cheats section for Contra, the game for the Nintendo Entertainment System for which it's best known.
2. Yahoo's singing yokel. If you remember the 1990s you'll remember this wonderful yell--the sound of the Yahoo yodeler. To hear it any time just click on the ! at the end of the Yahoo logo on Yahoo.com.
3. JetBlue wants a sandwich. The infamous peanut butter jelly time dancing banana (background) was briefly a part of JetBlue's travel search site. Typing in "PBJ" into the search box while holding shift and clicking the search button would pull up a clip from Fox's Family Guy with the dog Brian doing the dance. It was removed shortly after it was discovered. You can still see a shot of what it looked like here.
4. Google Easter eggs (3 parts)
- Google bombs come and go. Their very nature depends on search relevancy, so no one Google bomb will stick around forever. Two of the more prominent ones had to deal with the George W. Bush presidency, including the infamous faux 404 page for "Weapons of mass destruction" and the search for "miserable failure" which would link up to Bush's profile at the White House Web site. A more humorous iteration exists using Google's built-in calculator in relation to Douglas Adams' masterpiece The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Searching for "the answer to life, the universe, and everything" yields 42, which you'd understand if you had read the book.
- Google Moon. Google's mapping services are chock full of secrets. For a while Google Moon had a really great one. When zooming too far into the surface of the moon it became cheese, something that was later removed probably at NASA's request or improved topography. Here's a video someone captured of it by KoolAidGrenade at Metacafe.
- Ridiculous languages in Google Search. Remember the Swedish Chef from The Muppets? Why not make him your liaison to the world of search? Amidst the myriad of language options in Google you'll find "bork, bork, bork" which serves up your results in the gibberish language of the fictional Swedish Chef. Believe it or not Google gets over a million page views a day in Swedish Chef according to Marissa Mayer, Google's vice president of search and user experience.
If Swedish ain't your thing, there's also Elmer Fudd from Loony Toons and Esperanto, the language that belongs to no nation or people. However the best of all is Google for h4x0rs (hackers), which you can get to by going to 600673.com (Google spelled out in leet speak).
Is The Moon Made Of Cheese?!? ACCORDING TO GOOGLE.COM - video powered by Metacafe
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Viral marketing be damned, sometimes time spent searching the depths of the Internet for small, tucked-away items can be fun. Especially when you're rewarded from your efforts.
Web-printing company Moo is running its own Easter egg scavenger hunt in conjunction with several other hip online companies like Etsy, Blurb, Ponoko, and Picnik. People are supposed to hunt down small Easter eggs on the various services and claim them. Moo is also bundling some of the eggs in products sent to customers in the next week. Meanwhile, the company keeps track of who has found what, and awards various prizes from the partnered sites.
In addition to the Easter eggs found online, Moo is also venturing out into the real world (which it calls the "great outdoors") starting on Saturday. Real world eggs will be placed around cities with special codes people can claim, and hints are provided in the form of poems on Moo's blog (complete with rhyming couplets).
I've seen a lot of viral campaigns in my day, including one from Nick.com that was previewed a couple of weeks ago at Adobe's Engage event. None of them really seem to offer much in the way of user benefit--besides the potential of a prize or hidden piece of content that's usually been leaked elsewhere or is too inconsequential to warrant the time and effort spent. In this case, Moo's gone the route of tying together a small band of blogs and services its demographic is likely to enjoy using.
The rules are simple. Finding the hidden mystery eggs may not be, however.
(Credit: Moo Print LTD. )
Hang on, we're going in.
It's no Microsoft Flight Simulator in terms of controls, flyability, or features (no sound, no weather, no autopilot, only two aircraft choices... I could go on), but since the Google flight simulator has access to Google Earth's streaming database, the visuals are awesome. In most areas, it looks fantastic when your plane is more than about 2,000 feet above ground level. Get down low and it becomes a lot less believable, except in cities with good 3D building coverage.
I used to be a flight simulator junkie, and I still have a flight controller (err, joystick), plugged into my PC. Google's flight simulator has a "use joystick" option, but I caution readers that getting the application to actually read the joystick seems to be voodoo science--sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. Also, on my controller, some controls were swapped, which made the joystick unusable. On my ThinkPad, though, using the TrackPoint under mouse-control mode works well, and definitely better than trying to fly with either the keyboard or a standard mouse.
While a big step up from the "flight controls" option in Google Earth (Ctrl-G on a PC), and a really fun way to explore the scenery, Google Earth's flight simulator Easter egg is no competitor for a real flight simulator--even if it does have the best scenery in the world.
Via TechCrunch and Marco's blog.
See also: Google looks to the heavens.
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