10 awesome Internet Easter eggs
What are the best hidden Easter eggs on the Web? We count them down.
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.