Recursion, askew, anagram. They seem like random words out of the dictionary, but to people interested in finding secrets hidden, these words will have a different significance altogether. To those with much more important work in their lives and less curiosity, I’ll just say to type these words on google, hit enter and enjoy the lesser perks offered by the search engine. Impressed? Try this one: “Do a barrel roll” (minus the quotes). Voila! The magic of the mischievous coders at Google is before your eyes. And no, these small funny little tricks aren’t exclusive for google only.
Programmers all around the world tend to show their intellectual superiority (okay! Not always) by hiding codes that activate bizarre functions when the users performs specific tasks on their websites or their software. And this practice is not just common to the world of technology, every industry related to media does this.
Such a hidden message or a joke (usually intentional and others which are not are claimed to be!) is what is known as an Easter egg. So here’s a list of such eggs which you might find entertaining in this stressful times of examinations:
The Book of Mozilla
People working in Mozilla, since the beginning, have always believed in a higher power. And like any other group that does, they have their own book from which they quote scriptures about beasts. Now, don’t worry, you won’t find these people screaming on corners of streets about the impending doom, evil and the beasts. They’re silently spreading there messages. To view them and get liberated, all you have to do is type about:mozilla in the url bar of the Mozilla Firefox Web Browser.
The Harlem Shake
The Harlem Shake meme, an internet video phenomenon must have eaten a lot of space on YouTube servers in the early February of 2013 probably because of which it the meme itself got a dedication by the developers at YouTube. To know what it is, just type “Do the Harlem Shake” in the YouTube search bar, put a helmet on, get in the groove, press enter and do the Harlem Shake with YouTube.
Google in 1998
Feeling nostalgic? Visit the version of the search engine from where it all started. You don’t have to browse through archives of the internet to get to the source code to display what Google used to look like in the very beginning. Google respects the curiosity of the young and the memories of the old. Just type “Google in 1998” in the search bar of google.com and you’ll witness the first step of this giant corporation.
The Wikipedia Loop
It is said that every subject began with Philosophy. That’s why the “Ph” in Ph.D. stands for Philosophy. Authors at Wikipedia may not have been able to incorporate philosophy in their every article but they’ve found a very clever way to end them in it. Well, sort of. So, this is how it goes: Go to a random article on Wikipedia and start clicking at the first non-italicized word which is a link. Keep doing this and you’ll always end up with this loop: Philosophy->Reality->Existence->Ontology->Philosophy
The Rube Goldberg of producten.hema.nl
Remember the old Tom and Jerry cartoon in which Tom admires the blue-print for his complex mouse catching trap? Well, if you don’t then this will probably refresh your memory. Go to http://producten.hema.nl/ and hover your mouse over the “jip and janneke bekker” and witness some serious work on flash player.
Feature image credits: http://t3chsmash.com/
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