A virtual Easter egg is an intentional hidden message or feature in an object such as a movie, book, CD, DVD, computer program or video game. Virtual Easter eggs can be simple animations, messages such as the programmer's name, undocumented features, elaborate built-in extras in DVDs or hidden tracks in music CDs. Most eggs are triggered by a set of commands within the product.

Let's try to discover some Easter eggs. What happens when you...

1.

1. Open Word
2. Start a new document
3. Type =rand(4,5) anywhere on the document
4. Press Enter

 

2.

1. Open Word
2. Start a new document
3. Select Help > About
4. Hold down Ctrl, Alt, Shift
5. With the left mouse button, click the bottom line

  

3.

1. Open Word
2. Go to Choose assistant
3. Have the assistant say the tip of the day at start-up
4. Restart Word
5. Repeat until you find an unusual message. What does it say?

  

4.

1. Open Notepad
2. Type Bush hid the facts
3. Save it with any file name as a .TXT file
4. Close it, and re-open it

  

5.

1. Open Mozilla Firefox
2. Type about:mozilla in the address bar
3. Press Enter

  

6.

1. Open Nero Burning rom
2. Click on Help > About
3. Double click on any point of the image
4. Double click again several times

  

7.

1. Open WinRAR
2. Select Help
3. Select About WinRAR
4. Click on the books

 

8.

1. Open Photoshop
2. Hold down Ctrl + Alt
3. Click the small arrow on the layer palette
4. Choose layer option

 

9.

1. Open Dreamweaver
2. open menu Commands > Create Web Photo Album
3. Type into Title play a game

  

10.

1. Go to www.google.com
2. Type the word Google backwards in the search box
3. Click on I'm feeling lucky

 

11.

1. Go to www.google.com
2. Type Google l33t in the search box
3. Click on I'm feeling lucky

  

12.

1. Go to www.google.com
2. Type Google easter egg in the search box
3. Click on I'm feeling lucky

 

Discover more easter eggs in software, DVDs, music CDs at www.eeggs.com and www.eggheaven.com/eggs/



Núria Brichs
nbrichs@xtec.cat