10 more cool internet Easter eggs ... the sequel!

Another list of weird hidden features (or 'Easter eggs' as they’re known) from around the web.

 

Another batch of internet Easter Eggs.

One of my personal favourite posts on this blog was my '10 cool internet Easter eggs' post which lists hidden features and tricks found on the internet such as the YouTube snake, the Nyanit cat and even an update on the end of the world. There are many more hidden Easter eggs found on the internet though, so I thought it was about time I listed another ten cool internet Easter eggs in a post creatively entitled '10 more cool internet Easter eggs ... the sequel!'

1) ASCII Star Wars

Any Star Wars fans should definitely check out this first Easter egg. If you open up DOS (click on the Windows ‘Start’ button, then Run, then type ‘cmd’) then type:

telnet towel.blinkenlights.nl

…you get to watch the entire Star Wars movie illustrated with ASCII text symbols!

"Help us Obi-Wan.  You're our only hope!"

The amount of work that must have gone into recreating this DOS version of Star Wars is extremely impressive and I particularly like the renditions of R2D2 and C3PO. You need an internet connection for it to work, but presumably since you’re currently viewing this webpage that shouldn’t be a problem.

The above instructions should work fine in Windows XP but it's a bit more tricky if you're running Vista (you have to enable the telnet client before the movie will play), so for the benefit of Vista users, or for non-technical minded readers, you can also watch the ASCII text symbol version of Star Wars (also known as asciimation) at the following website:
Watch the entire Star Wars movie illustrated with text symbols!

Moving on from Star Wars to Lego...

2) US Legoland on Google Maps

If you go to the US Legoland on Google Maps, you’ll discover that Google have added a Lego themed Easter egg to their ‘street view’ feature:

Go to the US Legoland on Google Maps

Once you find the US Legoland on Google Maps, grab the orange street view dude (found above the zoom in / zoom out feature) and drop him anywhere in Legoland on the map. You should find that he then transforms into a little Lego man.

Update: Sadly, this no longer seems to work, so it seems that Google must have disabled the Lego Man hidden Easter egg on Google Maps.

Unfortunately this doesn’t work on the UK Legoland in Windsor, but as a consolation you can find The Stig driving a Lego car:

The Stig driving a Lego car at UK Legoland in Windsor

3) Cheat mode for Minesweeper

Easter eggs are everywhere and you can even find one hidden in Minesweeper. Admittedly, technically speaking Minesweeper isn’t the internet so it doesn't really qualify for this list, but it’s a pretty cool little trick to know for anyone who likes to cheat, so I thought I would include it anyway. First, open up Minesweeper and type ‘xyzzy’ then press 'shift' and 'enter' at the same time, and this will initiate the cheat mode. Now when you hover the cursor over any square on the minesweeper board, the top left pixel of your computer screen will change colour.  White means the square is safe to click and black means the square contains a mine. Just to clarify, it’s the top left pixel of your entire screen (not just the minesweeper board) which goes black or white. It’s only one pixel so you need sharp eyesight, but like I say it’s a useful tip to know for any Minesweeper fans who likes cheating.

Update: Apparently, the miserable grumps at Microsoft removed Minesweeper from recent versions of Windows, so obviously this will only work if you have a really old computer which still has Minesweeper installed.

Thumbs up for facebook emoticons.

4) Facebook emoticons

I mentioned in my previous Easter egg post some of the weird languages you can find in the settings on facebook such as upside down language and pirate language. Another noteworthy feature found in facebook is the inclusion of a few cool emoticons you can use when using facebook chat or when sending your facebook friends a message.

The most well known emoticon is of course the smiley which as most people know you can insert into a message by simply typing :) but there are many others:

Type:
:) for a smiley face
<(") for a penguin

(^^^) for a shark
:|] for a robot
:v for a Pacman
(y) for the 'like' thumbs up symbol

You can also insert your profile photo (or in fact anyone's profile photo) into a message by typing your facebook identifier* in double square brackets. For example, to insert my Charles Fudgemuffin profile photo in a message or facebook chat type [[charlesfudgemuffin.1]]

* If you’ve personalised your facebook address then your identifier is simply your chosen name, otherwise this will be the number found in the url address of your facebook profile page. Go to your profile page and check the url address if you need to check what your facebook identifier is.

5) Cute unicorns

The people behind the Adventure Quest Worlds website have hidden a cool Easter egg on their website but you need to enter the Konami code to trigger it. For anyone unfamiliar with the Konami code it’s ‘up up down down left right left right b a.’ Type out the previous sequence (using the cursor keys for up, down, etc) and a cool animated scene will appear involving cute unicorns which meet with an unhappy fate:

Adventure Quest Worlds. Enter the Konami code to awaken the unicorns

Update: Sadly, this is another Easter egg which no longer appears to be active. You'll just have to trust me that it was a really cool animated scene ten years ago when it still worked!

6) The truth is out there

This next one will appeal to any conspiracy theorists out there. If you type ‘illuminati’ backwards and follow it with dot com, i.e. itanimulli.com, you will be taken to the website of the US National Security Agency.

www.itanimulli.com

7) The Book of Mozilla

If you use Internet Explorer or Google Chrome as your browser then you’ll have to temporarily switch to Firefox, as this next internet Easter egg only works in Mozilla Firefox. Anyway, open up Firefox and then in the address box type ‘about:mozilla’ to discover a biblical styled Easter egg.

42.
The meaning of life, the universe and everything.

8) The meaning of life

This next Easter egg might not make much sense to younger internet users, but fans of The Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy by Douglas Adams will appreciate it. It works on Google.com, and if you type ‘What is the meaning of life, the universe and everything?’ (including the quotation marks), the first search result is revealed to be ‘42.’

'What is the meaning of life, the universe and everything?' according to Google.com 

9) One to find for yourself

The next website features a number of cool Easter eggs, but sometimes the fun comes from discovering things for yourself, so I won't say any more...

See if you can find the Easter eggs for yourself on this next website.

10) Google algorithms for misspelled words

Finally, this is one which I love. If you type ‘Charles Fudgemuffin is a fool’ into Google, it responds with the message:

‘Did you mean, ‘Charles Fudgemuffin is cool?’

I’d love to be able to say that it was exclusive to 'Charles Fudgemuffin' but sadly I’m not unique. It also works with any name which includes a double letter so for example it would also work with Charles Lloyd or Charles Hill.

Some people have hypothesised that this is down to Google programming a degree of politeness or pleasantness into their search engine, but in actual fact the real explanation is that it’s to do with the algorithms Google use for coming up with alternative suggestions for misspelled words. You can find a more detailed explanation at the following link:

Explanation into the logic behind Google's alternative suggestions

That's it for this batch of internet Easter eggs. You can find more puzzle themed blog posts below:
A trick crossword for National Puzzle Day
A simple test to determine your ideal career