Archive: Business & Technology

Dr. Digit 'Splains It AllDr. Digit 'Splains It All

If you celebrated Easter last weekend it is likely you painted Easter eggs or had an egg hunt.  But you may be surprised to learn that you probably have Easter eggs that you didn't know you had.  According to the Easter Egg Archive Web site, an Easter egg is 'any any hidden, entertaining thing that a creator hides in their creation only for their own personal reasons.'  Easter eggs are undocumented, hidden, and non obvious, can be seen by anyone who has the same product, non-malicious, and entertaining.


Sofware developers have included Easter eggs since the beginning of personal computing.  For example, did you know that there was a pinball game hidden in Microsoft Word 97?  To access it you had to know the secret steps: open a new document and type the word 'Blue'  Select the word and go to 'Format-> Font.'  Choose bold and the color blue for the font.  Next type one space after the word 'Blue.'  Go to Help-> About.  Now hold down the Ctrl and Shift keys while left clicking the MS Word Icon.  Once the game appears the 'Z' key is for the left flipper and the 'M' key for the right one.  Exit the game with the 'Esc' key.

These days Easter eggs aren't limited to software.  Many are hidden in movie DVDs, TV shows, and art.  One example is on Disk 2 of 'The Simsons' 8th Season DVD.  When you select the extras for 'The Twisted World of Marge Simpson' press the number 9 on your remote to see the hidden content.  It also works on the same DVD when you press '9' in the extras for 'Mountain of Madness.'

Are you a 'Lost' fan?  In the episode "Two for the Road", a flashback takes place at Anna Lucia's precinct.  In the first couple of minutes the parking lot is shown. All of the police cars have numbers on their roofs, the mysterious numbers that recur throughout the series.

Games also have hidden treasures.  In Atari's Flashback 2 turn your system on, then move the joystick up 1, down 9, up 7, and down 2.  A new menu appears with two additional games.  The numbers happen to represent the year Atari was founded, 1972.

Even computer operating systems have Easter eggs hidden in them.  And sometimes they reflect the political outlook of the programs' creators.  If you have Windows XP open the Notepad application and type 'bush hid the facts' (without the quotes).  Save the document -- it doesn't matter what name you use -- and close Notepad.  Now reopen Notepad and open the file: the text has turned into symbols that hide the text you typed.


Or if you are frustrated by Solitaire in XP and you really want to see those cascading cards, just press Alt + Shift + 2.  You will win instantly!

Mac users aren't exempt from the fun.  In OS X load your weather widget.  Either click the dashboard icon or press F12.  Now click the '+' sign in the bottom left corner of the screen -- this loads the widget bar.  Drag it to the Dashboard.  Now comes the fun part: hold down the command (Apple) and option (Alt) buttons while simultaneously clicking the weather symbol on top of the widget and the current city will change to 'Nowhere.'  Each time you repeat the sequence the widget will show a different kind of weather it is capable of displaying.

People have always loved hidden features in media, from hidden messages in novels to the infamous 'Paul is Dead' hoax that claimed playing Beatles records backward yielded clues to the still alive singer's demise.  Countless sites on the Internet are devoted to Easter eggs in software and other media.  They have progressed from obscure secrets that only computer enthusiasts knew about, generally used for crediting the developers, to a wide range of fun features.   So keep your eyes open and you may discover a hidden treasure.

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