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Beyond the barrel roll: Google's Easter eggs
Google Earth has a built-in flight simulator. It helpfully offers to start you out at Kathmandu for some exciting views of the Himalayan mountains.
(Credit: screenshot by Stephen Shankland/CNET)
The Google "do a barrel roll" search caught plenty of attention this week--but it's only one of many Easter eggs the Internet giant has hidden around the Web.
The company has been doing things its own, often nerdy way for years--basing its IPO price on e, the base of natural logarithms, for example, or showing pi in the sky at 3:14 a.m. with the right iGoogle theme. Also popping up are references to classic video games, science fiction books, and Lego.
It's a nice touch that gives a bit of personality to a company that has grown to become an Internet juggernaut of formidable influence. Some Easter eggs have come and gone--the Google Maps "pegman" mascot donning a tie-dye shirt when placed on Telegraph Avenue in Berkeley, for example, or the moon being made of green cheese. But many more live on.
Google's whimsical Easter eggs (screenshots)
Searching for "do a barrel roll" at Google--or for "z or r twice" produces a dynamically spinning view of the search site.
Google Maps has creative solutions for some navigational difficulties. One is its advice to take a jet ski from China to Japan.
A Google search for tilt or askew yields an appropriately off-kilter view of the search site.
Ask Google the answer to the question of life, the universe, and everything and, in a tribute to "A Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy," you'll get the number 42.
Google Earth has a built-in flight simulator. It helpfully offers to start you out at Kathmandu for some exciting views of the Himalayan mountains.
To load the Google Earth flight simulator, type Ctrl-Alt A or Cmd-Opt A on a Mac. You'll have your choice of planes. Flying is another matter altogether, but the place to get started if you lack a joystick is the Google Earth keyboard controls help page.
If you open a YouTube video, click in the frame right after the video starts loading, then immediately type one of the keyboard's arrow keys, you can start playing a game of snakey on the video as it plays. Don't run into the walls!
The Google Gravity chrome experiment by Mr. Doob is amusing--especially since the search page still works, with new search results piling up.
ASCII art is imagery made of monospaced letters named after the storied character encoding scheme. Search for ASCII art on Google and you get a fittingly adapted Google logo.
Google Maps' pegman character, used to signify the perspective of the street view feature, changes on special occasions. And when he shows up at Legoland in Carlsbad, Calif., he turns into a Lego character.
How often does the world experience a blue moon? Google Calculator results in Google search knows and will tell you.
Search for anagram at Google and the top result is, in fact, an anagram.
Google Reader comes with a Ninja Easter egg. To get a look, type the classic video game cheat code: up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, B, A.
Buccaneers or those sailing under a letter of marque might feel more comfortable with Google's Pirate interface. There's one for the Muppets' Swedish Chef, too.
Want to experience Google through a l33t interface? Try the Google Hacker page.
Google comes with a Pig Latin interface if you want it.
Self-reference is just the sort of mathematical amusement that entertains Google nerds. Searching for "recursion" suggests that perhaps you meant to search for "recursion."
This isn't a Google Easter egg, and maybe isn't even an Easter egg at all. Instead it's with the sarcasm-laden Let Me Google That For You site, which people can use when others ask them silly questions easily answered with a search engine. This particular cached LMGTFY page, though, sets things off in an unending loop of reloading.
Article from: http://news.cnet.com/8301-30685_3-57318776-264/beyond-the-barrel-roll-googles-easter-eggs/
Google Earth has a built-in flight simulator. It helpfully offers to start you out at Kathmandu for some exciting views of the Himalayan mountains.
(Credit: screenshot by Stephen Shankland/CNET)
The Google "do a barrel roll" search caught plenty of attention this week--but it's only one of many Easter eggs the Internet giant has hidden around the Web.
The company has been doing things its own, often nerdy way for years--basing its IPO price on e, the base of natural logarithms, for example, or showing pi in the sky at 3:14 a.m. with the right iGoogle theme. Also popping up are references to classic video games, science fiction books, and Lego.
It's a nice touch that gives a bit of personality to a company that has grown to become an Internet juggernaut of formidable influence. Some Easter eggs have come and gone--the Google Maps "pegman" mascot donning a tie-dye shirt when placed on Telegraph Avenue in Berkeley, for example, or the moon being made of green cheese. But many more live on.
Google's whimsical Easter eggs (screenshots)
Searching for "do a barrel roll" at Google--or for "z or r twice" produces a dynamically spinning view of the search site.
Google Maps has creative solutions for some navigational difficulties. One is its advice to take a jet ski from China to Japan.
A Google search for tilt or askew yields an appropriately off-kilter view of the search site.
Ask Google the answer to the question of life, the universe, and everything and, in a tribute to "A Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy," you'll get the number 42.
Google Earth has a built-in flight simulator. It helpfully offers to start you out at Kathmandu for some exciting views of the Himalayan mountains.
To load the Google Earth flight simulator, type Ctrl-Alt A or Cmd-Opt A on a Mac. You'll have your choice of planes. Flying is another matter altogether, but the place to get started if you lack a joystick is the Google Earth keyboard controls help page.
If you open a YouTube video, click in the frame right after the video starts loading, then immediately type one of the keyboard's arrow keys, you can start playing a game of snakey on the video as it plays. Don't run into the walls!
The Google Gravity chrome experiment by Mr. Doob is amusing--especially since the search page still works, with new search results piling up.
ASCII art is imagery made of monospaced letters named after the storied character encoding scheme. Search for ASCII art on Google and you get a fittingly adapted Google logo.
Google Maps' pegman character, used to signify the perspective of the street view feature, changes on special occasions. And when he shows up at Legoland in Carlsbad, Calif., he turns into a Lego character.
How often does the world experience a blue moon? Google Calculator results in Google search knows and will tell you.
Search for anagram at Google and the top result is, in fact, an anagram.
Google Reader comes with a Ninja Easter egg. To get a look, type the classic video game cheat code: up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, B, A.
Buccaneers or those sailing under a letter of marque might feel more comfortable with Google's Pirate interface. There's one for the Muppets' Swedish Chef, too.
Want to experience Google through a l33t interface? Try the Google Hacker page.
Google comes with a Pig Latin interface if you want it.
Self-reference is just the sort of mathematical amusement that entertains Google nerds. Searching for "recursion" suggests that perhaps you meant to search for "recursion."
This isn't a Google Easter egg, and maybe isn't even an Easter egg at all. Instead it's with the sarcasm-laden Let Me Google That For You site, which people can use when others ask them silly questions easily answered with a search engine. This particular cached LMGTFY page, though, sets things off in an unending loop of reloading.
Article from: http://news.cnet.com/8301-30685_3-57318776-264/beyond-the-barrel-roll-googles-easter-eggs/
