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Ask HN: Do you use easter eggs in your websites/software/etc?

6 points by ftfish ↗ HN
Do you guys add easter eggs to your websites/web apps/software/etc?

* if you go on my personal website and search my projects for certain keywords ("about", "hello", my name and some others), you will see a little description of my site

* at my previous job I created some JavaScript automation tools which had a few easter eggs, for example this one product search tool would open a random Youtube video from a list of songs that I liked if you searched for my name

* another "app" I made used code names based on names of artists, musicians, political activists etc; if you clicked a specific "empty" area in the toolbar, a website would open that explained where the code name comes from, for example My Awesome Toolbar v2.0 - Emma would open a Google search for Emma Goldman or MAT v4.2 - Kim would open a Youtube page with a Pixies song (Kim as in Kim Deal)

I don't think any of my colleagues ever discovered the easter eggs, but it was still fun adding them.

3 comments

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goldenkey
If you're basket of features is full, then add easter eggs. It's all about expected value. Most adults don't care about things like easter eggs, they just want a high quality product/service that ~tickles~ them well.

Relatively speaking, easter eggs go better and are more par for the course with less serious products like games, google Carmack easter eggs for some good reading :-)

dfeltey
Not really my project, but racket, specifically DrRacket has a handful of easter eggs for various holidays and the birthdays of core developers.
ftfish
Here's an interesting idea:

"I'm a big fan of the Konami code jQuery plugin. On my site, when you put it in you get a better deal on your VPS."

Not sure if I should include the guy's website, but I'm keeping this in mind for the next time I'll be ordering something online.