Easter Eggs in Web Sites?

cwikla asks: "Back in the .COM days, I worked at eGroups, now owned by a larger Company. During my time I added a couple of easter eggs to the site, which I was reminded of while watching Being John Malkovich this weekend. I checked, and ones sort of still there. If you append malkovich=1 to a message URL it would turn the message into 'malkovich' mode. It sort of still works, but over time I guess the code has been a changin' so it's kind of spotty. Oh, there are others that still are in there, but where's the fun of telling all the secrets? Any other folks done anything equivalent, especially on mainstream sites?"

Comments

I've done this before for copyright reasons

[Anonymous Coward]

I would append a url string like ....cgi?author=who

and the page would parse out my contact info. I would use this for portfolio pieces when demoing new clients. It just proved that you worked on it.

Background Images and Webcams

[Marasmus]

Heh, my favorite was on black-background pages, having a random background image with an embossed super-dark-grey color... so only people in 16bit+ color COULD see it, if the brightness and contrast was high enough.. and once they did see it, it'd still be hard to discern. :)

I remember putting a little easter egg into an undisclosed "mature webcam site" that would bring up the webcam of the NOC... I'm sure that nearly 3 years later it's gone, though... especially considering that the webcam of the NOC has changed IPs. :(

Every site I built from 95-99

[CDWert]

Every site, or more specifically interesting component I built was egged.

I did this for 2 reasons, 1 company I worked at, my MGR had a VERY bad habbit of claiming work was his, he would do a search and replace on Our names with his own....schmuck, SO, I would easter egg a cgi into it for "Author and Verion control"
Lol....It basically said it was built by me when and what cool stuff it did.

The second reason was Job Hunting, nothing like bringing up a killer site and being able to PROVE you were the constructor. Worked like a charm every time. Or if I was a company or two down the road from something of note I built, I could prove it was mine.

I started doing this in the early 90's when a lot of applications we were writing were for exclusive distribution and branding by third parties, who were never going to , or expected to give credit, of course they still graced my resumes....ONCE I had a company get contacted, they claimed it was all written in house, and I was lying about having ever worked on the app, NOW I can actually understand this , it was a finacial app and the thought of eggs or backdoors must have been scarry, I got called on it in my secnd interview. I explained why the company lied about my involvment and promplty offered PROOF of my involvment on particuar modules....I got the job.....:)

I still do it to some extent although not as clandestine or ego-centric. I proved myself to those in the area a loooonnng time ago. But its cool that over half the site I put up are still up in their original form and doing well, most are ecommerce site, and their eggs are still there :) Not backdoors mind you, just "Author Control's" :)

If code goes under the proper review channels, as it should before release this should never happen, funny thing is you have guys in charge of this stuff like me who then add it :)

But then again , on a smaller site that then gets gobbled by a 800lb gorilla you may see this, I guess If Ive done it, the author has done it and as many slashdotters Ive seen have done it .....how many egged sites are out there ?

Easter eggs in my software

[PolyDwarf]

In the software I'm writing (Windows app), we've put in an easter egg that brings up a picture of one of the guy's dog (Yorkshire terrier that he absolutely loves) with an algorithm to animate flames superimposed on the picture, to achieve a burning dog effect.
How did you get there?
Up-Up-Down-Down-Left-Right-Left-Right-B-A- Return

(Up, Down, Left, Right being the arrow keys... No start key, so we had to go with return).

PHP4 Easter Egg

[N8F8]

Append "?=PHPE9568F36-D428-11d2-A769-00AA001ACF42" to the end of any php page running PHP$ gives a goofy picture of one of the PHP developers.

Slashdot, was Re:HTTP header

[babbage]

% lwp-request -m HEAD http://slashdot.org/ | grep '^X-'
X-Fry: I'm never gonna get used to the thirty-first century. Caffeinated bacon?
X-Powered-By: Slash 2.003000

% lwp-request -m HEAD http://slashdot.org/ | grep '^X-'
X-Bender: Bite my shiny, metal ass!
X-Powered-By: Slash 2.003000

% lwp-request -m HEAD http://slashdot.org/ | grep '^X-'
X-Bender: Like most of life's problems, this one can be solved with bending.
X-Powered-By: Slash 2.003000

% lwp-request -m HEAD http://slashdot.org/ | grep '^X-'
X-Bender: There's nothing wrong with murder, just as long as you let Bender whet his beak.
X-Powered-By: Slash 2.003000

% lwp-request -m HEAD http://slashdot.org/ | grep '^X-'
X-Fry: No, no, I was just picking my nose.
X-Powered-By: Slash 2.003000

Is this a Slashdot specific hack, or does the publically available version of it do the same thing?