Easter Eggs

An Easter egg in a software program is a hidden surprise. Easter eggs are usually activated when a user enters a sequence of commands. Easter eggs could be an animation or other special feature. There are plenty of Easter eggs in the Palm Operating System. Students love revealing these Palm OS 5 Easter eggs (as posted here March 2005):

Guys in Suits:
Start the Giraffe game and place your stylus in the lower right corner. Then press the up button. You'll see a photo of two people in suits!

A Real Easter Egg:
Go into Prefs and select Power. Draw a small circle with your stylus in the lower right corner of the screen (it usually takes a couple tries). A small egg will appear!

Fiery Credits:
With the Easter egg showing, tap Home. Select the Options menu and choose About Applications. Hold the Down button while you tap OK. Repeat the process of choosing About Applications, holding the Down button, and tapping OK two more times. Flaming credits will appear on the third try, but you must keep holding the Down button.

Taxi Cab:
Be sure the Easter egg is showing in the Power preferences. Next, in any application, hold the Down button while drawing a line from the middle of the Graffiti area to the left edge of the screen (between the Home and Menu buttons). A taxi will drive across your screen!

Inchworm:
Go into Prefs and select Power. Using Graffiti, enter a pound sign (#). Wait ten seconds and an inchworm will make its way across your screen!

Windows Mobile handhelds don't seem to have these kinds of Easter eggs. However, take a look at the Egg Heaven 2000 site. It's the place that catalogs Easter eggs in handhelds, Windows, Macintosh, DVDs, games, and more.

After finding surprises in their handhelds (or elsewhere), try asking students what Easter eggs they would leave for others if they created a computer program. How would someone find the egg? What would it show?

Although it's not a hidden surprise, you may also be interested in Easter Eggs 2002. It is a Palm puzzle game where you try to change all of the eggs on the screen to the same color. Enjoy!