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Easter Eggs

Contrary to popular belief, Easter eggs are not merely seasonal cheer for children. 'Hidden' in Easter eggs is another implication - instances and tidbits that creators hide in their products. If you knew where to look, you would find Easter eggs in software, books, movies. And sometimes even in your wristwatch.

In IT parlance, Easter eggs are essentially undocumented pieces of code hidden in operating systems, applications, Web browsers, or games. All you have to do to uncover these hidden code is key in a sequence, change some basic settings, click on certain icons or edit a particular file. With the right combination, you could stumble across a variety of experiences. Starting from the names of the developers to multimedia presentations and even games. With no real practical purpose, Easter eggs are entertaining and fun. We've put together some of our favourites from popular software titles.

Windows 95
For those of you still loyal to Windows 95, this egg displays a multimedia presentation on the names of the developers, song included. The program runs for about 15 minutes.

Your Directions: Right-click the Desktop and select a new folder. Name the folder with this text - "and now, the moment you've all been waiting for". Next, right-click the folder, and Rename the file as - "we proudly present for your viewing pleasure". Right-click the folder and Rename the file again to - "The Microsoft Windows 95 Product Team!". Now double-click to open the folder and activate the egg.

Office 97
Just expect a splash screen.

Your Directions: Load the Microsoft Office 97 Shortcut Bar. You will find it in the Microsoft Office directory. If it's not available here, install it by running setup.exe on your Office 97 CD-ROM again. Once loaded, click on the Office 97 icon and select About Microsoft Office. Press Ctrl-Alt-Shift and double-click the puzzle piece.

Excel 97
With DirectX drivers installed on your system, this easter egg offers a grand flight simulator. Without DirectX, all you will get is an animated list of the development team.

Your Directions: Create a new spreadsheet and press F5. Then key in X97:L97, Enter and press the Tab key. Press Ctrl-Shift and click on Chart Wizard on the toolbar. Now start flying around using the mouse. To move forward, use the right button and left for taking you in reverse.

Netscape Navigator
Mozilla, a cartoon dinosaur and Netscape's almost extinct mascot is still lurking in Easter eggs.

Your Directions: Type about:mozilla in the Location box and press Enter.

PowerPoint 97
For a list of programmers.

Your Clues: Go to Help and About Microsoft PowerPoint. Then click on the PowerPoint icon in the dialog box.

Excel 2000
Play a spy hunter like game.

Your directions: For this Easter Egg to work, you need DirectX. Open a spreadsheet in Excel 2000 and in the file menu, Save As Web Page. Next select Publish Sheet and Add Interactivity. Save this to a htm page. Open Internet Explorer in this htm page, with Excel being in the middle of the page. Go down to row 2000, column WC and select this combination. Then press Shift+Crtl+Alt and click the Office logo in the upper-left corner.

Drive using the arrow keys, use space to fire, O to drop oil slicks and H for headlights when it's dark.

Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.0
Check out the new options.

Your Directions: Open IE5 and in the menu, go to Tools/Internet Options/General/Languages. Add ie-ee and click OK. Then Move Up "User Defined [ie-ee]", so that it appears at the top of the list. Click on the Search icon to display the side search menu. Select Previous Searches.

Win Me
Displays a screen saver, which lists all the volcanoes in the US Northwest, the location of Microsoft.

Your Directions: Go to display properties and click on the screen saver tab. Then click on Properties and change name to 'volcano'.

PalmOS v2
Watch an Easter egg and a Taxi.

Your Directions: There's also an Easter Egg for users of the PalmOS v2. Go to Preferences, General Tab and draw a small circle above the calculator silk-screen button, in a counter-clockwise fashion. Press the Page Down button and streak a line from the middle of the Graffitti input area to the left of the screen. This should fall between the applications and menu silkscreen buttons. Users have reported that the egg also works with OS 3.x.

Radhika Peddi
[email protected]

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