Written by: Karen Lopez
Wednesday, May 24, 2006 4:53 PM

This recent CNET News.com article about owners of Toyota Prius hacking the control systems of their automobiles started me thinking about hacks, easter eggs, and other mods users make to sofware applications.

It has only been a few years that we modeling tool users have had the ability to change the fonts, backgrounds, colors, and other usability features in our tools.  Before that, we often had to resort to printed material or image capture to highly parts of our models or to get extended features.

I've often wondered if there are easter eggs in any of these products.  From eeggs.com:

What is an "Easter Egg"?

In the context of software (get that Cadbury Bunny out of your head!), an Easter Egg is a hidden feature or novelty that the programmers have put in their software. In general, it is any hidden, entertaining thing that a creator hides in their creation only for their own personal reasons. This can be anything from a hidden list of the developers, to hidden commands, to jokes, to funny animations. You'd be surprised just how many things contain Easter Eggs... just look at the list that has accumulated here!

A true Easter Egg must satisfy the following criteria:

1. Undocumented, Hidden, and Non-Obvious
   An Easter Egg can't be a legitimate feature of a product, or be an obvious part of a storyline. Easter Eggs will usually stand out either because they totally don't fit with their context (like a pinball game in a word processor), or because they have a deeper hidden personal meaning to the creators, so they threw it in for entertainment.
2. Reproducible
   Every user with the same product or combination of products must be able to produce the same result given the instructions. If others can't reproduce an Egg, then it doesn't belong in this archive.
3. Put There by the Creators for Personal Reasons
   The Egg must have been put there on purpose, and furthermore have a personal significance to the creators beyond just making a better product (movie, TV show, software program, etc).
4. Not Malicious
   Easter Eggs are there for fun, not to do damage.
5. ENTERTAINING!
   The most important element... if it's not there for entertainment, it's not an Egg.

I've never seen anyone report an easter egg in a modeling tool...have you?

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