Wednesday, April 29, 2015

Rare YouTube Easter Egg Shows TV-Style "Snow" Error Message

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YouTube has unleashed a rare easter egg that shows TV-style “snow” as an error message.

The animated feature, which quietly went live a week or so ago, pops up when you’re trying to watch a live message that’s ended or if you try to load a video and it’s interrupted. When that happened previously, the YouTube error message had the same message — “An error occurred. Please try again later,” against a black background. Matt McLernon, a YouTube rep, says the easter egg was created by a summer intern and was meant to be a “fun homage” to traditional broadcast TV.

Want a way to quickly invoke this error? Watch one of the YouTube live streams at NBCOlympics.com. Press the pause button. You’ll get a message that says “This video is live only. Press play to watch live.” Not only is the background snowy, it also moves with faux-scan lines. Retrolicious.

Though parent company Google is fond of dropping easter eggs, at YouTube they’re rarer. One of the more notable ones was a 2010 feature that let you play the classic game Snake on YouTube by holding the left and up arrow keys on your keyboard while a video is playing or paused. Previously, Google put a button on YouTube videos that played a World Cup-style vuvuzela sound.

Google Tricks and Easter Eggs

Gravity

Enter “Google Gravity” in the search bar. Hit “I’m feeling lucky” (if you have Google Instant enabled, it’s on the right hand side of the suggested searches). Then watch your world fall down.

Askew

Simply search for the word “askew.” We dare you not to tilt your head.

Chuck Norris

Search for the Walker Texas Ranger star, hit I’m Feeling Lucky, and Google will school you in Norrisology.

ASCII

Searching for ASCII art — the kind built out of characters — is about the nerdiest thing you can do. Google salutes you with a special logo.

Recursion

Here’s one for word nerds and philosophy majors. Search for “recursion” and Google asks “did you mean recursion?”

Mentalplex

This one started life as an April Fool’s joke, but is still around at google.com/mentalplex. Baffle your less Internet-savvy family and friends!

Pacman

The Google doodle that launched a thousand lost hours of productivity will live forever at google.com/pacman.

Ninja!

Here’s where Google easter eggs start to get a little more complex. Go to Google Reader, then use your cursor keys thus: up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, B, A. A ninja then pops onto your screen and into your search box. Thankfully, this still works in the new version of Google Reader.

Nessie

Set your iGoogle homepage to the beach theme. Wait until 3:14am (or if you can’t, just move your clock forward). What monster this way comes? Could we be on the shores of Loch Ness?

Flight simulator

This one began life as an easter egg, and became so well-loved that Google incorporated it as a feature in Google Earth. Click on Tools > Enter Flight Simulator, and you’re off and flying around the planet. Bon voyage!