7 great internet easter eggs

1. The Konami code. The infamous code sequence that appears in many video games old and new (↑ ↑ ↓ ↓ ← → ← → B A) has a place on the Internet too. Two sites take advantage of this to yield humorous results. The first, and most recent, is Google Reader. Inputting the code graces your feed source menu with a funny ninja. This trick also works on GameSpot.com. Entering in the code and hitting enter at the end will take you to the cheats section for Contra, the game for the Nintendo Entertainment System for which it's best known.

2. The kitchensink. Open Firefox (2.0 or higher) and type “about kitchensink” (without the quotes) into the address bar. Click Enter and a fully-working kitchen sink should appear in your browser.

3. Watch Star Wars in ASCII. In Windows XP, click Start and choose Run. Type in "telnet towel.blinkenlights.nl" without the quote marks and click OK. You should be able to watch an ASCII art version of the whole "Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope" movie

4. Get a Picasa Teddy. Open Google's Picasa and hold down Ctrl + Shift + Y on your keyboard. A teddy bear wearing a red bowtie will pop up. Keep pressing the key combination to cover your screen with him.

5. Amazon's secret send-off. On the Amazon.com homepage scroll to the bottom until you reach a set of links and click on 'Directory of All Stores'. On the following page, scroll all the way to the bottom again until you see the copyright notice. Roughly one centimetre below the year '1996' in the copyright notice there's a small invisible link. Click it to see a secret web page created in honour one of Amazon's old employees, David Risher.

6. Firefox revelation. In Firefox or any Mozilla-based browser type "about:mozilla" (without the quotation marks) into the address field and you'll be presented with a mystic text.

7. 404 pages. If you type in a URL for a place you're not supposed to go usually yields a boring 404 message but some site creators have chosen to make things a little bit funnier. Smashing Magazine has compiled lists of cool 404 pages here and here, but a great one that changes every time you use it is from 3D Realms. Going to a page not on the site map takes you to a page with a picture of staff members around the office with the colors reversed to look like an old film negative. It changes every time you refresh the page. There's also Spore.com which spells out 404 with animals made using the game's Creature Creator if you go somewhere you're not supposed to