User:Lexein/data

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 * This is not a Wikipedia article. It is a userspace draft, intended to be developed as time permits.

Easter Egg Archive (eeggs.com) is a website founded in 1995, owned and operated by David and Annette Wolf, which serves as a growing catalog and rating system of "Easter eggs", hidden features contained in software, hardware, and several varieties of media.

Features
The Archive describes Easter Eggs as:
 * "Any amusing tidbit that creators hid in their creations. They could be in computer software, movies, music, art, books, or even your watch. There are thousands of them, and they can be quite entertaining, if you know where to look."

The site narrows the definition of "true eggs" as features which have the following characteristics: "Undocumented, hidden, and non-obvious, Reproducible, Put there by the creators for personal reasons, Not malicious, and Entertaining". Eggs are submitted by registered users after first passing a screening form in which the user certifies that the egg meets the criteria. The owners/editors "make a best effort to eliminate false and harmful instructions", check entries for functionality, and post them "usually within a week", notifying users by email. Wolf is reported to test eggs "on his own machines to be sure they exist." Published items can be rated by registered users, who can also suggest corrections to items.

Management
The Wolfs graduated together from the University of Washington. . David Wolf received a Master's degree in Computer Science from Stanford University and held positions at Active Voice, Intel's Data Security group,, LiveWeb, BeComm, and later Amazon.com.

David's work at LiveWeb formed the basis of a chapter on implementing a database-driven retail application in Using Javascript (1997), by Mark C. Reynolds et. al.

History
Wolf writes that the Easter Egg Archive website was established in 1995 "to experiment with Netscape's new frames feature", on a University of Washington server while he was a student there; its web address was for the University server in 1997. The domain "eeggs.com" was registered in August 1997. In 1997, Wolf wrote Easter Eggs: Software Surprises, based on the website, under his former last name, Nagy-Farkas, which he changed around 1999. The book included eggs, and "explor[ed] the reasons behind eggs and interviews with those who placed them in software."

In 2008, the site listed "over 5000" software and videogame eggs, according to TechRepublic. In 2009, Lifehacker reported that the site had "over 13,000" total eggs.

Reception
A 1997 summary at Refdesk.com made note of the volume of new submissions to the site's "large sorted-by-application collection of eggs." In a 1999 review of the site, it was rated 19/25: "excellent" content and layout, with points deducted mainly for lack of images. In another newspaper article that year, the site was described as "perhaps the Web's most comprehensive guide to Easter Eggs".

In 2003, the site was cited as holding a "master list" of eggs by Ed Skoudis, author of Malware: Fighting Malicious Code.

Most years around the Easter religious holiday, eeggs.com is mentioned in news media stories about virtual Easter eggs and other software issues.
 * 1997
 * 1999
 * 2002
 * 2005 Interviewed on NPR. (long list of citations incl NYT & etc)
 * 2009