Was it just me?
After finishing one game and clicking on returning to images i ended up with an image search page with the search term as "Budgerigar"...An interesting looking bird.
If intentional, any specific significance?
Do a Google Image search for "atari breakout"
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Re: Do a Google Image search for "atari breakout"
#22Was it just me? After finishing one game and clicking on returning to images i ended up with an image search page with the search term as "Budgerigar"...An interesting looking bird. If intentional, any specific significance?
I got "jellyfish." I think it might just be interesting picture searches from a list.
Re: Do a Google Image search for "atari breakout"
#23Their Pac-Man Doodle allegedly caused ~5million lost hours of productivity, I look forward to seeing how much this one racks up :)
Re: Do a Google Image search for "atari breakout"
#24If you screen is small enough, your paddle ends up above the images. (I tried this with Firefox 20.0.1)
Re: Do a Google Image search for "atari breakout"
#25This stuff is both great and depressing. The problem is that some companies, like Google, 37signals, etc. let their workers do these kinds of projects. Yes, some of them will bring those companies more customers, but the reality is that it's not clear if the hours put into this type of thing will ever pay off. Despite that, these companies can afford to have 20% time, or whatever it is, and let their employees mess around.
What makes me sad about this is how this kind of stuff is perceived by the rest of the community. People seem to follow the cargo cult of "Google has 20% time, so should we", thinking that it's the 20% time that makes Google special. I think copying this behavior until you are flush with cash is dangerous. I tried to implement it with the previous team I ran and it was more or less a disaster. It became an entitlement which you couldn't take away, but did not produce any direct or even indirect positive results no matter how we spun it. Productivity actually suffered as a result, while the 20% projects were completely unusable.
Has any startup been able to get away with this kind of thing, and if so how did you do it?
Edit: I should add that my previous team was a mess on many levels. While we had brilliant individuals, getting the company to move in lockstep in one direction was close to impossible, so there are many confounding factors to my experience. Perhaps a happy team that hadn't been terrorized by the upper management for a year and a half would have done better.
Re: Do a Google Image search for "atari breakout"
#26Its truly awkward and surprising that google continues to have time for easter eggs like this one, but yet continue to sunset/kill valuable projects like Reader and others because there is noone at their organisation to maintain the codebase.
Re: Do a Google Image search for "atari breakout"
#27Its truly awkward and surprising that google continues to have time for easter eggs like this one, but yet continue to sunset/kill valuable projects like Reader and others because there is noone at their organisation to maintain the codebase.
Hey HN, let's get it all out of our system in replies to joering2! Who here is still frustrated about Google killing off Reader, but hasn't yet commented about it on an unrelated story? Vent on!
Re: Do a Google Image search for "atari breakout"
#28Its truly awkward and surprising that google continues to have time for easter eggs like this one, but yet continue to sunset/kill valuable projects like Reader and others because there is noone at their organisation to maintain the codebase.
Hey HN, let's get it all out of our system in replies to joering2! Who here is still frustrated about Google killing off Reader, but hasn't yet commented about it on an unrelated story? Vent on!
Yeah, it's almost like Google had a reason for shuttering Reader that is almost completely unlike any other product they offer. If they close the unprofitable Reader, obviously the massively profitable [insert product here] will be next!
Re: Do a Google Image search for "atari breakout"
#29I'd rather them support their existing products than create this.
Re: Do a Google Image search for "atari breakout"
#30This stuff is both great and depressing. The problem is that some companies, like Google, 37signals, etc. let their workers do these kinds of projects. Yes, some of them will bring those companies more customers, but the reality is that it's not clear if the hours put into this type of thing will ever pay off. Despite that, these companies can afford to have 20% time, or whatever it is, and let their employees mess a…
This is not new, in the 1950s HP and 3M employees had respectively 10% and 15% time. The post-it was invented during this 15% time at 3M.
http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2012/08/today-is-goof-off-a...