A Google Street View Of Justice

I work for a multimedia department of a bigger software company; I am a UI designer for small apps and websites. I also do a bit of programming and scripting; it’s nothing too fancy, but good enough to create a nice presentation.

I am asked to create a program showing some locations on maps provided by our client. In short, I create an extremely basic version of Google Maps. In beta while waiting for the real maps, I start with a map of a non-existing country with very weird city names. It will appear if you type a very specific phrase in the search bar. After beta-testing, I find it too clever and funny to remove it — and it is not offending at all, just silly.

Later, my department is dissolved during a major reorganisation. It is a very big mess, and our client smells an opportunity to save some money. He actually claims we never created the program. The company has lost all track of us creating it during the reorganisation, so months later my old manager calls me at my new job to ask if I can remember creating the app.

Even on the phone I can hear her grin from ear to ear when I tell her how she can bring up this childish easter-egg country nobody knows about but me. Since it is already a court case, you could say the weird map is a pretty awesome silent witness.