The Mystery Of The Google I/O 2011 T-Shirt

Google tends to hide fun little messages in the shirts they pass out at each years Google I/O conference, and this year’s shirt is no exception.

If you’re lookin’ to crack the code yourself, everything you need is in the image up above (larger version here). If you’re just interested in what’s hidden within, take a peek behind the jump for the spoilers.

Alright — so, as you likely assumed, this year’s hidden message is contained in that array of dots and dashes on the back. Given that we’re looking at a message made up of just two unique characters, we can assume it’s one of two things: binary, or morse code.

We counted the number of dots and dashes in there — turns out, it’s not divisible by 8, so it wasn’t likely that it was text converted to binary. So, next guess: it’s Morse Code. Copying the dots and dashes (while considering the line breaks as spaces, or new characters) gives you this:

…. – – .–. –. — — .-.-.- –. .-.. .- ….- -.-. -…. …– —-.

Passed through this here Morse Code translator , the code gives you:

HTTPGOO.GLA4C639

Tada! It’s a URL. Putting all the proper URL punctuation in wherever it made sense, we ended up with a link to http://goo.gl/A4C639, which forwards to this page:

So in the end, the mysterious code on the back of the Google I/O shirt is an invitation to create an avatar of yourself.. wearing the Google I/O shirt. Rad. It’d be more rad if that avatar shirt was only available to those who’d stumbled upon the page (which, as far as we can tell, isn’t the case) — but hey, the fun is in the hunt, right?