Trek

Beam -- er, stream -- me up, Scotty. And do it via Facebook.

The social network is powering up its Facebook Live site Friday evening to give Trekkies, Trekkers, and Trekyamacallits of all stripes the chance to transport the original Mr. Sulu into their living room -- along with J.J. Abrams, director of the soon-to-be-released Trek flick, "Star Trek: Into Darkness."… Read more

If Starfleet Academy has a Marketing 101 class, these commercials must surely be on the syllabus.

Twice in recent days, Earth's ad agencies have dispatched officers of the "Star Trek" franchise on missions not to seek out new worlds, but to sell new products.

First came a video clip from PC maker Acer using clips from the imminent "Star Trek Into Darkness," docking soon in a movie theater near you, to pump up the excitement for its new flagship Aspire R7.

Then Audi flew into view with a two-minute Spock vs. Spock spiel for its … Read more

It's hard being an old Vulcan.

Younger beings come along and just want to vulcanize you.

Old Vulcans have it so bad they drive Mercedes. Young ones, quite naturally, drive an Audi.

These aren't the musings of an addled mind; it's the premise of a new Audi ad. Here we have old Spock, Leonard Nimoy, and young Spock, Zachary Quinto, challenging each other. Yes, they will race each other to the golf club -- loser buys lunch. (Do not attempt.)

Quinto has a very fancy Audi S7. Spock is slumming it in an old guy's Mercedes. … Read more

Huston Huddleston is playing a seminal role in the "Star Trek" universe right now. It's OK if you don't recognize his name. He didn't appear in any of the television shows. He hasn't been on-screen or working behind the scenes of any of the movies. He is, however, captaining a massive project that, when finished, will be a source of delight to "Star Trek" fans everywhere. He's rebuilding the bridge of the Enterprise.

In late 2011, Huddleston was working above a Paramount office in Hollywood, confessing to a colleague that he would never be able to turn his living room into an Enterprise bridge. "Be careful what you wish for," his colleague said.

"He took me to a warehouse that had a Paramount-built Enterprise D Bridge from "Star Trek: The Next Generation," made in 1997 for display (after the original had been destroyed), that sat outside for five years and was about to be destroyed," Huddleston tells Crave.… Read more

If you're looking to attract attention, setting a Guinness World Record is probably a good way to start.

That was the goal -- attracting attention, that is -- for a group of IBM Research scientists who recently set out to make what turned out be the Guinness World Record-certified smallest stop-motion film ever.

Called "A Boy and His Atom," the animated film features a small boy having a good old time as he bounces around, playing catch, and dancing. The twist? The film was shot at the atomic level and features 130 atoms that were painstakingly placed, atom by atom, as the researchers shot 250 individual frames. The images were created at a temperature of negative 268 degrees Celsius and were magnified 100 million times. … Read more

The Improvised Star Trek podcast has recorded in Klingon what is perhaps the most twee love song ever written: Sixpence None the Richer's "Kiss Me."

OK, so we may have lied a little. We don't think it's actually possible to make Klingon sound "cute," never mind "cutesy." This video is hard evidence. Sixpence None the Richer's "Kiss Me" is possibly the cutesiest romance pop song written (although, feel free to disagree in the comments). In Klingon, it sounds like a mouthful of glitter-sprinkled gravel. … Read more

We've seen a number of drop-dead beautiful watches this week from Baselworld 2013, but meanwhile watchmaker MB&F has introduced this delightful spaceship that plays music.

The Musicmachine, part of the brand's Performance Art series, is a music box that plays your favorite melodies from science fiction and classic rock on rotating cylinders.

Produced with high-end music box maker Reuge, the 18-inch-long craft has a walnut sound amplification chamber that doubles as a fuselage, and two aluminum outriggers. The two music-playing brass cylinders are powered by mainsprings wound by turning two attached propellers. Each cylinder has 72 notes per comb. … Read more

A new enterprise was born today. The Trek Initiative brings together wiki host company Wikia and Roddenberry Entertainment, the creators of "Star Trek," in a brave new Web site dedicated to offering fans a home planet on the Internet. It offers communities for fan interaction, fan fiction, fan films, and rare images from the Roddenberry Entertainment archives.

Hard-core Trekkies will particularly enjoy a 55-minute audio clip of Gene Roddenberry discussing his motivations for "Star Trek" and his views on the future of humanity. The "Star Trek" franchise is currently under the ownership of CBS, publisher of CNET.… Read more

In advance of a planned May 3 press conference, PC maker Acer is teasing a new laptop as part of a tie-in with the upcoming film "Star Trek Into Darkness."

In the (somewhat cheesy) video, clips from the film are intercut with rendered images of what looks like a massive new laptop. Separately, Acer says this is going to be a "unique" laptop that "approaches touch and type in a new way."

As seen in the video above and these screenshots, this unnamed laptop has an unusual hinge that pivots the entire lid out, … Read more