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'Star Trek II' producer talks Ceti Eel, J.J. Abrams, and more (Q&A)

The release of "Star Trek Into Darkness" has not only spurred interest in the "Trek" world in general, but especially in its film daddy, the original Khan-as-villain movie "Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan." While the new film takes quite a few detours, it is full of homages to the earlier work.

Let's look back to 1982. "Star Trek: The Motion Picture" had been released in 1979 and faced a poor critical reception. Paramount, the film's studio, was gun-shy after the movie nearly doubled its original budget, ending up with a $46 million price tag. Nonetheless, plans for a second movie plodded along.

Into this mix of wariness and hope stepped Robert Sallin. With 2,000 commercials to his name, he was primarily a director, but he signed a deal with Paramount to take on producer duties for "Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan." With no script ready, no director on-board, and Paramount keeping a tight clamp on the budget, Sallin had his hands full with steering the film into and through production.

All those trials somehow came out OK in the end. "Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan" is now often viewed among fans as one of the greatest films (if not the greatest) the franchise ever turned out. Crave caught up with Sallin to get a behind-the-scenes view on this iconic movie.… Read more

Star Apps: GigaOM's Om Malik

Award-winning journalist Om Malik leveraged years of tech and business media experience -- senior editor at Forbes.com, senior writer at "Red Herring" and later "Business 2.0," and contributor to "The Wall Street Journal," "The Economist," and "MIT Technology Review" -- to found leading indie tech blog GigaOM, back in 2006.

Offering news and opinion on startups, social media, cloud computing, mobile gadgets, and of course, software, Malik's CNET Blog 100-recognized Web magazine has since spawned numerous conferences such as GigaOM Structure (cloud computing and Internet infrastructure), GigaOM … Read more

Sling, Belkin settle patent dispute over place-shifting tech

Sling Media and Belkin this week reached a settlement in their patent dispute related to place-shifting technology.

Sling on Monday asked the U.S. International Trade Commission to dismiss Belkin from its complaint filed in January.

Sling and Belkin declined to comment Friday.

Sling, a subsidiary of EchoStar, also has filed suit against other rivals, including Monsoon Multimedia. The company has accused its competitors of patent infringement related to technology used in its Slingbox, a device that allows users to watch and control their home television from anywhere. Belkin and Monsoon make products that compete with the Slingbox at lower … Read more

George Takei wins at Amazon reviews, too

Amusing Amazon reviews are an art form. They are delicate flowers of funny that need to be carefully nurtured in order to strike the right balance between absurdity, plausibility, and humor.

George Takei, known as Mr. Sulu on "Star Trek" and Mr. Internet anywhere social media resides, has the magic formula down.

Only slight sleuthing is needed to determine that the "George Takei" leaving reviews on Amazon is the real deal. He also cross-posts them to his official Facebook page. So far, he's only racked up six reviews, but they're good ones. He has tackled products as diverse as the "Best of David Hasselhoff" CD to the Denon AKDL1 Dedicated Link Cable.… Read more

Meet the 23-ton X-Wing, the world's largest Lego model

There's big, then there's really big, and then there's colossal, which might be a good word to use when describing a near 46,000-pound Lego X-Wing that made a triumphant debut Thursday in New York's Times Square.

The full-size replica, about 42 times the size of the Lego "Star Wars" X-Wing (#9493) set available on store shelves, celebrates the debut of Cartoon Network's "The Yoda Chronicles," which premieres on May 29 at 8 p.m. … Read more

Disney making 'Star Wars Rebels,' a new animated show

Disney said today that it has begun production on "Star Wars Rebels," a new animated television series. It will air in 2014, first as a one-hour special, and then will continue as a regular series.

The special will be shown on the Disney Channel, while the series will air first on Disney XD channels globally, Disney said. It will be produced by LucasFilm Animation.

The announcement that production has commenced on "Star Wars Rebels" comes just two months after Disney shut down "Star Wars: The Clone Wars," a popular and long-running cartoon series. What's unclear is whether the announcement of "Star Wars Rebels" will do anything to ease the enmity toward Disney that has sprung up in the wake of the "Clone Wars" shutdown, as well as the closure of LucasArts, the video game arm of LucasFilm. … Read more

Why this old-school Trekkie loves the 'Star Trek' reboots

SPOILERS AHEAD: The new "Star Trek" movies with J.J. Abrams at the helm have turned into commercial successes, but some long-time Trekkies aren't thrilled with the direction the franchise is taking. Check out the Reddit responses to Wil Wheaton's take on Abrams to get an idea of the discussion.

I, for one, am a bit in love with the reboots. Sure, I was suspicious at first. I enjoyed the 2009 "Star Trek" well enough, and thought it clever how it totally wiped out the timeline from the original series and gave itself a new universe to play in for the subsequent films. But it was seeing "Star Trek Into Darkness" yesterday that truly turned me into a fan of the new films. I'm going to tell you why.… Read more

Want a 10-foot-tall painting of 'Star Wars' action figures?

Do you still have your original "Star Wars" action figures? Mine are tucked away in storage, but looking at Rob Burden's artwork makes me want to dig them out.

The San Francisco artist is so obsessed with his old "Star Wars" figures that he does 10-foot-tall oil paintings of them, like "The Birth of a Jedi," above. The works don't portray the characters from the series, but the actual action figures themselves.

Now he's taking his passion to new heights on Kickstarter with a $24,000 campaign to produce two enormous 10x14-foot "Star Wars" canvases. … Read more

Crave Ep. 121: Wake up to a dancing iPhone

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This week on Crave, we take a look at Tim-e, an iPhone dock that wakes you up in the most annoying ways possible. We salute Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield on making space travel cool again, and demonstrate Petswitch, which lets you put your face on your cat's visage. … Read more

Friday Poll: Does 'Star Trek' really trump 'Star Wars?'

Once upon a time, a person could be categorized by the question "Rolling Stones or Beatles?" In geek circles, that question is "'Star Trek' or 'Star Wars?'" There's plenty of crossover, but many fans come down solidly on one side or the other.

Famous geek and astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson made a splash this week by spelling out his "Star Trek" love and lack of passion for "Star Wars" in terms of physics (or lack thereof).

Tyson's opinions certainly spawned some heated discussion, with fans standing up for their favorite … Read more