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Star Trek Online Has People Tweeting In Klingon

Andy Beal — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 18:20:49 +0000

Twitter…the final frontier. These are the voyages of game-maker Atari. Its 2-month mission: to explore strange new social networks, to seek out new geeks and new game players, to boldly go where no ad campaign has gone before!

[Cue intro]

If you’re a Trekkie, you’re probably already well aware of the pending February 2nd launch of the massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) "Star Trek Online." Well, according to ClickZ, its creator, Atari Inc., has decided to reach those that don’t quite go as far as greeting each other with "Live Long and Prosper," by launching a number of social media initiatives to promote the game.

YouTube, Facebook, and secret access codes on game sites, have all been part of Atari’s marketing efforts, but my favorite has to be its Twitter strategy:

For Twitter, the New York-based company has created a microsite-app combo, dubbed "Tweet in Klingon," that allows viewers to type English phrases and have them tweeted in fictional Klingon language.

And you thought Foursquare updates were annoying. Wait ’til people realize they can start tweeting in Klingon. Better yet, they start updating their Foursquare status in Klingon. Race ya to become the Mayor of Adigeon Prime!

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Companies Finding It Hard To Transition To Google

Andy Beal — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 18:49:44 +0000

If you decide to sell your company to Google, keep this in mind: you will be forced to give up the English language and will only be able to speak Klingon.

I kid, I kid…mostly.

Nik Cubrilovic explains that something akin to the above, does actually happen to companies acquired by Google.

One of the first main challenges for a company that has been acquired by Google is adopting the proprietary technology stack used within the company. Google does use Linux and open source, but their core technologies are all internal to the company. I have heard that it can take a new engineer at Google anywhere from 3-6 months to become accustomed to using these tools and services.

Some companies make the transition quickly–YouTube for example–but for others, Google becomes a technological Elephant’s Graveyard–remember MeasureMap or Dodgeball?

Something else for conspiracy theorists. Does Google insist on its own proprietary technology to make it hard for Googlers to leave the company?

And what comes of former Google employees? They spend years building on a technology stack that nobody else is using. How useful are they to a company that is looking for MySQL, Apache, Python, PHP etc. experts?

Things that make you go, "hmmm."

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