Checking into the matter further, he learned that the user holding the @ReadingRainbow Twitter name hadn’t Tweeted anything in over three years. Seeing an opportunity to assume the name, Geordi, I mean Burton, seized the helm and reached out to his fan base:

“Dear @twitter I’m trying to contact the individual who’s sitting on @ReadingRainbow but he hasn’t Tweeted in #3YEARS Can you help? Thanks!”

Over 700 fans rushed to his aid and retweeted the message. This caught Twitters attention and within hours Burton got what he wanted. @ReadingRainbow was his. No mentioned of a reaction from the previous owner.

Perfect World Entertainment and the original developer Cryptic Studios announced today that the Star Trek Online MMO has gone free-to-play.

“We couldn’t be more excited,” Jack Emmert, CEO, Cryptic Studios, Inc., said. “Updating Star Trek Online to the popular free-to-play model removes those barriers of entry that previously kept fans and casual gamers away. Anyone can download and play Star Trek Online at no cost. There’s no better way to see how sitting in the captain’s chair feels.”

With the game going free-to-play, anyone can download the game for free without a retail copy or subscription. All players will be able to enjoy the game’s many features for free. Like all freemium games, however, some content and features must be bought through the online store.

The game tasks players to become a starship captain in the wide expanse of the Star Trek universe. Players can either join the Federation or the Klingon Empire in a persistent online universe. Players can expect to journey to strange new worlds and take part in epic ground and space missions.

The game is completely free to play so there is no subscription or any payment required. New weekly episodes will be updated throughout the game’s lifespan and feature story-based gameplay that will put your captain’s ability to command to the test.

The goal is to become a captain and seek out new life. Players can advance to the maximum level for free. Players can expect to travel to Starfleet Academy, Deep Space Nine, The First City of Qo’noS and many other locations from the series.

The Foundry is the final unique feature that allows players to create and build brand new missions to share with the Star Trek Online community. Players can great ground or space missions to their liking by making custom missions or entire series of episodes.

Star Trek Online is available to download and play for free today at the official Web site.

Cryptic have created a new story trailer for the game in celebration of it going free-to-play.

In fact, while Siri has certainly been a hit, and has proven useful at times, it’s not perfect. Google’s not perfect either, but when it comes to search, Google has a little bit of background in that area. Siri does more than search obviously, but search is a big part of it. Google happens to do more than search too, and being Apple’s main competitor in the smartphone space, it makes sense that Google would be working on its answer to Siri.

Android and Me reports that this is indeed the case, and we might even see it before the year is over (but more realistically within the next couple of months). It’s being developed under the code name Majel, says Android and Me’s Taylor Wimberly. Majel comes from Majel Barrett-Roddenberry, who provided the voice for most of the onboard computer interfaces throughout Star Trek.

The Star Trek theme is one that Google has embraced for quite some time. Just over a year ago, Google acquired Phonetic Arts, a speech synthesis company that generates natural computer speech from samples of recorded voice.

“In Star Trek, they don’t spend a lot of time typing things on keyboards—they just speak to their computers, and the computers speak back,” said Google Speech Technology Manager Mike Cohen at the time. “It’s a more naturalway to communicate, but getting there requires chipping away at a range of hard research problems. We’ve recently made some strides with speech technologies and tools that take voice input: for example, we launched Voice Search, Voice Input and Voice Actions for mobile phones, allowing you to speak web searches, compose emails by voice, ask your phone to play any song, and more. And last year we started automatically transcribing speech to produce captions on YouTube videos.”

But Phonetic Arts comes in when you start talking about computers talking back to you – voice output as opposed to input – kind of like Siri, though Google has offered some things in this area since long before Siri came to the iPhone. Examples include features in Google Translate and Maps Navigation.

A Star Trek mention also came up in a recent video Google put out about the evolution of search.

“The truth is that our users need much more complex answers,” said Google’s Amit Singhal in the video. “My dream has always been to build the Star Trek computer, and in my ideal world, I would be able to walk up to a computer, and say, ‘Hey, what is the best time for me to sow seeds in India, given that monsoon was early this year?’ And once we can answer that question (which we don’t today), people will be looking for answers to even more complex questions. These are all genuine information needs. Genuine questions that if we – Google – can answer, our users will become more knowledgeable and they will be more satisfied in their quest for knowledge.”

Wimberly says the initial release of “Majel” will likely only include Google search queries at first, and it may include some of what is being worked on at Google X (you, know – Google’s secret robot lab). Other, more advanced features like controlling phone actions and apps with natural language, are expected to come later, he says.

I’m sure that won’t stop people from slamming the service when it comes out, proclaiming that it’s not as good as Siri – kind of like what happened with Google Music, even if it has a very legitimate reason for existing (also like Google Music). Android is doing pretty well these days.

The feud between Shatner and Fisher, which WebProNews covered last month, began when Shatner proclaimed Star Trek, the sci-fi television show he starred in, as superior to Star Wars, the sci-fi vehicle that Fisher was a part of. Fisher replied with a playful prod to Shatner’s declaration along with a couple of good-humored jabs at Shatner himself, but then Shatner accelerated the debate into a territory of pure venom with a very invective video he recorded for YouTube. In his video response, he launched insult after insult towards Fisher. Fisher, at least publicly, never dignified his attack with a response.

Although the issue seemed to have simmered down following Shatner’s last response, Takei, who co-starred next to Shatner in Star Trek, has possibly resurrected the feud but with the mission of peace. In a video address released last night, Takei implores Shatner and Fisher to call a truce and focus on the greater threat of “vampires that sparkle and mope and go to high school.”

“Sci-fi fans be warned,” Takei declares, “there are no great stories, characters, or profound life lessons to be had in Twilight.” He follows up with a campy appeal to take up arms against pithy supernatural creatures and hopefully “rid the world of this vampire menace.” The full address can be viewed below:

It remains to be seen if Takei can broker peace among the embattled sci-fi stars, or if they even care enough to continue this dispute. While Takei presents the olive branch between Shatner and Fisher, what I really wanna know is if that painting he’s standing in front of in that video is a portrait of himself. If so, then forget about his “Star” Friends. He wins.

It’s usually easy to dismiss these debates and arguments because the contributors are almost always anonymous. Almost.

This would be a wonderful exception.

William Shatner and Carrie Fisher have been engaged in a spirited (if not a little hostile) disagreement about the age-old argument that occupies many nerd disagreements: Which is better, Star Wars or Star Trek?

Shatner opened his silo first in this interview:

Carrie Fisher then responded to his comments in this interview:

A pretty playful jab, sure, but even that was too much for Shatner to swallow. He slashed back with this wild retort on Monday (it’s so mean at times that it’s kinda awkward):

So anybody wanna comment and speculate how long it takes for one of these two to resort to Godwin’s Law?

[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!

Comments

Star Trek introduced a device known as "the Communicator" that is widely acknowledged to be the precursor of today’s cell phones, so the tie-in sort of makes sense.  Without Kirk, Spock, Bones, and the rest of the gang, it’s doubtful that we’d all have tiny communications devices on us around the clock.

Google has, however, veered a bit away from a "thank you" to Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry and towards blatant self-promotion.  On the Official Gmail Blog, a post tried to teach people about visiting gmail.com in a mobile browser and/or using a phone’s built-in email application.  Not that many readers of the blog probably haven’t figured that out.

Then, on the Official YouTube Blog, a post gave the slightly less obvious suggestion to visit m.youtube.com.

More advice should follow between now and the end of Friday.  We’ll check back in if anything of interest is shared, and in the meantime, just leave you to remember a great old series.

No official link between those two events has been made; we cite them as they happened chronologically. However, we have noticed CBS pulling a little sleight of hand with this unhappy change.

On December 14th, the former production team posted this message on StarTrek.com’s News section:

Goodbye from the STARTREK.COM Team

Sadly, we must report that CBS Interactive organization is being restructured, and the production team that brings you the STARTREK.COM site has been eliminated. Effective immediately.

We don’t know the ultimate fate of this site, which has served millions of Star Trek fans for the last thirteen years.

If you have comments, please send them to editor @ startrek.com – we hope someone at CBS will read them.

Thank you for your loyal fandom over the years. It has been a pleasure to serve you.

When we contacted CBS for a comment about this change, we received a statement about the changes being planned within StarTrek.com by CBS Interactive. The text of the statement also appears on StarTrek.com at this link.

The URL from that link is the same URL that contained the farewell message from the production team, the message we reproduced earlier. That earlier post has been cached in Yahoo’s search engine, and we have kept a copy too.

CBS Interactive has full rights to do as it wishes with its site and its employees. The right to do something doesn’t always fully consider the wisdom of doing so.

It’s obvious from the earlier post the entire team had been fired on short notice. Was Strike Trek the catalyst for this change?

People tend to not burn bridges in Hollywood, so we’ll likely never know. Unless they post something in the comments below (hint hint).

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