Lenovo, a Chinese computer brand that bought out IBM, seems to be a big fan of social media campaigns that has been backed up by the recent success of its Lenovo S10 that I mentioned previously.

This time around, Lenovo is embracing the sci-fi fan base of the Trekkies for the newest Star Trek movie that will be coming out in May 2009. I ran across the ads on Facebook about a week or so ago, but for whatever reason when I clicked on the link, the resulting page was blank. I tried again today on an ad that look as the following:

Ironically, I was not interested in purchasing a new laptop as much desktop provides all that I need at this point, but was more interested to see how the “Star Trek” Lenovo laptops looked. Suffice to say, it is a Thinkpad/Ideapad and that means ugly, RECTANGULAR, and no sense of StYlE.

Personally, I would have recommended using the money to build a better laptop with a sci-fi look rather than a viral campaign, but regardless, let me tell you what they did.

As you may have noticed with the Facebook Ad, it talks about the Lenovo Ideapad, but when you hit the page, the first computer they show is a Lenovo Thinkpad. It is minor, but thought I would mention that regardless. In any case, there are some sweet sweepstakes you can sign up for called the Intel Lenovo Seek New Frontiers Sweepstakes where you can win an Ideapad or a really sleek Star Trek messenger bag. There are even greater prizes later on in 2009 with going on the zero gravity flight or showing up for the premier of the Star Trek movie.

If you are not a fan of signing up to sweepstakes, feel free to play the really easy four questionaire (that gives you the answer anyway if you answer incorrectly) to get a nice Star Trek background desktop image.

Once you are done having fun there, head on over to the Intel viral Starfleet Shipyard site to trailers, desktop backgrounds, the USS Kelvin, character snapshots, and much more.

Man, how I wish I could have worked on a Star Trek buzz campaign.

Freebie–here’s a picture of a Beta Quadrant alien called a Monchezkian (I’ll let the canon concept of a Beta Quadrant alien in Star Fleet aside for now):

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There was no way I could not mention about the new Asimov movie on the Foundation Series. My childhood, game characters, and this blog has been influenced through the writings of Asimov’s many books, primarily the Foundations and Robots book series. And though oddly the plan is to make the Foundation Series movies first over the Robots and Empire Series (if at all), I actually made the same mistake and read the series in the reverse order as well.

Though Hari Seldon and Dors Venabili are the main and well-regarded characters from the whole series overall,  the one character that most fascinated me was the enigmatic humaniform robot by the name of R. Daneel Olivaw (seen in the picture to the left from the book Caves of Steel). In particular, it was in the Foundation Series with R. Daneel Olivaw as Demerzel that I empathize with from childhood and use for many of my game-playing characters around the net from playing chess on a Telnet FIC, to a mud-based text game called Sanity’s Edge, all the way up to World of Warcraft.

There are a couple of blogs out there with as much focus around the character of Demerzel (Demerzel’s Echoes), gaming profiles (Navigator Demerzel), computer names (computer Demerzel), social media profiles (Sphinn Demerzel), and art drawings (Eto Demerzel art).

I will be anxiously waiting to see who will make up the cast and of course who will be playing the role of the humanoid, R. Daneel Olivaw. I would not be surprised to see Will Smith in there somewhere as well as he seems to enjoy having roles in many of the latest science fiction movies.

SFF Media was the first on the scene with the news about having a movie on the Foundation Series and I am sure more will come as lately many sci-fi films from the major sci-fi writers have been doing well enough for sequels. Here’s the details so far:

New Line founders Bob Shaye and Michael Lynne are developing an adaptation of Isaac Asimov’s 1951 novel Foundation, the first in Asimov’s classic space opera saga. According to the Hollywood Reporter, Shaye said, “our idea is to renew the worldwide audience’s appetite for the story” but he added that it is a complex novel, “this is not a script you can knock out in six months.” Shaye and Lynne plan to adapt the first book, but if the first Foundation movie is successful, aim to create an entire new Foundation movie trilogy just as New Line did with Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings.

Good things will certainly come from this as New Line knows what it is doing.

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It has been a long time since really watching Stargate: SG-1, going through the better part of my college life (whereas Star Trek was when I was before high school), and I have definitely missed watching the show. This is not to say that Stargate: Atlantis is not any good, just that Stargate: SG-1 truly was a great show.

Oh, and before beginning into Stargate: The Ark of Truth, I also have to say that it was definitely sad to see the Asgard go.

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Nobody likes anything delayed, and it definitely sucks that Star Trek XI will be delayed, but if that’s necessary for a better Star Trek film, so be it.  SyFy Portal has the details:

Although Paramount Pictures is saying “Star Trek XI” will hit theaters May 8, 2009, sources with the studio tell SyFy Portal that no actual premiere date is set in stone.

That’s nearly a half year delay from the Star Trek Under Construction trailer that I linked to previously that showed it would come out on December 25th.

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Io9 has some more good information (an interview this time) on the upcoming Star Trek XI movie and some interesting plans for the movie. Though canned questions, still interesting nonetheless particularly about the avoidance of the greenscreen, which is not a bad idea in many cases as the focuses is then less on acting which can really get people involved into a movie.

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I ran across more info on SyFy Portal about the newest Star Trek movie coming out. Turns out that the viral site does show up the forth picture but only for one second of the interior of the original Enterprise so I likely missed that, but to make life easier, here’s the picture after the jump…:

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Bump and Update on 12/06/2008:

Click here for more of my thoughts on the Star Trek Viral Campaigns.

Bump and Update on 1/29/2008:

Click here for more of my thoughts on Star Trek Under Construction.

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Io9 and many others have the scoop on the newest Star Trek trailer for 2008 that provides a lovely snapshot of the original Enterprise being built with the original theme music that gave me some nice goosebumps.

From a Star Trek fan (Trekkie) perspective, hopefully this movie will be better than the last (which I thought was sadly poorly done) and 1,000 times better than the quasi-Star Trek “Enterprise” that tried to build on a new and young fan base that collapsed horrifically when it did not follow Star Trek cannon (how stupid could one be really? Sons and daughters of major Star Trek fans would only denigrate the show which would in turn only turn them off from the show). I only hope that the lesson has been learned and will strictly follow cannon this time. That means no ending the movie by giving Enterprise to the whole original crew as it first goes to Captain Pike (Correction: Captain April, then Pike, then Kirk. hat tip: fishstickjesus)!

From the buzz aspect, if you’re curious, click on the small flashing red button–it leads to a landing page with three cameras that you can adjust to see the picture better. I’m not entirely sure if there is more to the site (and if anyone knows, please tell me), but it certainly would be a good buzz campaign if they did so. Regardless, sadly the site is still mostly under construction (some links do not work) and then there’s a link to Bad Robot, a lovely picture that really tells me nothing, [UPDATE: so go to wikipedia here]. Oh, and forcing people to use Quicktime for the HD? Poor choice imo.

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My co-worker introduced me to a brand new sci-fi website (literally started today it seems) called io9. Rest assured it’s a horrible name for online marketing, but a great website to recommend (here’s an excerpt from Wired):

The new blog, which launches Jan. 2, is the latest addition to Gawker Media’s network of 15 blogs. Newitz, a former Wired News writer, edits and steers io9, whose contributors include Geoff Manaugh (founder of architecture blog BldgBlog), Graeme McMillan (of comic blog Newsarama), Kevin Kelly (contributor to Joystiq and Cinematical) and feminist retro-futuristic writer Lynn Peril (author of Pink Think: Becoming a Woman in Many Uneasy Lessons).

[...]

Wired News: What is the significance of the name io9?

Annalee Newitz: Well, io9s are input-output devices that let you see into the future. They’re brain implants that were outlawed because they drove anyone who used one insane. We totally made that (device) up to name the blog. The blog is about looking into the future and science fiction, so we wanted to come up with a fictional name, something that was science fiction.

The blog is already kicking off into high gear and I’ve already fallen behind, but hopefully will catch up on the weekends as I already like their content already (go, go, RSS feeds).

Mostly I like to just read a lot of the sci-fi, but I figure I had to make one post of disagreement about their view that the US is the least futuristic (read: most technological) society.

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I wanted to follow-up on my previous post about Life After People by the History Channel as I ran across an article online by the Discover Magazine called “Earth Without People.” Essentially it has the same fundamental concepts as what the History Channel will show on January 21st, but it was written back in 2005:

Given the mounting toll of fouled oceans, overheated air, missing topsoil, and mass extinctions, we might sometimes wonder what our planet would be like if humans suddenly disappeared. Would Superfund sites revert to Gardens of Eden? Would the seas again fill with fish? Would our concrete cities crumble to dust from the force of tree roots, water, and weeds? How long would it take for our traces to vanish? And if we could answer such questions, would we be more in awe of the changes we have wrought, or of nature’s resilience?

It was a great read and now the only thing I hope is that I didn’t ruin watching the Life After People special if it takes the same stuff from that. (more…)

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When movies or TV shows create various laws about traveling through time, there is going to be some fundamental mistakes that crop up within the respective show or movie.

Let’s take “Time Machine” by H.G. Wells for instance; the law within this movie/book was that the inventor of the time machine could not prevent the death of his wife in the past no matter how much he tried. Yet, at the end of the show [spoiler] he is able to change future’s history by saving one version of humanity against another.

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