[Star Trek] Happy 40th Anniversary!

Today, October 6, 2006 in terms of US dating, marks the 40th Anniversary of the landmark Start Trek series. Whether or not you consider yourself a "Trekkie," you can't help but acknowledge the tremendous impact the series has had on pop culture on a global scale.

I'm glad that CNet.com has decided to "celebrate" the anniversary with a host of various Trek-related articles, blog entries, videos and slideshows. They've centralized all Trek coverage on one page and to help all those Geeky Guide readers out, here are some of the more interesting pieces (in my opinion at least).

Of the the piece photo slideshows that caught my eye was Life Imitates 'Star Trek', which is a very brief look at some of the more prominent influences the Star Trek series has had in terms of the development of technology over the years. It's another case of life imitating art, I suppose, considering the same geeks who grew up watching the adventures of Kirk, Picard and all other that followed have become today's intellectuals changing the way our future is shaped in terms of technological advances. One such comparison is seen on the right in terms of pretty much all flip top celluar phones will have to owe some credit to the original Star Trek communicator often used on the show. At least the predominant influence in modern times was not Get Smart's shoe phone.

Another good read is Neha Tiwari's blog entry Search for Spock on the WEb, which is a nice Trek guide to what's worthwhile on the web. You have to admit that even the ranking methodologies of Google are insufficient to truly determine which of the hundreds or even thousands of trek-related sites exist on the web today. With the disclaimer that the list based on her opinion of things, her top ten sites are pretty good and I'll agree with most, if not all of them. Some of them are sites I've yet to encounter but definitely had a lot to offer even the most stringent of Trek fans.

Recent news is buzzing with the results of the Christie's auction of Star Trek memorabilia amassed over years from all of the TV series and movies. The bidding was pretty fierce and somewhat unusual at times given some of the bidders decided to come in costume as well. CNet had previously posted photos of some of the items up for bidding so feel free to go down Trek memory lane as you go over the images.

The last entry that came to mind was another Neha Tiwari blog posting, this time called Star Trek Movies: Which is best?, which tries to determine a way to really determine the ranking of all 10 movies so far. It was just interesting to see how their gross earnings over the years evened out although I would like to see someone try to recompute the totals b factoring in inflation somehow.

There are more tidbits for you on the main CNet page or elsewhere across the web as the science fiction world unites to celebrate those brave explorers or boldly went where no TV series had gone before.