Official Star Trek Into Darkness app wants you to scan the sights and sounds of Trek
Official movie tie-in apps are a dime-a-dozen these days, with every film studio looking to every avenue possible to promote their multi-million-dollar blockbusters. The latest is for the upcoming Star Trek Into Darkness, which while not due in theaters until May of this year, has launched an app that attempts to draw you deeper into the the J.J. Abrams Star Trek universe. Or at least the promotions for the film.
To boot, Star Trek App, as it's listed in the App Store, exists for you to scan released promotional photos and the audio of the two already released trailers. Scanning these things gets you points (typically 20 points per scan), which total up to slowly move you up a ranks and rewards chain. Right now there aren't a ton of available options for things you can scan - mostly it's promotional images from Empire magazine - so getting high up the rank chain isn't going to happen quickly. Presumably there will be more items to scan in the coming months, but for now you're going to top off as a Petty Officer with a bunch of available-all-over-the-internet pictures. Supposedly there will be more videos, images, and wallpapers to come, but for now it's pretty sparse.
While most of the scannable things are available online, there are a few that aren't. For one, you can get twenty points by visiting the future home of Starfleet Academy and loading up the app. I for one, am not about to make the thousands-of-miles trek out to San Francisco's Presidio for a measly twenty points. While many of us may never be able to get the geolocation points, anybody watching the Super Bowl The Big Game tomorrow will be able to to scan the commercial airing during the second quarter for exclusive in-app content.
Suspiciously (and somewhat disappointingly) absent from the app: J.J. Abrams's signature lens flares. At least it's notably better - or at least more aware of what it's supposed to be - than some other official Star Trek apps available in the App Store.
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Derek Kessler is Special Projects Manager for Mobile Nations. He's been writing about tech since 2009, has far more phones than is considered humane, still carries a torch for Palm, and got a Tesla because it was the biggest gadget he could find. You can follow him on Twitter at @derekakessler.