The Weekender: a new ‘Star Trek’, Google’s big event, and government and science as games

The best of the week gone by

by Jacob Kastrenakes

May 18, 2013, 2:00 PM UTC

Jacob Kastrenakes is The Verge’s executive editor. He has covered tech, policy, and online creators for over a decade.

Welcome to The Verge: Weekender edition. Each week, we’ll bring you important articles from the previous weeks’ original reports, features, and reviews on The Verge. Think of it as a collection of a few of our favorite pieces from the week gone by, which you may have missed, or which you might want to read again.

Feature

Inside Hangouts, Google's big fix for its messaging mess

Google has had maybe half a dozen messaging tools over the years — many of which are still in use — but none has ever become "the one." We sat down with the team behind Hangouts to talk about the company’s effort to pull all of those services together, the need to move away from an open platform, and out what took so long.

Report

Can fancy photos and lavish linking help Google+ take off?

Google is using the breadth of its network’s knowledge to power some big new features for Google+. We got an in-depth look at the changes and spoke with the head of the company’s social efforts about what makes the new technology possible.
Review

‘Star Trek Into Darkness’ review: boldly going back to the future

J.J. Abrams’ first take on the cult series was a memorable summer blockbuster that made us excited for more. Into Darkness is just as action-packed, but can Abrams deliver another ride that's emotionally powerful as well?
Report

Ventus: can we crowdsource the fight against global warming?

There’s about 30,000 fossil fuel-burning power plants throughout the world, but little data about where they’re located and the emissions they produce. Now, a university researcher is trying to turn collecting the data into a crowdsourced game.
Interview

Sketching Instagram: co-founder Mike Krieger reveals the photo app's humble beginnings

Mike Krieger helped build the first version of Instagram in 2010, and today he’s leading the company’s team of engineers. We chatted with him about working under Facebook, building well-made features, and the evolution of the filters that made Instagram famous.
Report

Metadata matters: how phone records and obsolete laws harm privacy and the free press

You leave behind countless bits of information when carrying out just about any digital task. Though the information can be incredibly revealing, privacy laws still haven’t been updated to protect it — and the government is taking advantage while it can.
Report

Immigration as a game: 'Papers, Please' makes you the border guard

Checking immigration papers may sound dull, but Papers, Please challenges players with difficult moral decisions as they man the desk guarding a cold-war era communist state.
Report

Pick your poison: messaging will be fragmented, expensive, or locked-in

Google may have tied all of its own messaging services together, but it hardly means the end of every other chat app that’s trying to kill SMS. We look at the history of interoperability in messaging, and why that’s been going away.