By Paul Thomson :: 4:10 PM
Portions of Apple’s mobile messaging service, iMessage, appear to be down for many this afternoon.
Users across Facebook and Twitter are reporting errors with iMessage. For some, messages will not load, and/or the application hangs when a user attempts to send a text through iMessage.
For users trying to reach other iMessage recepients via a cell phone connection, iMessage will eventually fail over to the SMS service, and send the message as a traditional text message, but that process can often take several minutes to occur.
Apple has noted on their Support Status page that they are currently experience issues with both iMessage and FaceTime services. No further information has been offered, and no estimated time of fixing the issue has been provided.
By Cynthia Herbert :: 2:29 PM
A U.K. illustrator who has posted and shared her work on the social blogging platform Tumblr discovered that one of her illustrations may have been used by Disney without her permission.
Katie Woodger turned back to Tumblr for help yesterday, with a post entitled, “Disney Have Stolen my Artwork.”
In 2010, Woodger created a painting of Alice in Wonderland. It features Alice, back turned, painting roses red. Woodger recently found very similar artwork on a t-shirt that Disney sells, and nearly an exact match to her piece on a Disney-branded cosmetic bag.
Below, on the left is Woodger’s original painting. The middle image shows it depicted on the Disney cosmetic bag, and on the right, the Disney t-shirt.
Woodger is deciding how she will handle the recent discovery of this information. She is currently working in Japan. Disney has not issued an official statement regarding this matter.
[via Katie Woodger]
By Gilbert Falso :: 1:54 PM
That collective gasp you heard from Twitter early this morning was the sound of thousands of academics, librarians, and fans of the Mendeley service, after hearing that it has been acquired by Elsevier.
Mendeley is an application that allows users to organize, annotate, read, share and collaborate on documents. It had been embraced by the academic community and library community in particular, and enjoyed a large following because of its open, non-corporate background. In addition to the app, Menedely also offered an open API that allowed developers to work on projects that allowed transfer of data in and out of the Mendeley system.
Elsevier is a publisher of educational books and journals, and also hosts a number of research databases and services geared towards academics. However, in much of the academic community, Elsevier is scorned, and seen as an “evil empire” – serving only to make money off of the research and works of others.
To this community, Mendeley was a beacon of freedom that has now been gobbled up by the much-reviled corporate publisher. Many took to Twitter this morning to voice their displeasure:
And talking of the Mendeley sale, the academics on my feed have melted in disgust. Elsevier, if this is your market you have a problem.
— emily bell (@emilybell) April 9, 2013
The extent to which @mendeley was becoming an integral part of the knowledge ecosystem = how much the @elsevier acquisition disappoints me.
— David Weinberger (@dweinberger) April 9, 2013
Mendeley cannot fix Elsevier’s reputation. Elsevier published fake journals, backed SOPA, uses bundles to screw scholars/libraries. Too evil
— danah boyd (@zephoria) April 9, 2013
Bad news. Cool, innovative, company sells its soul to the most evil & rapacious corporation in academia. #mendeley tinyurl.com/brwojsa
— Rob Knell (@RobKnell1) April 9, 2013
Mendeley joins Elsevier, acknowledges criticism of the behemoth but does it anyway – aka evil empire strikes again.blog.mendeley.com/start-up-life/…)
— Kathleen Searles (@kesearles) April 9, 2013
The community is already rallying, offering alternatives to the much-loved Mendeley. The free research tool Zotero, is quickly rising to the top as a popular alternative.
By Gilbert Falso :: 10:17 PM
Over 800,000 customers of Time Warner’s home phone service lost their dial tones intermittently last night, due to a technical issue at the cable company.
The company issued the following release last night about the situation:
There’s a technical issue preventing a limited number of our home phone customers from placing or receiving calls on an intermittent basis. Our engineers are working on the problem to restore service as quickly as possible. Emergency calls are still getting through.
By this morning, nearly all customers had their service fully restored, and all lines were functioning fully this afternoon.
As the second largest cable provider in the United States, Time Warner provides home telephone service to about 5 million customers.
By Cynthia Herbert :: 9:36 PM
Last month, the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office (USPTO) turned down Apple’s request to trademark the word Mini in reference to its iPad Mini tablet. The USPTO declined the request because it felt the term was merely descriptive of the diminutive tablet.
In a statement released last week, the USPTO explained, “upon further review of the application, the examining attorney has determined that the following refusals issued in the initial Office action should be withdrawn. The examining attorney apologizes for any inconvenience caused.”
The office has determined that Apple can use the word Mini in a trademarked fashion, but must do so with a disclaimer that reads, “No claim is made to the exclusive right to use ‘MINI’ apart from the mark as shown.”
In other words, Apple cannot use the word Mini to describe the tablet, but only as its name.
Apple has not publicly acknowledged the USPTO’s recent statements regarding its trademark filings.