By Gilbert Falso :: 1:28 PM
Last week, it was made public that the US Patent And Trademark Office had denied Apple’s request for a trademark on the name of its new small tablet, the iPad Mini
Apple had been notified of the decision at the end of January, but the legal paperwork only became public within the last few days. The Patent Office denied the trademark because, “the applied-for mark merely describes a feature or characteristic of applicant’s goods.†The iPad Mini is small – the word “Mini” is descriptive of the new iPad’s size, so no trademark for Apple.
The company can respond to the ruling, but patent experts are unsure how Apple might be successful in swaying the opinion of the office that the term Mini is anything other than descriptive. The Patent Office would only issue the trademark if Apple could somehow show that the word ‘mini’ has acquired a “distinctiveness†because of the iPad. Something Apple isn’t likely to be able to prove.
iPad Mini was announced in October, 2012, and is the 7.9-inch version of the standard iPad tablet, which is 9.7 inches. It first sold on November 2, 2012.
By Paul Thomson :: 11:14 AM
Can’t get to church on this Easter Sunday? With the increased technology available to them, many churches have taken to broadcasting their services live through video streaming on the Internet. Once reserved for special occasions like Christmas and Easter, many churches are expanding this service to include regular Sunday masses as well.
If you still want to experience Easter Sunday services, but can’t make it out to a house of worship this morning, below are a few options from churches that stream Easter services live online.
- Canyon Ridge Church (Nevada) – Streaming service at 1:00 PM Eastern
- Church of the Highlands (Alabama) – Streaming services at 11:30 AM and 6:00 PM Eastern
- Mars Hill Church (Washington state) – Streaming services various times throughout the day
By Cynthia Herbert :: 9:58 PM
The blogging and posting platform Posterous, which was acquired by Twitter last year, will be closing in one month, at the end of April. Users who have blogs on the site, and who have pointed their domains to work with Posterous will need to move their content and redirect visitors by April 30, when the site will shut down.
For Posterous users who find themselves still needing to move their content to another service, many are looking at the WordPress platform and WordPress.com as a strong option. WordPress staffers are reporting a spike in blog post imports to WordPress.com from Posterous over the last several weeks.  In the past 30 days alone, WordPress.com has imported over 15 million posts. Two million Posterous posts have been imported since the shutdown was announced.
Posterous and WordsPress have made the path for migrating to WordPress.com very easy. WordPress has a feature where users can import their posts directly from their Posterous backup file. It is not an exact replica of the Posterous space, though, as document files and audio files are not downloaded. Also, image files are downsized to smaller versions, and post comments are migrated over, but all comments lose the name of the commenter.
In addition to WordPress.com, other options for wayward Posterous users are Tumblr, SquareSpace, Posthaven, and Blogger.
Posterous began life in 2008 as a startup funded by Y Combinator. Twitter purchased the service on March 12, 2012. The 21 members of Posterous’ staff joined the workforce at Twitter after the deal closed.
By Katherine McClosky :: 8:03 AM
Did the Easter Bunny bring a Kindle Fire in the Easter basket this year? If your children received one of Amazon’s tablets for Easter, parents might be pleased to know that it comes with a robust set of features to keep the kids from viewing inappropriate content or applications with their new toy.
Both of Amazon’s Kindles, the Fire HD 7-inch
To enable parental controls:
- Swipe down from the top of the Kindle’s screen to display the notification bar.
- Tap “More” on the notification bar.
- Tap “Parental Controls” and you’ll be prompted to establish a Parental Controls Password.
- Switch the controls on by tapping the “On” button on the right side of the screen.
Now that controls are enabled, you can restrict access to certain content on the Kindle:
- Open the Parental Controls menu and enter the password you established.
- Select “Block and Unblock Content Types” and choose the content you want to restrict.
Beyond the basic parental controls, you can also set up an Amazon Kindle Free Time
To activate Free Time you’ll need to create a profile for your child. To create a profile:
- Connect to the web and make sure your Kindle Fire is updated to the latest system version.
- Open Free Time and create a password.
- Select an avatar for your child by picking one of the images provided.
- Enter details about your child, their name, gender and birthdate.
With the Kindle Free Time profile created, you can now manage your child’s profile and enable or disable certain settings. You can choose which books, videos or apps you want to make accessible to your child, and they will see only the selected content in their profile with Free Time is activated.
By Gilbert Falso :: 10:09 PM
Users who subscribe to Klout, the online service for measuring social media influence, will soon have two new sources of data that influence their score – Microsoft’s Bing search engine, and Facebook’s Instagram photo sharing service.
The two networks will now provide data to Klout’s algorithm, which assigns users a number from 1 to 100 to show how influential they are in the online world.
Last fall, Microsoft made an investment in Klout, but at the time, it wasn’t clear how the two companies were going to work together strategically. With this recent announcement, we have a more clear picture of what the partnership will bring.
Although Bing influence will not immediately reflect in a user’s Klout score, the data will be gathered, and rolled into the service in the near future. “Bing search data will start becoming integrated into Klout’s algorithm, and search results will eventually factor into each user’s Klout Score,” said a post on Klout’s blog.
In 2011, Klout allowed users to link their Instagram and Klout accounts, and now Instagram data will also be factored into Klout scores going forward.