One Cast Member Dead in Disney Monorail Crash

One cast member has been confirmed dead in a collision between two Monorails at Walt Disney World. The crash occurred on the EPCOT line near the TTA station around 2AM as operations were winding down following 4th of July fireworks. The pilot of the second monorail was transported to the hospital with minor injuries. No guest injuries are reported.

Click Orlando has the story and a video of the aftermath as guests and cast rush to reach the monorail pilot who is trapped in the pilot cone of the monorail train. The video appears to have been taken after the trains were pushed or pulled into the nearby TTA loading area. One family is shown being evacuated from the purple monorail and everyone looks okay.

Disney has said the monorail system is shut down for inspection and alternate transportation will be provided for today’s guests.

While the monorail is piloted by a cast member, each monorail is supposed to automatically apply its brakes if it closes within two “hold points” of another monorail. However the operator is allowed to override that system in some circumstances. This is the first fatal accident in the 38 year history of the monorail system at Walt Disney World.

I want to stress that this is not a regular occurrence on the monorail lines at Walt Disney World. Since the new trains were added in 1989 there have been no train to train collisions during normal operation. There have been a series of incidents where the nose cone windshield glass popped out during operation, plus many were so badly scratched you could barely see the track in front of you, but Disney had been replacing all the windsheilds on the trails.

9:49 AM by Shubham Mittal · 0

Whether Twitter freaking out over 'tweet' trademark Or not?

Is Twitter getting possessive of its own name? Maybe.

A developer building an application using Twitter's API was told via e-mail that Twitter took issue with the user interface of his application, allegedly very similar to Twitter's own, as well as his use of the word "tweet" in the application's name.

The developer forwarded the e-mail to TechCrunch: "Twitter, Inc., is uncomfortable with the use of the word Tweet (our trademark) and the similarity in your UI and our own."

Uh-oh. If Twitter is staking a claim to the word "tweet," that could mean a problem for TweetDeck, TweetMeme, PoliTweets, and some of the other extremely popular businesses built atop Twitter.

A few things to keep in mind here. One, the developer was also creating a service that looked a lot like Twitter, the TechCrunch post explains, which means that the use of the word "tweet" may really have been less important than the e-mail made it out to be. Second, it's a personal e-mail coming from a Twitter employee--not a company representative or executive--which means that it may not be perfectly aligned with the company's official stance on things.

(Case in point: A Twitter investor hinted to The New York Times that the company would be making money with virtual coupons. One of Twitter's co-founders said in a comment on a blog that the investor was "brainstorming on his own.")

But the tech industry does have a history of getting into one skirmish after another over names similar to their trademarks. Several years ago, Apple started sending cease-and-desist letters to some third-party equipment companies and fan blogs that were using the word "pod" in their names. Google, too, has taken issue with the word "googling" being used as a generic verb.

And as TechCrunch points out, Twitter has filed for a trademark on the word "tweet." On the other hand, being possessive of this term (which, it goes without saying, has been a dictionary word for centuries) might not be the smartest strategy, if Twitter indeed wants to be a Digital Age communication standard "like electricity," as one executive said last month. So we'll see how this one unfolds.

9:28 AM by Shubham Mittal · 0