Apple Inc. has another week to respond to Cisco Systems Inc.'s trademark infringement lawsuit that threatens to keep Apple from using the name "iPhone" on its much-hyped cell phone-music player.

After the companies had previously agreed to extend the deadline until Thursday night, the world's largest networking equipment maker said Apple now has until Wednesday to respond to the lawsuit filed last month in San Francisco federal court.

Both companies reiterated previous statements that they want to use the extra time to reach a settlement.

Cisco, whose Linksys division began shipping a line of iPhones last spring, has said it would allow Apple to use the trademarked name but wants both companies' phones to be able to communicate with each other. It has not provided details of such interoperability.

Apple has called the lawsuit "silly" and argued that it's entitled to use the iPhone name because the phones operate over different networks. Apple's works using cellular technology, and Cisco's operates over the Internet using a technology called Voice over Internet Protocol, or VoIP.

Cisco has owned the trademark since 2000, when it acquired InfoGear Technology Corp., which originally registered the name.

The popular online social networking Web site MySpace.com has sued a Colorado man once accused of being one of the world's top three spammers, saying the man gained access to MySpace profiles using stolen passwords and used the information to send spam bulletins.

MySpace, which is owned by News Corp., claims Scott Richter and his various companies, including OptInRealBig.com and Mediabreakway.com, sent millions of spam messages to members using technology that made the messages look like they had come from individual members' accounts.

The lawsuit was filed Friday in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles and asks for damages, an injunction preventing Richter and his companies from accessing MySpace, and repayment of all profits gained as a result of the activity.

Several calls to Richter were not returned Monday.

Managing its rapid growth has been a challenge for MySpace, which has fallen prey to people who launch spam attacks.

Unlike random unsolicited e-mails, which are readily identified as junk, the spam bulletins on MySpace appear to be sent by trusted friends, giving them an air of legitimacy.

Troubled ringtone vendor, Infospace which recently lost on of its largest clients has been hit by a US$100 million lawsuit from the music publisher, EMI. The complaint alleges that InfoSpace and its subsidiaries Moviso and Premium Wireless Services have been underpaying royalties and selling ringtones for songs to which they hold no licensing rights.

The lawsuit also claims that InfoSpace has "engaged in a deliberate effort to frustrate and obstruct the audit rights held by plaintiffs pursuant to license agreements."

EMI says that it had requested an audit of InfoSpace's accounts to ensure accurate royalty payments but was met with "diversion, obstruction, misdirection and misinformation." Specifically, EMI alleges that InfoSpace claimed it did not have access to many of its records, and then refused to turn them over.

EMI claims it turned over information it acquired to its auditors at Gelfand Rennert & Feldman, who concluded that InfoSpace was miscalculating royalties due to downloads through third-party Web sites operated by cell phone carriers Verizon and US Cellular; failing to report royalties for eight approved sub-licensees; and failing to pay royalties for compositions that appeared on its catalogue of offerings.

InfoSpace also says that it will announce fourth quarter 2006 financial results on Thursday, February 1, 2007, after market close.

Four families whose daughters were sexually assaulted by predators they met on popular internet social network MySpace sued owner News Corp this week for negligence and fraud, the lawyers representing the families said in a statement.

The families, from New York, Texas, Pennsylvania and South Carolina, filed suits in Los Angeles Superior Court on Wednesday. The suits involve five girls, ranging in age from 14 to 15 years old, who the lawyers said were lured to meet with older MySpace members and sexually assaulted.

One 15-year-old girl was drugged and assaulted in 2006 by an older MySpace user, the lawyers said. The user pleaded guilty to sexual assault and is serving a 10-year sentence, they said.

Last year, the parents of a 14-year-old girl in Austin, Texas, sued MySpace for $US30 million after she was sexually assaulted by a 19-year-old man she met on the network.

"In our view, MySpace waited entirely too long to attempt to institute meaningful security measures that effectively increase the safety of their underage users," Jason Itkin, an lawyer at law firm Arnold & Itkin LLP, which is representing the families, said in a statement.

Google, the world’s leading search engine, shows about 40 million search queries for Web 2.0, the buzzword everyone in the Internet business today is talking about.
Then what in the world does Web 2.0 refer to? Is the Internet becoming a version of a software application? Even tech gurus are hesitant to answer these simple questions.

In fact, Web 2.0 is ill defined and its exact meaning is extremely elusive. Some even decry it as a marketing catchphrase, while others accept it as nothing but renewed conventional wisdom.

However, efforts are now underway to figure out the characteristics of the next-generation Internet and more and more folks are accepting the concept of Web 2.0.

Most experts pick brisk participation of Internet users in creating contents or the increased importance of collective intelligence as core factors of this.

In addition, they agree techsavvy South Koreans have already applied Web 2.0 to their Internet usage, starting years ago, even before the term was coined.

Advent of Web 2.0

There is no agreement on exactly what Web 2.0 means but there is an agreement on who first created the term - O’Reilly Media of the United States first used it in early 2004.

O’Reilly indicated that the dot.com bubble burst in the fall of 2001 signified the beginning of Web 2.0 and a flurry of new technological applications.

The most outstanding principle that the Web 2.0 companies share is that they use the power of the Internet in order to collaborate, communicate and grow, according to O’Reilly.

Under concepts that the Web is a platform, O’Reilly further defines Web 2.0 as a set of core principles and practices like participation, collective intelligence and rich user experiences, to name but a few.

Since then, Web 2.0 gained credibility in the tech world but the term caused confusion _ it does appear to mean different things to different people.

Observers point out Web 2.0 doesn’t have a hard boundary and it is a trend to explain the evolution of the Web from a producer- oriented world to a consumer- centered space.

“At its heart, Web 2.0 is about the participation of end users. They are no longer passive consumers of Web contents but are proactive producers,” said Kang Rok-hee, an analyst at Daishin Securities.

“In a sense, Web 2.0 lies on a natural development path of the Internet and the characteristics that go beyond the enhanced role of Internet users might be called Web 3.0 some time in the future,” Kang said.

Collective Intelligence

To understand the new crest of the Internet, Kang said that it is important to understand a host of Web 2.0-esque services such as Wikipedia.

Wikipedia is a copyright free online encyclopedia, which relies on volunteer writers from across the world to pen upside of 4 million articles in several languages.

“Wikipedia involves as many people as possible _ ordinary users create articles and others upgrade them around the clock. Readers become writers and that is a norm in the Web 2.0 era,” Kang said.

“The result is encouraging as the new-born Wikipedia boasts of a wide coverage and correctness comparable to the timehonored Encyclopedia Britannica,” Kang said.

Wikipedia came out in 2001 when enough people worldwide had gained access to the Internet at an affordable price.

This contrasts to Britannica, first published in around 1770, which many top-tier experts in each field embellished through seamless updates and revisions over time.

Naturally, concerns are flaring up that Wikipedia entries might not be reliable because unpaid amateur contributors can make miscues or unscrupulous writers may intentionally mess things up.

Late last year, however, the British-based journal Nature confirmed the reliability of Wikipedia by finding the site comes just as close to Britannica in terms of the accuracy of its science entries.

Among articles covering a broad swath of the scientific spectrum in the two encyclopedias, Nature reviewers conducted a side-by-side comparison to detect eight serious errors, four from each source alike.

“The openness of Wikipedia can be just as much of a strength as it can be a problem _ the openness that allows vandals to cause troubles also allows other contributors to restore order and self-police the site,” said Min Kyung-bae at Kyung Hee Cyber University.

“This amply demonstrates the power of collective intelligence and Web 2.0-based services. You can find a similar example in the emerging open-source programs against proprietary ones,” he said.

Korean Edge

Wayne Lee, an economist at Woori Securities, is saying Web 2.0 started in Korea a few years ago, even before the term was coined.

“Take a look at the so-called knowledge search services of NHN. It began in the early 2000s but it retains elements and components of Web 2.0,” Lee said.

“In addition, social networking sites like Cyworld and user created contents, which are huge in Korea, are all evidence that Web 2.0 is already burgeoning here,” he noted.

Under the knowledge search of NHN, users post their questions that are answered by other users _ creating a database that now totals tens of millions of entries.

The services were devised because Koreans often come up short when attempting to find information in their native tongue _ the number of Koreanlanguage sites is just 1 billion in comparison to 20 billion of English ones.

“The logic of the knowledge search is to extract what exists inside people’s brain to the Web site. It was designed to increase the Korean-language database,” NHN chief executive officer Chae Hwi-young told reporters late Sept. in a closed-door meeting.

Experts project Korea will be able to preempt the global thrust for Web 2.0 services and applications thanks to its tech-savvy children, called “digital natives,” who continue to spring up.

Digital native refers to the first generation of people who were born and grew up in the 21st century Internet era surrounded by gadgets such as computers and cell phones.

“With a majority of its preschoolers going online regularly, Korea is filled with digital natives who will spearhead the full-fledged advent of Web 2.0 era and beyond,” said Park Junghyun, a senior researcher at the LG Economic Research Institute.

Indeed, a majority of Korean children between the ages of three and five go online periodically _ a recent government survey found that 50.3 percent of this age group use the Internet at least once a month.

“Korea has bright prospects regarding Web 2.0. Currently, it already has an edge and digital natives are expected to sharpen it down the road,” he said.

Three-D televisions and paper-thin monitors that have so far been available in sci-fi movies are about to become a reality, as Samsung Electronics’ president predicts that those shown in the movie ``Minority Report’’ will be available within a few years.

``In the not so distant future, displays shown in the `Minority Report’ will appear,’’ Lee Sang-wan, the head of Samsung’s LCD division, told some 500 students during a lecture held at Yonsei University on Tuesday. He also said that Samsung aims to take more than a quarter of the $100-billion LCD market by 2010 by taking advantage of its technology leadership.

The remark came right after Samsung’s announcement that it has developed the thinnest liquid crystal display (LCD) panel ever reported, which is thinner than a credit card at 0.82 millimeters.

It was a counterattack on its rival LG.Philips LCD, which unveiled a 1.3-millimeter panel in September, which was the world’s slimmest at the time. Lee said that the intensifying battle for the ``world’s best’’ will eventually help bring those future gadgets into reality earlier than most people have expected.

``The display market is smaller than the semiconductor or mobile phone markets as of now. But it has unlimited growth potential,’’ Lee said. ``Korean makers like Samsung and LG.Philips have never lost our leadership in the display industry since we bypassed Japanese manufacturers in 1998.’’

In the 2002 movie, which depicted the future world of year 2054, John Anderton, played by Tom Cruise, and his fellow cops use various thin, transparent displays in their daily businesses of pursuing criminals. At home, Anderton uses a 3-D image projector in reminiscing of the days with his family.

In reality, Samsung’s latest LCD model is far smaller than Cruise’s. It is only available in 2.2 inches in the diagonal size, as it is designed for mobile phones. But its executives think the company is quite close to achieving larger models.

``Samsung’s R&D initiatives, including LCD module thickness reduction and reinforced shock resistance, will enable our customers to develop truly differentiated and more reliable, ultra-thin mobile products,’’ said executive Vice President Yun Jin-hyuk, in charge of the mobile display team of Samsung.

As for 3-D displays, LG Electronics has come quite close to the movie. During last month’s Korea Electronics Show, LG displayed a 40-inch TV that shows 3-D images without the need for special glasses.

``It is the first time for us to develop a 3D display for the naked eye,’’ LG’s public relations official manager Kim Kyung-hwan said. `` It may look a bit unusual but it feels alright when people’s eyes get accustomed to the 3D images,’’ he said, adding that the company aims to sell the display to commercial sites such as airports, exhibition centers and shopping malls.

Lee of Samsung also predicted paper-like flexible displays will become the next-generation standard. They were seen in ``Minority Report’’ as an electronic newspaper that updates its front page once in a while, and as a cereal box that has a video advertisement on its reverse side.

LG.Philips in a partnership with E-Ink of the United States is leading the flexible technology field with a 14.1-inch flexible e-book already available as a black-and-white prototype.