London-- Blighty’s culture secretary, Andy Burnham, seeks to impose an Internet rating system on English-language Web sites that mirrors movie-like ratings, and said that he would negotiate with U.S. President-elect Barack Obama’s administration team on drafting international standards for contents against indecency, violence, libel and copyright theft on the websites in a bid to better police the Internet and protect children from harmful and offensive material, Britain’s minister for culture has said.

If Britain’s culture minister has his way, the U.K. government could soon impose tough restrictions on websites -- a rating system akin to the movie industry in the coming year.

Washington-- US telecommunications giant Verizon, has been awarded a record judgment by a federal court in the Northern District of California for $33.2 million in a cybersquatting lawsuit against a shady Internet domain services company “ OnlineNIC” that claims to registered hundreds of domain names using Verizon name and trademarks.

Verizon said the award was made in a default judgment late last week, by a federal court in Northern district of California in San Francisco ruled that OnlineNIC should pay $50,000 for each of the 633 domains Verizon claims were created specifically to be confused with legitimate Verizon brands.

A small Indiana based company called “Cygnus Systems” has lodged a patent violation case against three technology heavyweights Google, Microsoft and Apple claiming that it holds the patent on a common “file preview” functionality both in web browsers, and operating systems, which enables users to a brief preview of files before they actually opened them.

Beijing-- Sina Corp., China's major internet media portal, agreed to acquire core assets of Focus Media Holding Ltd.'s digital outdoor advertising networks business at a deal that could be valued at $1.37 billion in stock, a bold attempt to seek a growth engine for its advertising revenues.

The deal announced late Monday demands Sina to purchase most of Focus Media, which has advertising spots in office buildings, malls and airports. Its network contains banks of television screens in office building lobbies and poster frames in elevators.

The agreement is a deviation from Sina's online business, which consists of 280 million registered users, in an effort to expand its advertising business.

San Francisco-- Meebo, the foremost Web-based instant messaging aggregating service, has attained its current level of popularity by providing Web access to popular IM interfaces like AOL, MSN, and GTalk. And quite recently, Meebo extended its functionality to embrace this growing market -- now expanded its support to Facebook and MySpace IM chat.

“These are two of the leading social networks in the world, and we are sure many of you use them on a daily basis,” according to a Meebo blog post. “So click that [sign on to more accounts] link and let us know what you think.”

Helsinki-- World’s leading mobile phone maker Nokia on Sunday cleared one of the key obstacles for adopting its new Internet offering, and is gearing toward completing its Ovi service suite -- making it easier for their customers to log into their online service network Ovi.com.

The company intends to provide a single login mechanism on this service which combines various features some of which require separate details.

Recently Nokia has acquired a dozen companies -- including an $8.1 billion (5.4 billion pound) purchase of mapping company Navteq -- to jump-start its Internet business as growth in the mobile phone market stalls.

New York -- Discussions between Warner Music Group ordered YouTube last weekend to pull down all music videos by its artists from the popular online video-sharing site after renegotiations over royalties licensing agreement for the record label’s music videos broke down Saturday.

The stalemate comes at a time when all four major labels, including Universal Music Group, Sony Music, and EMI, are renegotiating their licensing deals with YouTube.

The order could affect hundreds of thousands of videos from artists including Madonna and Metallica, as well as the rights for songs published by its Warner/Chappell unit, which includes many artists not signed to Warner Music record labels.

San Francisco -- The Inside Facebook blog posted some astonishing growth figures this week for the popular social networking site. For sure, Facebook is growing faster than the population in China! Just before two weeks Facebook has reached the 130 million user landmark. According to their statistics Facebook alone is showing growth of more than 500,000 members a day

According to Inside Facebook, Facebook has been growing at 3-4 hundred thousand users per day during the fourth quarter. The report highlights a recent increase of rate in the already meteoric rise in usage during this quarter.

“If Facebook maintains this rate, it could add up to 20 million new users in December and reach 200 million active users by March,” Justin Smith, editor of Inside Facebook writes.

San Francisco -- Adobe Systems on Wednesday has released the Linux version of its Adobe Integrated Runtime (AIR), a platform for building programs that cross the barrier between the web and your desktop, is now fully compatible with Linux operating systems, and bringing it up to speed with the versions available for Windows and Mac users.

The company has released AIR 1.5 for Linux, the first time the Linux desktop variant has made it as a production-grade, Adobe-supported release.

While AIR applications are already functioning on Windows and Mac computers, this release would mean that developers can now build a single application that will run on pretty much every major operating system.

New York -- Hasbro Inc., the world’s second-biggest board game maker, on Monday said that it has dropped its months-old trademark and copyright-infringement lawsuit against two Indian brothers accused of making a knockoff version of the Scrabble board-game for Facebook.

According to documents the toymaker filed in U.S. District Court in New York, dismissed the lawsuit Friday, without giving a reason. “Scrabulous” developers Rajat Agarwalla and Jayant Agarwalla, accused of replicating Scrabble’s rules and aesthetic, dropped the game in North America after the lawsuit was filed.

The North American rights to the original board game are co-owned by Hasbro and Mattel, sued Jayant and Rajat Agarwalla, brothers from Calcutta, India, this summer. The brothers were charged with developing the unauthorized version, called Scrabulous, after they could not find an online version they liked.

New York -- Google Inc. on Monday said that its new Google Friend Connect service, which connects social-networking features into participating sites, has now been integrated with Twitter.

“This indicates that now you will be able to Tweet from any Friend Connect-supported site.”

“This means that now, when you link to a friend connected site, you can choose to use your Twitter profile, discover people you follow on Twitter who are also members of the site, and quickly tweet that you have found a cool website,” explains Google Friend Connect Product Manager Mussie Shore.

“With Google Friend Connect, Twitter folks will be able to bump into and recognize each other out there on the web -- and discover new people to follow on Twitter,” says Twitter Co-founder Biz Stone on the Twitter Blog.

New York -- High definition video from the king of blurry pixels! Yes, it is true, but so far there is no official announcement from the popular video sharing as yet, though late last week YouTube quietly added the option to watch videos in high definition (HD) without the need for any URL hacks.

YouTube has switched to widescreen format with the “watch in normal quality” option still available for those on slower networks or lower download limits, but now there is no more guess work -- on any uploaded videos that are wider than 720 pixels, users will see a new option to “Watch in HD” where the “watch in high quality” option usually appears.

San Francisco -- Yahoo-owned Flickr, late last week unveiled its “radically revamped” mobile video-sharing site that makes the popular website more social and easier to use on the move. The improved version, in addition to some improvements to the mobile site’s user interface, the update adds video playback capability now available Apple iPhone and iPod Touch handsets users and offers the capability to upload or download videos from their mobile phones.

Flickr embedded video capability to m.flickr.com early this year, and while users could upload short videos from their cell phones, they could not actually watch them from their mobile devices -- something previously missing from the Flickr mobile experience.

New York -- Google and Facebook on Thursday independently announced the general availability of their rival technology platforms that is designed to infuse websites with trendy social-networking features widely across the web.

The Palo Alto, Calif., start-up Facebook Inc. Thursday announced the general availability of its long awaited “Facebook Connect” service for the public, in an attempt towards linking its social network with entertainment, media and other Web sites as the Internet Company seeks new ways to accelerate its growth.

“A Facebook Connect service that was under testing for months with selected partners is now available for anyone interested in converting their static websites into interactive communities of users.”

San Francisco -- MySpace, the world’s leading social network site, a division of News Corp., and RipCode, the pioneer in offering Internet and mobile video system solutions, announced today that MySpace Mobile users worldwide will now be able to enjoy MySpace video content from their video enabled mobile devices while they walk and watch TV at the same time.

MySpace also said that users would presently be able to watch videos they have uploaded or marked as favorite on mobile devices including the BlackBerry Bold, Palm Centro, Motorola Q9, LG Voyager, Nokia N95 and Samsung Instinct. The move makes MySpace the first social network to enable mobile video streaming.

Barcelonan -- With more than four billion mobile phones in use globally, Nokia, the leading mobile device maker, on Tuesday at its annual Nokia World conference in Barcelona, has announced the latest versions of its upcoming mapping and navigation platform, along with a new messaging service in an effort to build out its mobile services.

A beta of this newest edition of Nokia Maps now allows users to plan their journey in advance on a PC and synchronize the route with their mobile phone. Currently, the pre-planning function is only available for Windows-based devices. Nokia has also combined the latest version of Nokia Maps more closely with its PC-based service Ovi.

The upgraded Nokia Maps also offers features, such as high-resolution aerial images and 3D landmarks. The new software also empowers users to share their location using GPS.

San Francisco -- Social networking giant Facebook said it is geared up to expand its new website called “Facebook Connect,” the long anticipated universal log-in service, to integrate functionalities with more third-party Web sites, now seems to be collecting more steam.

Originally announced on the Facebook Developers blog this summer, during the social network’s second annual F8 developer conference in San Francisco, Facebook Connect service enables the members of Facebook to bring their Facebook account information, friends and privacy to other third-party sites, desktop applications and devices, according to Dave Morin, Facebook senior platform manager.

“The social networking giant, it appears though, is planning to make an essential place for Web users and to add interconnectivity around the Web to its site.”

New York -- The sphere of patent lawsuits has moved out of control. The most latest and bizarre patent lawsuit issues from EMG Technology, LLC, who has filed suit at the US District Court in Tyler, Texas, alleging that Apple’s use of a system that shrinks pages to fit smaller screens, which it says infringes US Patent 7,441,196 that was awarded to EMG on 21 October.

An American real estate developer turned inventor, who established EMG Technology, LLC, to hold a newly purchased patent, has started legal proceedings against Apple over its Mobile Safari patent, claiming that he holds the ownership to the intellectual property rights to iPhone-like web browsing on mobile devices.

San Francisco -- Many people who love watching their favorite television programs live and are often saddened when they miss out their much loved television shows, but now they need not feel bad about it. Also if you have the tendency of forgetting to schedule your TiVo DVR box, and only remember while out and about, then you can leave all your worries to TiVo! TiVo has launched a new mobile site, which brings relief for those who miss to record the big game or their favorite sitcom, as the news service enables customers to program their Series 2 and Series 3 DVR from a cell phone, even when they are away from their home.

More specifically, TiVo Mobile users can program recordings straight to their TiVo box from their mobile phone. The TiVo Mobile is a free mobile phone-optimized Web site that allows subscribers and non-subscribers to browse, search and discover television shows regardless of mobile platform, carrier or browser.

San Francisco -- Facebook Inc., the world’s largest social-networking Web site, has been awarded $873 million in a landmark judgment against a Canadian resident accused of sending more than 4 million sexually explicit “spam” messages from members’ profiles, many advertising male enhancement drugs. The judgment was issued in federal court in San Jose, Calif., on Friday against Adam Guerbuez, of Montreal, and his company, Atlantis Blue Capital.

The man, Adam Guerbuez, did not defend himself or show up in court. The U.S. District Judge Jeremy Fogel in San Jose, California, on Nov. 21 issued the order against Adam Guerbuez, of Montreal, the owner of Atlantis Blue Capital and the Web site Ballervision.com, according to court documents. The ruling also forbids Guerbuez from using Facebook or interacting with its members ever again.