Attorneys must love the founders of Skype -- Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis, who filed yet another lawsuit. This one is against the former CEO of Joost, Mike Volpi, as well as Index Ventures. The claim is that the defendants breached their fiduciary responsibilities to Joost by brokering the $1.9 billion buyout of Skype, which is currently owned by eBay (NASDAQ: EBAY). One of the investors in the proposed deal is Index Ventures (and Volpi recently became a partner of the firm).

Keep in mind that on Wednesday, the Skype founders filed a lawsuit -- against eBay, Silver Lake Partners, Index Ventures, Andreessen Horowitz and the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board -- for copyright infringement. They believe that their company, Joltid, owns key intellectual property for the Skype platform and that eBay is in violation of the terms.

User-generated content (the YouTube phenomenon) has sent the entire internet industry scrambling for a piece of its ad-revenue potential. Now, any bozo with a video camera can produce his/her own masterpiece and find an audience of millions (just like Hollywood bozos do).

What if, however, your creativity runs to internet gadgets, mashups, and web pages? Microsoft Corp. (NASDAQ: MSFT) doesn't believe your lack of html expertise should freeze you out of the market.

Following the lead of Google Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) and Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ: YHOO), Microsoft has launched a new tool, Popfly Creator, to take the coding work out of creating user-built web content. It has also launched a community, Popfly Space, to host the creations.

With Popfly Creator, you'll be able to piece together feeds to create your own custom web pages, or mash them up to create something new and wonderful (or dreadful). For example, suppose your life dream is to create a real-time display correlating the temperature in Mumbai, the S&P 500 average, and the color of the shirt you have on, in a 3-D graph? Popfly could make that dream come true, for better or worse.

Microsoft is not, as usual, first with concept. Yahoo launched Yahoo Pipes last year. Google has allowed mashups utilizing Google Earth and Google Maps.

MSFT is currently spooning out user privileges, perhaps hoping to clone the video site Joost's success in cultivated allure through the illusion of scarcity.

The new program is built using Microsoft's new Silverlight platform, but the average user won't need to know that. Microsoft is betting that, if they allow the world to unleash its creativity, some great content is bound to result -- the million monkeys approach. Then, by hosting such content on Popfly Space, the company will gain the eyeballs they need to grow their advertising revenue.

Since the cautious release of Apple TV (NASDAQ: AAPL), we've been waiting on pins and needles to see who will be the first to take Internet television to the next level. I'm thinking that the next phase of the video revolution might very well be knocking on our door right now in the form of Joost, the Internet television service being developed by the founders of the eBay service Skype. I'm a bit dismayed that there isn't a lot more noise being made about the wireless feed of Internet data into our home entertainment systems. Am I the only one who relishes the idea of sitting back on my couch and doing my digital image editing on a 72-inch HD flat screen on the wall?

The Commercial Alert website posted a nice article by Eric Pfanner of the New York Times . In it, Mr. Pfanner discusses the level of interest that big time advertisers have shown relative to Internet TV and its potential. He makes clear that major advertisers are waiting in the wings. The list of potential players includes, "the Purina division of Nestlé, Hewlett-Packard, Intel, Motorola, the Opel and Vauxhall units of General Motors, Taco Bell, Lions Gate Entertainment and the United States Army."

The Unofficial Apple Weblog has reported that Apple TV units have begun to make an appearance in the Chicago area. Apparently, they can be had for under $300. Gadget Lab did a nice expose' on the units and provides an excellent snap shot of public feed back. While I can't claim that Apple TV has generated anything in the genus of excitement quite yet, it does appear to me that the proposition and its implications are being well received.

So sit back on your haunches for a while and watch this development as it progresses. Relax and wait for the major wave to hit. Be amused as Joost prepares for launch and ponder why Apple has built the launching pad. But, don't be surprised when this concept breaks loose and takes the world by storm. Internet TV on your home entertainment system is most assuredly "The rabid dog in the wood shed," and someone is going to let that puppy out.

MAJOR PAPERS:

• According to the Wall Street Journal (subscription required), Viacom (NYSE: VIA) may announce a licensing deal with new Internet service Joost.
• Also in this morning's Journal, Airbus owner EADS surprised investors and employees yesterday by postponing a long-awaited announcement of Airbus's big makeover plan, called Power8.
• And in more airline news in the Journal, JetBlue (NASDAQ: JBLU) is planning to overhaul its procedures after a storm caused the company to cancel a thousand flights and strand thousands of travelers.
• According to the Financial Times (subscription required), rumors have spread that Anheuser-Busch (NYSE: BUD) and InBev are in serious talks.

OTHER PAPERS:

• The Sunday Edition of the U.K. Times reported that JP Morgan (NYSE: JPM) will formally kick off a GBP 7B auction of DaimlerChrysler's (NYSE: DCX) Chrysler unit as early as this week.
• According to French paper La Tribune, STMicroelectronics (NYSE: STM) will supply multimedia microprocessors to Nokia (NOK) for its mobile telephones.