Media

Every time we post an item on type fonts, we're surprised at what a passionate topic it can be--especially when they're free. (One reader once commented, for example, that "true type fonts are evil.")

But regardless of controversy, it can be difficult to choose which fonts to use when there are so many available. That's why we appreciate sites such as Urban Fonts, the self-described "coolest free font collection." Our personal favorite: a Papa.

A new online alert Web site offers a service that will send alerts to people via phone, e-mail, text message, instant message or fax for any event or appointment they need to remember.

Users have to log on and provide the date and time of the event, choose the method they want for the alert, when they want to be alerted and how many times. Alerts can go to land lines or cell phones and instant messaging applications from AOL, Microsoft and Yahoo. The 6Channel6 service works in the U.S. only.

The Web site says the free service may … Read more

Start your own new-media company. Lead the next new-media wave. And the Knight Brothers Foundation will pay you to get started.

On Monday, the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation announced the Knight Brothers 21st Century News Challenge, a contest that will award up to $5 million to "news projects that best use the digital world to connect people to the real world."

Here's how the foundation describes its quest: "The Knight Brothers 21st Century News Challenge hopes to recognize transformative ideas, pilot projects, leadership initiatives and investment opportunities that will help improve the flow … Read more

How many sites can the craze sustain?

It might be a while before we see a big shakeout among youth-focused social-networking sites. The current leaders in that space, Facebook and News Corp.'s MySpace.com, have recently faced criticism over privacy controls.

That hasn't stopped their breakneck growth, but a new crop of competitors with high aspirations is hoping to carve out a niche.

Many college students have read about the success of Mark Zuckerberg and a few friends, who started Facebook, essentially an interactive online directory, during their sophomore year at Harvard University.

Now that Zuckerberg has set … Read more

AOL will next week announce a deal with Intel that will let consumers download Gabe Kaplan's finest work to their PCs and watch it on TV.

Under the deal, AOL will let owners of Viiv PCs, an entertainment PC platform designed and promoted by Intel, to download episodes of Welcome Back Kotter and studio movies to the PCs, according to sources close to the companies. These consumers can then watch these movies on plasma TVs or LCD TVs. Consumers will also be able to download music.

A few years ago, studios adamantly opposed consumers download movies onto PCs, except … Read more

A prosecutor out of Hayward, Calif., who had intended to force a murder suspect's mother to remove trial-related documents from her MySpace.com account, has done an about-face on the issue.

After taking some heat in the press from First Amendment legal scholars, Alameda County Deputy District Attorney Amilcar "Butch" Ford, who has not returned phone calls from CNET News.com, told a judge Friday morning that he was not filing a motion asking the court to restrict what goes up on Laura Rangel's MySpace account. Rangel's site is a place for friends and family … Read more

As the battles escalate among text and photo aggregation sites, competition is just beginning to heat up in video.

VideoSift and Viral Video Chart are examples of two approaches that have emerged in this space. The latter, which just launched, appears to use a more traditional method of indexing to scan "several million blogs a day to see which online videos people are talking about the most."

VideoSift, by contrast, is an open-source system based on submissions by its members. Viewers vote for their favorites--whether they be on YouTube, MySpace, Google Videos or anywhere else--and the highest-ranked videos … Read more

CBS announced on Wednesday that it will stream commercial-free versions of three of its shows on Google Video.

"Smith," starring Ray Liotta, "The New Adventures of Old Christine," starring Julia Louis-Dreyfus, and "The Class" are available now for free on Google Video through Sept. 18.

CBS is also offering the first four episodes of each show for free on Innertube, CBS's broadband channel. Each of these free episodes will be available for one week after the TV broadcast. "How I Met Your Mother," "The Unit" and "Shark" … Read more

Despite all that's been written about the power of blogging, it's not necessarily for everyone.

Readers such as this, in fact, apparently think a lot of us should hang it up immediately, if not sooner. So for those misplaced individuals who want to blog but shouldn't, here is an entry on wikiHow that's not to be missed: "How to Dissuade Yourself from Becoming Blogger."