After struggling to line up major cable operators to carry the English version of Al Jazeera last year, the Arabic news channel in April turned to the Web's primary TV alternative: YouTube.

SNBC.com is giving new meaning to audience interaction with an in-cinema game that's part of a broader campaign aimed at newshounds.  

Virgin mobile USA has become a billion dollar-a-year company in just five years, though it was still $36 million in the red for 2006. That was one of the disclosures the youth-focused mobile service made in filing for a $100 million IPO in May. The prospectus also contained some other intriguing nuggets.

New video networks seem to be debuting online almost weekly now, and the latest contender is Jalipo. The broadband network features professional, high-quality video with a pay-as-you-go model similar to prepaid mobile plans.

Political debates have been known to generate a lot of hot air but not clouds - until now. Following the first presidential debates, Janet Harris, president of media analysis firm Upstream Analysis, created "tag clouds" that provide a visual display of the 50 words used most often by candidates in both parties.

A pair of recent government reports are taking aim at violence in entertainment media. The Federal Trade Commission and the Federal Communications Commission in separate studies call for greater restrictions on the distribution and marketing of violent movies, TV shows, video games, and music with explicit content.

As an oxymoron, Technology forecasting may deserve a place alongside such chestnuts as business ethics and airline food. That's especially true when the technology relates to media - which is subject to the whims of consumer taste and so even more resistant to accurate prognostication. Nevertheless, industry predictions, especially bullish ones, retain near-mystical power for the role they play in driving business plans, justifying strategic investments and boosting marketing budgets.

As I write this I've got a stack of gripping, action-adventure books piled high on my desk. No, they're not part of my summer vacation reading list. And they're not novels, though they tell some epic tales of heroic figures engaged in mighty conflicts, some of which might have been deemed science fiction if published a few years ago. They're business books.

When Sports Illustrated came out with its 43rd annual swimsuit issue in February, the beauteous subjects didn't just grace glossy printed pages. Rather, the company transformed the magazine into a multi-platform extravaganza with streaming video, a TNT special, iTunes videos, cell-phone wallpapers and an on-demand cable channel - all featuring the same swimsuit models as the long-established print issue.

Time was, we didn't ask much of our cell phones. As long as they held a battery charge for a few hours and worked more-or-less well enough to let us get a line, they met our expectations. No more. Today, they swivel, they flip, they ring, they play music, take pictures, play games, capture video and, oh, yeah, you can still talk on them.