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CBS Interactive's restructuring includes the elimination of the seven humans who create Startrek.com, the team announced Friday.

The franchise's official site has covered the original show, its five spin-offs, and the 10 movies devoted to Star Trek. The site's fate is up in the air, and the team encourages fans to write to CBS at editor@startrek.com.

Live long and prosper, Startrek.com.

Read the full story on Slashdot: "Startrek.com shutting down"

I caught CNET Editor at Large Brian Cooley on the CBS Evening News report last night, "The Secret Lives of Teens." In the second installment of this three-parter, which featured a tug-of-war between a daughter and her mother concerned about her risky online behavior, Cooley observed that, "This is just the return of the Cold War, with different players. Instead of the U.S. and Russia, it's Mom and Dad versus Joey and Bill." Cooley talked about parental control technology but added that, "In the end, this points back to the parenting relationship, and it moves away from technology when you really have to make a difference in their lives...you cannot rely on software."

I agree with Cooley's conclusion. Online safety for teens is a complex issue that cannot be covered in one blog post, but the CBS Evening News series gave me a lot of food for thought. They posed the question, is parental spying on teen Internet use an "invasion of privacy or smart parenting?" and I wish the CBS series had given more consideration to the possibility that digital spying is a misguided parenting practice.… Read more

A chunk of 36 city blocks in Manhattan will have free, ad-supported public Wi-Fi access by the end of November, thanks to a new initiative from CBS Corporation in conjunction with the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) and New York City Transit.

Called the CBS Mobile Zone, this area of coverage will stretch through a bustling, tourism- and business-heavy swath of midtown from 42nd Street north to Central Park south, from Sixth Avenue west to Eighth Avenue. (Landmarks-wise, that's roughly Times Square to Columbus Circle.)

The new effort will be supported largely by advertising. Upon logging on, Web surfers will … Read more

Influence is tough to measure, but it's one of those things where you know it when you see it.

Apple's influence on the mobile phone industry after just over 90 days as a player was evident at the CTIA show Tuesday. Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer didn't mention the iPhone specifically in his keynote address, but noted that Apple "has done some nice work." After Ballmer's keynote, a friend of some staffers in Microsoft's booth enthusiastically demonstrated his iPhone for an audience checking out the latest Windows Mobile phones. And a panel of five … Read more

Updated 12:30 p.m. PT

A coalition of major media and technology companies that notably does not include Google appears to be getting serious about copyright on the Internet.

A who's who of media companies--CBS, News Corp.'s Fox Entertainment Group, NBC Universal, Viacom, and Disney--as well as Microsoft and the News Corp.-owned MySpace, along with video-sharing sites Dailymotion and Veoh Networks released a set of guidelines Thursday designed to halt online piracy.

Notably absent from the list is Google, which unveiled filtering technology for its YouTube video-sharing site on Monday. Sources familiar with the coalition plan … Read more

The announcement has been made--read CNET News.com's full coverage here.

The Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday that an impressive cast of major media and technology companies plans to announce a high-profile list of joint guidelines for preserving copyright and fighting piracy online. Sources told The Journal that the companies involved include media moguls CBS Corp., NBC Universal, News Corp.'s Fox (and its MySpace social network), Viacom, and Disney, as well as tech icon Microsoft and French video-sharing site DailyMotion.

It's unclear whether these are the only parties involved in the deal. Inquiries to several of … Read more

Rumors started flying on Thursday morning that CBS had picked up celebrity gossip site Dotspotter for somewhere in the neighborhood of $10 million. Valleywag reported the dirt first, and the strictly-business PaidContent said that industry sources had confirmed it.

Dotspotter has not yet responded to a request for comment.

CBS' interactive division, headed by Valley veteran Quincy Smith, has been acquisition-happy in recent months, snapping up social music site Last.fm and finance video blog Wallstrip. It's not yet clear whether Dotspotter--or CBS' other digital acquisitions, for that matter--will remain standalone or ultimately be integrated into the media company'… Read more