NIST Hash Contest
NIST has announced the contest to find a replacement for SHA-1, with the goal date in 2011 for the final product.
With the current attacks on SHA-1, NIST has decided that it is time for a replacement to be fished out of the internet ether.
Now, in case you are unaware what the big deal with hash functions is, here is a quote from Schneier's Blog.

Quote::

One-way hash functions are supposed to have two properties. First, they're one-way. This means that it is easy to take an input and compute the hash value, but it's impossible to take a hash value and recreate the original input. By "impossible" I mean "can't be done in any reasonable amount of time."

All I have to say is, good luck to all, and it is about time.

And here is the link to Schneier on Security