Elaine Thompson / AP Blind student Lindsay Yazzolino demonstrates WebAnywhere.

Retired AOL executive Ted Leonsis is turning his passion for documentaries into an Internet service meant to give independent filmmakers broader viewership.

His Web site, SnagFilms, will take professionally produced documentaries like "Super Size Me" and some from National Geographic and PBS and show them for free — or embed them at social networking hangouts.

Ads will run periodically, with revenue split between SnagFilms and filmmakers.

Leonsis said the idea grew out of "Nanking," his entry into filmmaking. "Nanking," which won an editing award at last year's Sundance Film Festival, chronicles the brutal Japanese occupation of the Chinese city in 1937.

Leonsis is SnagFilms' majority owner, but he turned to former AOL colleagues, including co-founder Steve Case, for funding. AOL is providing technical and advertising help. Ex-National Geographic executive Rick Allen will be chief executive.

Web-based product helps blind users

Blind people generally use computers with the help of screen-reader software, but those products can cost more than $1,000, so they're not exactly common on public PCs. Now a free new Web-based program for the blind aims to improve the situation.

It's called WebAnywhere, and it was developed by a computer science graduate student at the University of Washington. Unlike software that has to be installed, WebAnywhere is an Internet application that can make Web surfing accessible to the blind on most any computer.

To get WebAnywhere running, a blind person has to get online. Once online, a blind Web surfer can use the WebAnywhere browser, which can link to and then read out loud any page — as long as the computer has speakers or a headphone jack.

Pittsburgh is abuzz with robotic art

A green roller coaster twists above the entrance of the Children's Museum of Pittsburgh, Pa. But its cars are filled with plants and a solar panel that triggers the ride to stop and start.

It is one of 11 "BigBot" robotic art installations in celebration of robotics, dubbed Robot 250 to coincide with Pittsburgh's 250th anniversary. The Robot 250 prelude included workshops for teachers so that kids and adults could create their own robots.

— The Associated Press