The Case For Skein
After the initial set of attacks on MD5 and SHA-1, NIST organized a series of conferences on hash function design. I was lucky enough to be able to attend the first one, and had a great time. This was the place where the suggestion of a competition in the style of the AES process to replace SHA-1 and SHA-2 was first proposed (to wide approval). This has resulted in over 60 submissions to the SHA-3 contest, of which 14 have been brought into the second round.
Of the second round contenders, I think Skein is the best choice for becoming SHA-3, and want to explain why I think so.