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In a kind of Wikipedia of textbooks, Macmillan, one of the five largest publishers of trade books and textbooks, is introducing software called DynamicBooks, which will allow college instructors to edit digital editions of textbooks and customize them for their individual classes.

An analysis of Google Buzz, and a little perspective on Google's broad ambitions: "We will index all the world's information, upload all the books, deploy the fastest network and design the coolest phone, while simultaneously managing your e-mail, pictures, blogs and anything else you'd care to upload to our online repositories."

The Toronto-based startup Thoora promises to gauge how well individual news stories are doing by analyzing and calibrating real-time data from blogs, mainstream news sources and Twitter. Thoora's software uses more than 100 attributes to determine not only the most popular content but also the highest quality, using measures such grammar and spelling and the authority of sites that link to the content.

Comcast/NBC combined cable networks will comprise 82% of the cash flow to the combined venture. Network and film studio will contribute only a small portion. Comcast says no overlap between it and NBC. Thus no redundancies or lay-offs.

Network television and cable networks have a bright future, despite the inroads of TiVo and the threat of free video on the Web. And book publishers may also see growth in the years ahead, if they can learn to relax and love the e-reader. Newspapers, however, can pretty much pack it in.

Apple is looking to renovate old media and content distribution in the home and classroom