Zite for iPad Screenshot via iTunes

CNN has bought Zite, maker of a popular news reader app for Apple’s iPad that gives readers personalized web content presented with a magazine feel.

CNN announced the acquisition on its PressRoom blog after a week of rumors about the deal. The deal was first reported by TechVibes’ Rob Lewis after the GROW conference in Vancouver, Canada, where Zite is based.

No announcement was made about the size of the deal, but Lewis initially reported that the deal would be for about $20 million to $25 million.

Zite will remain an autonomous unit inside CNN, according to...

A massive language study, spanning Google Books, Twitter, popular songs lyrics and The New York Times, has found that English tends to look on the bright side of things. Positive words outnumber the negative.

The findings are preliminary, but offer a glimpse of the origins and fundamental nature of English, and perhaps of language itself.

“In taking the view that humans are in part storytellers — Homo narrativus — we can look to language itself for quantifiable evidence of our social nature,” wrote mathematicians from Cornell University and the University of Vermont in an Aug. 29 arxiv paper.

Whi...