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Comcast is making its push against over-the-top content distributors like Netflix and Hulu. Today, it took another step towards evening the playing field by enlisting Elemental Technologies, a video processing company that specializes in sending content to tablets and smartphones.

Comcast is one of the first cable companies to meaningfully compete in the content market, instead of being a "dumb pipe" operator. Comcast's desire to be in the content business became apparent with its massive take over of NBC Universal approved last year. In terms of content monetization against the other operators like Verizon, AT&T or Time Warner, Comcast is now ahead of the curve.

The video and voice calling service Skype is coming to a TV near you, thanks to a new partnership with Comcast, a leading provider of cable TV services here in the U.S. This morning, the two companies formally announced a deal that will allow Comcast customers to use Skype's HD video calling on their HD television sets, made available through a Comcast-provided adapter box which works in conjunction with an HD video camera.

Customer trials of the new service will begin in "the coming months," but no exact date was given for the service's wider launch, only that more details will be made available "later this year."

Comcast is looking to try to beat the online video sites at their own game. According to The Wall Street Journal, the cable provider is testing how to deliver live television over Internet protocol to better enable itself to do battle with the likes of iTunes, Hulu, Amazon and Netflix in a trial run at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology this fall.

When giants walk, all others be wary. Comcast's goal is to bring live television to any device that can access the Internet. Its test will be available to MIT students who will be able to watch video on any device this fall. Is this what consumers have been waiting for? Who better to do it than a cable company with a giant infrastructure and content distribution broadcast rights?

The media world is changing fast. The latest anecdotal evidence of that: TV star Keith Olbermann left his post at MSNBC this weekend with zero explanation, yet he hasn't lost his access to the public's ear. Olbermann just Tweeted to his 200,000 fans on Twitter.

Specifically, he Tweeted that he's going to Tweet. At 8 PM EST tonight. Presumably about why he left his show so abruptly. Was it because of the Comcast/NBC merger the day before? Was it not that at all, but rather longer-running tensions between the star and management? We'll be able to hear it directly from the horse's mouth in just over 5 hours. In 140 character chunks.

The Federal Trade Commission has approved the controversial sale of a majority share of NBC Universal by General Electric to Comcast, leaving only Justice Department approval for a deal that could define the changing landscape of national power. (Update, it's all approved now, by the Justice Dept. as well.) Critics used to call into question the relationship between NBC, a leading provider of news and analysis regarding current events, and its owners General Electric, a leading provider of big weapons that made those current events go boom.

Now we live in a different world, a post-Cold War information age. Power used to hinge in large part over who had the biggest bomb stockpile. In the future it may be a question of whose voice and content gets delivered through the tubes. If this deal goes through, the many tubes that belong to Comcast will have a vested interest in getting NBC content to customers fast. Other content, not as much. Into that breach may come legislation. The openness of the Web will be hotly debated.

Frank Eliason, the man behind the ballyhooed Twitter account @comcastcares, announced his resignation from giant cable and internet provider Comcast this afternoon. Companies interested in social media, and that's just about all companies these days, have watched @comcastcares very closely.

Eliason was named Senior Director in National Customer Operations at Comcast just one year ago and has only been at Comcast at all for less than 3 years. Stardom can be built up fast in the young world of social media, however, and as a widely studied ground-breaker Eliason could likely now get a job at almost any company in the world. A specific but unnamed opportunity to do social media work in the financial services industry, where Eliason has worked for years before, is next on his agenda, according to his blog post on the Comcast site.

Capitol Hill is abuzz as Comcast and NBC Universal defend their merger in an antitrust investigation before the Senate Judiciary Committee. While a number of interest groups are commenting on the potential acquisition, Boxee CEO Avner Ronen's blog post offers some hints at how the merger could affect the environment for web TV startups.

Comcast sees the writing on the wall: cable-based TV will not survive the next decade. Its value is fast eroding because it can't compete with on-demand, Internet-delivered TV across all screens. Unlike their music counterparts, TV executives have pulled their heads out of the sand in time and are working hard to survive this monumental shift. To do so, however, they need to choose the right battles to fight.

Enjoy the online TV party while it lasts, because if it is up to your favorite cable companies like Comcast and Time Warner, access to TV shows might soon go behind a paywall that will be controlled by cable or satellite TV providers. Just as the newspaper industry doesn't know how to react to the new challenges posed by the Internet, the cable industry, too, is trying to remain relevant in a world where appointment TV is a thing of the past. This is due to the proliferation of DVRs where TV networks and producers can just put their content on the web and users can watch these shows on their TVs and in their living rooms thanks to cheap hardware devices from Apple and Roku, and software like Boxee.

Today, Comcast announced that it will amend its Acceptable Use Policy and add a clause to it that will establish a "monthly data use threshold" of 250 GB per month. This effectively puts a cap on the amount a Comcast user can download per month and codifies an informal policy Comcast was already enforcing. While 250GB is a large amount of data right now, it won't be once a large number users start watching HD streams which can easily take up numerous GB per hours.