First off: I can reassure all my readers that I will not be coming out with an opus on Yahoo’s turmoil in 2012. Nor rounding out a trilogy of books on AOL in 2013, for that matter, full of lessons learned and bridges burned.

But that’s not true for other players in Silicon Valley, including three sure-to-be prominent books coming out in the next three months.

First off, on Jan. 25, will be the work of Fortune magazine writer Adam Lashinsky, who turned his cover story on the inside workings of Apple into a book called … “Inside Apple.”

The subtitle, “How America’s Most Admired — and Secretive — Company Really Works,” promises the “secret systems, tactics and leadership strategies that allowed Steve Jobs and his company to churn out hit after hit and inspire a cult-like following for its products.”

Apparently, we’re all about to find out about concepts like the “DRI” — or assigning a Directly Responsible Individual to every task (which I call DYS, or Do Your Story, here at AllThingsD); and the Top 100, “an annual ritual in which 100 up-and-coming executives are tapped a la Skull & Bones for a secret retreat with company founder Steve Jobs.”

Sadly, not anymore on that retreat, but I am still looking forward to reading more about the management techniques of the late tech visionary.

On Valentines Day, well-known VC, entrepreneur and Start-Up Whisperer Reid Hoffman’s book with co-author Ben Casnocha also comes out, touting lessons from Silicon Valley.

Titled “The Start-up of You: Adapt to the Future, Invest in Yourself, and Transform Your Career,” it is described as a “blueprint for thriving in your job and career in today’s challenging world of work by applying the lessons of Silicon Valley’s most innovative entrepreneurs.”

Let’s hope it’s not the dudes from Color handing out the advice!

According to the authors, “the key is to manage your career as if it were a start-up business: a living, breathing, growing start-up of you.”

If I were a start-up, I would sell virtual doughnuts. Hey Reid, gimme a badillion dollars!

Finally, on March 12, the grumpy investor Peter Thiel teams with entrepreneur Max Levchin and chess grandmaster Garry Kasparov for “The Blueprint: Reviving Innovation, Rediscovering Risk, and Rescuing the Free Market.”

It’s funny that they, and also Hoffman, are using the hopelessly analog term “blueprint,” but I like the retro feel.

No surprise, Thiel’s posse is unhappy with the pace of innovation, presumably underwhelmed by “Plants vs. Zombies” compared to the internal combustion engine.

“Challenging the notion that we are living in an age of technological progress, three of the world’s most original thinkers demonstrate that we have become a risk-averse society, hobbled by tort laws and government regulations, short-term financial thinking, and mind-numbing complacency,” the book’s description reads. “Eager to end ‘paper entrepreneurialism’ and avoid another financial meltdown, they propose that we expand research and development in breakthrough ‘disruptive technologies,’ create millions of jobs through science-based engineering and genuine innovation, shore up our crumbling infrastructure, stop squandering money on misspent ‘horizontal education,’ and restore financial discipline.”

Phew! And here I was very pleased that I can Instagram filtered pictures of my dinner last night around the world.

In any case, before the zombies arrive to steal them, get your brains ready to think big thoughts.

According to sources close to the situation, Intel Capital and Advance Publications will lead a $30 million investment round in Kno, the high-profile student tablet start-up.

In addition to the funding from its venture capital arm, Intel itself will consult with Kno on its tablet design. Kno, which is getting out of the hardware business, will now focus on its software to manage the devices that are aimed at the college market.

Intel will not manufacture tablets either. Instead, its engineers will consult with Kno on power management, graphics, display, systems integration, which it does for a variety of its customers.

Along with Intel Capital and Advance, current investors will also participate in the round, said sources. But Intel Capital and Advance, the owner of the Condé Nast publishing empire, make up a big part of the funding.

Sources said Intel Capital’s investment is $20 million and Advance and others make up the rest of it.

BoomTown reported in February that the much-funded and high-profile Silicon Valley start-up–aimed at making tablet computers focused at students–was considering selling off the entire hardware part of the business.

Sources said Kno execs have recently decided that the quicker-than-expected uptake in tablet production by a multitude of powerful device makers had made its efforts to package a seamless offering less critical.

Instead, the company will now focus on its robust software and services to offer students on the Apple iPad, as well as upcoming tablets based on Google’s Android mobile operating system and others.

The move is a dramatic shift for the company, which had not shipped significant numbers of the touchscreen device as it has long touted.

In fact, Kno said in November that it would ship a $599 and $899 version of the tablet by the end of the year.

The lower price was for its single-screen device, while the clamshell double-screen version was more expensive.

And, although it has been reported no pre-orders were fulfilled, Kno did indeed ship several hundred of them, built by China’s Foxconn, before stopping doing so earlier this year.

Many have been dubious about Kno’s ambitious hardware efforts.

That’s because marketing a new and complex product like the Kno takes a lot of effort and cash, especially since it is an increasingly competitive market for mobile and portable computing products that includes Apple, Microsoft, Hewlett-Packard, Google, Amazon, Dell and many others.

Before this $30 million, Kno has raised another $46 million in funding to add to an earlier $10 million round.

Sources in February said that the Santa Clara, Calif.-based company considering going back out to raise even more.

Its current backers include prominent venture players like Andreessen Horowitz and First Round Capital, along with angel investors Mike Maples and Ron Conway.

Sources said the shift to deliver textbook and other student-related delivery system would be a better path for all that investment money, since Kno has established a wide range of partnerships with colleges and universities.

In addition, Kno co-founder Osman Rashid has a lot of experience in digital education market. He was also the co-founder of Chegg, the textbook rental business that is reportedly aiming for an IPO soon.

BusinessWeek was first to report that Intel Capital was making the investment in Kno, but the post did not mention Advance’s involvement or that Intel itself was licensing the hardware design business from Kno.

It’s a significant deal for IBM, and the company claims there’s a great fit between its BPM portfolio and Lombardi’s Teamworks and Blueprint offerings.

But not everyone agrees. MWD Advisors analyst Neil Ward-Dutton wonders if there’s a bit too much overlap between the two companies’ BPM offerings.

“Although the strengths of Lombardi’s tools are different from IBM’s there is almost 100% product overlap,” Ward-Dutton writes. “What’s more the design philosophy of Lombardi’s offering is almost diametrically opposed to that of IBM’s offering–many of Lombardi’s strengths come from its tightly-integrated toolset and repository. It’s not straightforward to see how these things can come together to form a coherent portfolio–unless they’re basically fenced off from each other and positioned as supporting different kinds of BPM scenario (with Lombardi focused on ‘people centric’ processes, WebSphere on ‘system centric’ processes).”

BoomTown is thinking of starting a drinking game wherein the group gathered at Yahoo’s “Open House” media event this morning takes a shot of Cuervo every time an exec says “open.”

Except, everyone would be drunker than drunk by now if that was the case, as Yahoo lays out strategies to open its platform and all its products to the whole wide world.

That would be developers, publishers, advertisers, content creators and my mother.

OK, not her, since she cannot turn on a computer. But definitely everyone else.

As Yahoo U.S. VP Hilary Schneider noted, the main benefit for Yahoo (YHOO) ad clients of Yahoo becoming more open and allowing them to buy and target ads more easily: “It’s more access, better [return on investment], and it gives the advertiser a better experience.”

It’s also easier. “What an advertiser wants to do is reach target consumers, and they want to do it without working with a lot of different silos,” she said.

While Schneider (pictured here) was not specific in any substantive way–more to come next month, apparently–about what that ad system eventually looks like, streamlining and automating Yahoo’s often confusing ad process is critical to improved financial results.

She also skittered rather quickly through any specifics about the company’s controversial Google (GOOG) deal, in which Yahoo is outsourcing some of its search-ad business, making it sound peachy-keen for advertisers and not scary in any way.

Next up was Connected Life EVP Marco Boerries, who had not been expected to present, to talk about Yahoo’s mobile strategy.

“Open for us in mobile is not only a strategy, but a necessity,” said Boerries (pictured here), who also showed off a more open mobile home page that users could customize in any way.

He also talked about more openness for Yahoo’s Blueprint mobile development platform, which lets third-party developers create standalone applications, as well as its oneConnect, which debuted yesterday.

Yahoo has described the service as an “evolutionary new social address book that brings together a user’s circle of friends, their lives and all the ways they communicate into one seamless, easy-to-use application.”

Essentially, it is a social-networking aggregation play, which is a good thing to do given that Yahoo does not have a true social-networking play.

Next up: Video of demos!