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Over the last 18 months, digital technologies - including mobile, analytics, big data, social and cloud - have reached a tipping point with business executives. Analysts said there is no choice but to increase technology's potential in the enterprise, and this means evolving IT's strategies, priorities and plans beyond tending to the usual concerns as CIOs expect their 2013 IT budgets to be essentially flat for fifth straight year.

"Creativity is not a talent, it is a way of operating." John Cleese talks about research surrounding creativity, and the factors to consider to facilitate being creative.

The death toll in Egypt so far is over 300, with thousands wounded. Way to jump on a trending #hashtag to push your products, Kenneth Cole.

Oh, and in case you missed it, there is already a parody Kenneth Cole PR Twitter account at http://twitter.com/KennethColePR Hours after its creation, it already has 3,633 followers. Electric speed indeed.

Also of interest: http://twitter.com/#!/dacort/status/33303368441004033 Damon Cortesi posted a screenshot of the KC fan page activity.

Brad Feld, a venture capitalist, recently had a very uncomfortable experience with social media. The final quote from his account of the experience highlights the need to experience media to understand it: "I guess it's a good thing that this just happened and caused me to think harder about the implications. One of the reasons I immerse myself in this stuff is to understand the products and services, but also to understand the impact on humans and our society. While it's easy to think intellectually about privacy, it's a whole different deal when you have to process the ideas in the context of real issues that you encounter."

People who see the "glass as half empty" may be more willing to contribute to a common goal if they already identify with it, according to researchers from The University of Texas at Austin, University of Chicago and Sungkyunkwan University.

"Small companies might turn to an out-of-box ESN like Salesforce (Chatter), while larger companies buy an ESN platform and then customize it to fit their needs.  But one of the biggest problems with ESN's right now is that developers and trainers don't account for culture."

Walmart, the world's largest retailer, embraces social, mobile, and the startup spirit to compete against Amazon. Will it be enough?

"The Institute's director, Dr. Michael Rappa, spoke today in Washington, DC with senior IT executives across Federal agencies and state government about the looming talent shortage in Big Data. The panel included Jeff Butler, Director, Research Databases, with the Internal Revenue Service and Micheline Casey, former Chief Data Officer, State of Colorado. This past summer Dr. Rappa served as academic co-chair of TechAmerica Foundation's Big Data Commission, which examined strategies for transforming government through the application of Big Data."

"Alongside this, we wanted to gauge wider views across the sector into charities' use of digital and how else they think it could help them. So today we're launching the results of our Charity Digital Survey at our sold out Charity Digital Summit, part of our Google funded programme of technology events for charities. Many of the 334 charity sector professionals who responded to the survey view digital as essential to their work, but fear they could miss out on opportunities for fundraising and income generation due to a lack of digital skills."

"On the day of the United Nations General Assembly's vote on upgrading Palestine to non-member observer status, the @UN official account sent out a tweet that seemed to undercut support for the move. The tweet was deleted soon after posting and a correction issued, but not before it received around 100 retweets, as well as comments and screenshots for the record."

Data from social networks are making social science more scientific (via @TheEconomist)

The Utility of Twitter Lists As the negotiations progressed, it was helpful to monitor a Twitter list of Congress members in order keep up with their feelings about the proposed deals. After the final votes were cast, a stream of tweets from members came pouring through, providing an instant window into how they voted and why they voted the way they did. (thanks CSPAN)

"Why the increasing business use of social media by business? Social media offers immense potential for marketing, image-making, advertising, public relations efforts, customer relations, investor relations and a variety of other positive, beneficial activities.  But it also carries potential risks, a caveat perfectly illustrated by the Hastings case. The risks of social media are in some, but not all respects, similar to those of print media.  But not all libel laws apply-issues of malice and negligence have not been definitively decided in the courts. Insider trading issues, however, are clear.  The transmission via social media of insider information about a publicly traded company is illegal. Using Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest or private blogs to transmit insider information to large numbers of people is a violation of law."

"Courtesy of a plethora of very irked Yahoo employees, here is the internal memo sent to the company about a new rule rolled out today by CEO Marissa Mayer, which requires that Yahoo employees who work remotely to relocate to company facilities. "Speed and quality are often sacrificed when we work from home," reads the memo to employees from HR head Jackie Reses. "We need to be one Yahoo!, and that starts with physically being together." Painfully awkward as this is phrased - I might have used "being present together" - it means every Yahoo get to your desks stat!"

Is there a bright line between what you say in "real life" and what you say on social media sites like Twitter? If you are a public figure, a journalist, or an employee at a corporation, do your tweets reflect on your organization or are they merely personal opinions best ignored? Is a tweet "newsworthy" or is it something you say in the privacy of your own internet? Derek Andersen of Startup Grind thinks I'm "clueless" (and apparently every other author at Forbes) because I blogged about a tweet that one of EA's product managers made about Call of Duty: Black Ops 2. In the tweet, Kevin O'Leary called the franchise "tired." To me, this was an interesting display of rivalry.

Colleges do not have to actively monitor the social media accounts of their athletes for NCAA rules violations, according to a ruling released Monday. Last summer the NCAA said it was investigating nine rules infractions by the University of North Carolina football program, including not being vigilant enough in monitoring social media for evidence of rules infractions. As ESPN columnist Sarah Spain wrote at the time, the NCAA was setting itself up to open a potential can of worms.

In March of 1961, nine years after the publication of Charlotte's Web, author E. B. White received a letter from a young fan named Cathy Durham who wanted to know when, if ever, his next children's book would see the light of day. His reply ultimately prompted another letter explaining information overload as it applied to a popular writer of kids books a half-century ago.

"In a move to boost sales through social recommendations, online shoe and clothing retailer Zappos, which is owned by Amazon, has added a new feature called "PinPointing" that offers recommendations based on Pinterest accounts. Unfortunately, the feature doesn't work very well yet."

Has email become the new fax machine? Thierry Breton, Atos Origin CEO and Chairman, would have you believe so. Following through with a promise made earlier this year to eliminate email use among company employees, Breton plans to move beyond email within the next eighteen months and initiate a communication policy based on instant messaging and social media sites. As Atos Origin is a major international information technology company, the decision to abandon email has the potential to influence other companies' methods of communication among employees.