NEW YORK, NY - Nearly half (41 percent) of companies plan to deploy cash reserves in the new year, according to a recent Deloitte poll of business professionals from a cross section of industries. Respondents also suggest that their companies are likely to execute acquisitions (28.2 percent), increase capital budgets (20.6 percent), repurchase shares (11.8 percent) or issue one-time dividends or increase dividends (6.1 percent) in 2012.

ORLANDO - Last week I attended my first Mobile meet up. It was a panel discussion on mobile app development. I’m a Baby Boomer PR consultant, so this was truly a new experience.

Knowing that Boomers just spent more money than any other cohort on technology on mobile during the 2011 holiday season, I thought it would be fruitful to learn about how theses apps are developed and how they are marketed to the largest and wealthiest cohort in the nation.

NEW YORK, NY - In the rapidly expanding world of incubators and accelerators, TechStars stands out as the Yale of law schools or Harvard of business schools. More than 1,200 companies will apply for the 12-15 spots available in the New York 2012 spring class. This past Saturday, about 70 companies were invited to participate in TechStars for a Day (TS4AD), and my co-founder and I were lucky enough to score an invitation.

ORLANDO - The latest forecast figures in consumer spending from GfK Digital World, produced in partnership with the Consumer Electronics Association, reveal global spending on consumer technology devices will surpass $1 trillion in 2012 for the first time, increasing by 5% over 2011’s figure of $993 billion.

EGHAM, UK - Nearly one third of organizations either already use or plan to use cloud or software-as-a-service offerings to augment their core business intelligence functions, according to Gartner.

A survey of over 1,300 IT managers and business users of business intelligence platforms in the fourth quarter of 2011, only 17 percent of organizations have replaced or plan to replace parts of their core business functions with cloud/SaaS offerings.

FT. LAUDERDALE - South Florida-based virtual computing solutions firm, Citrix Systems said Wednesday afternoon that earnings rose 16% for the fourth quarter on growing sales of its cloud-based business software offerings.

TAMPA - Tampa-based customer management and business process outsourcing firm, Sykes Enterprises, has announced its expansion of Sykes Home, a virtual call center model in which customer service professionals work out of their homes.

The Sykes home model is being used by several of its largest customers, including Fortune 500 companies in the technology, telecommunications and financial services sectors. Work-at-home professionals tend to be more experienced than is typical for the industry.