Malcolm Gladwell, that delightfully frizzy public intellectual, recently argued in The New Yorker against the commonly held belief that social networks will transform activism by making it easier for people to organize and participate. And, well, he couldn't be more wrong.

For all the peculiar twists, dents and dings of the digital revolution, this may be about the oddest: With zero fanfare, old-school, dawn-of-the-desktop office productivity tools - digital moldy oldies like word processing, calendaring and sketching - are getting a Web 2.0 makeover. Office productivity heavies Microsoft and Google, along with dozens of other start-ups, are smashing the building blocks of the virtual office and recasting them as more Web-based, collaborative modules that are ripe for savvy advertisers cutting fresh paths to new markets.

This summer Papa John's Pizza unleashed a crowdsourcing campaign that tested the R&D and marketing chops of its most ambitious customers. Consumers were asked to create and submit recipes for interesting new pizzas. The top three pizzas were then put on the regular menu and finalists had one month to hustle up sales of their pizza creations, mainly through social media and PR. The top-selling pizza earned $10,000 for its creator/marketer and $480 worth of free pizza every year for 50 years.

When Gap sized up the iPad back in April, it didn't see the tablet as merely a place to put Gap ads inside upscale mobile magazines, but rather as an opportunity to create its own constantly streaming magazine.

When constructing the "Look What You Can Do"-themed campaign promoting the Olympus PEN E-PL1, the media and creative teams at the Boston office of Mullen wanted to put the camera in the hands of consumers. But that's not so easily done - only the true enthusiast is going to be motivated enough to rush out to the camera shop for an in-person demo, after all. So Mullen decided to provide potential buyers with a hands-on trial they could take part in at home, work, or anywhere for that matter, through an online augmented reality experience that is a key part …

"Integrity" is not exactly a word that rolls off the tongue. It's not typical marketingspeak, especially for food that is appreciated because it is fast and cheap. The word doesn't foster visions of good times or tasty, easy-to-eat meals.

The media has been rumbling for years about the rise of the digital creative agencies in DUMBO, the gem of urban renewal in Brooklyn nestled literally Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass. Led by agencies like Huge and Big Spaceship, DUMBO-based firms are winning mission-critical digital business with both Fortune 100 clients and dotcoms. Talent-hungry boutiques continue piling into this post-industrial eyesore turned quaint design utopia, and a recent job fair-slash-cocktail hour attracted hundreds of eager applicants. The DUMBO allure seems increasingly less about discounted rent than participating in a unique culture of innovation and creativity that's drawing big clients …

Every digital district seems to impart its own quirks and eccentricities onto its inhabitants. Boulder ain't Boston and San Francisco is a world away from São Paolo. The original capital D Digital District (perhaps only in that some of its residents have claimed that moniker for themselves), DUMBO is an apt starting place for us to explore sense of place in the agency world. It's long been an aim of this magazine to chronicle these cultural differences, but it took a somewhat quarrelsome exchange to finally see it through to fruition as a proper package, though we hope to bring …