Don’t get taken
Clay auto dealerships have been running ads (disclosure: including in the Globe and on Boston.com) touting a site where they share all the “secrets” of car dealerships, reminding me a little of the old Saturn flat-price ads. I think this is a smart strategy, zagging against the common practices of a lowly-regarded industry. I will be interested to see if their “high-road” strategy makes them more money.

Apocrypha panned
Wow, rarely have I seen a Globe restaurant review this critical.

How to program 30-second skip for Comcast DVR
Super-handy. I just programmed my remote, and life is so much better now.

Lostcasts
A very good weekly Lost podcast.

Holliston Police Station on track
It’s good to see that the new police station is still on schedule. The police are moving into the old Middle School Flagg building; I’m happy to know that my fifth-grade language arts classroom is not longer just metaphorically a jail cell.

33 ways to improve productivity
Interesting nuggets. I’m a bit of a productivity and GTD geek, so I try to do follow quite a few of these strategies. It doesn’t help put more hours in the day, but it helps get more of the important things done.

The Harry-est towns in America
Once upon a time, I worked briefly on community at Amazon, helping launch the PlanetAll-derived Purchase Circles. Here’s another application of that concept: which towns are buying the most Harry Potter books? Sadly, Holliston did not make the list.

BostonWorks is no more
Our partnership with Monster launched today. Congratulations to everyone involved, though I don’t envy Alan for having to port my old browse by commute code. Sometimes things you wrote five years ago linger on far longer then you expect them to.

Battling the bloodsuckers
Bellingham, Medway and Millis are among the towns spraying mosquitos. Apparently the recent heavy rains have made this area a skeeter paradise.

Banned from the Holliston library
Quite the scandal.

Once More with Feeling
I am so sad I missed this: Buffy’s Once More with Feeling sing-along night at Coolidge Corner. Must have been bunnies.

15 Things Kurt Vonnegut Said Better Than Anyone Else Ever Has Or Will
So it goes.

Mark Cuban on commercials for ripoffs
Mavs owner Mark Cuban goes off on the spammy infomercials. I despise all those “work at home and make millions” commercials.

Roger Ebert on his illness
He’s in pretty rough shape, but he will not forgo his own film festival. I miss him on Ebert and Roeper, and hope he gets better soon.

A word of advice during a housing slump: Rent
The New York Times crunches the numbers and finds that many would be better off renting than owning right now.

Congress Street vs. Summer Street
I’ve been working at Fort Point Channel (320 Congress Street) for the past couple of years. I’m a little surprised that people are considering either Congress or Summer Street as the next happening neighborhood in town.

ESPN: Can we keep the yelling down?
ESPN has a new ombudsman, and she pulls no punches. WEEI’s endless yelling has dropped my weekly listening from tens of hours to barely tens of minutes.

Pew: Newspaper readers; Daily Show and Colbert Report viewers best informed
Viewers of Fox News and morning news shows bring up the rear.

Take the funny and run
Interesting review of how jokes are stolen and recycled in the comedy world. Denis Leary, Dane Cook and Carlos Mencia do not come off well.

Alert waitress at a restaurant
Inspirational story of a waitress who notices a guy slipping something into his date’s drink.

Circuit City fires thousands after deciding they earn too much money
Firing your best salespeople is the best way to grow sales at a dying retailer.

How car dealerships try to rip you off
Another insider report from Consumerist. If you aren’t reading Consumerist each day, you should be.

Entwistle Trial
I snarfed up this domain thinking I’d be able to cover the trial as it was happening. Unfortunately, with so much else going on, I’m not going to be able to do that. So, the domain is up for sale, if anyone wants to make an offer for the good type-in traffic.

A review of the Tufte class
Here is a review of the recent Edward Tufte presentation here in Boston. Jay, Russ, me and several other Abuzzers went to this in 2000. It will change the way you think about presenting information. If you haven’t already, you should buy The Visual Display of Quantitative Information, Envisioning Information, Visual Explanations and Beautiful Evidence.

The trouble with private police forces
Be very afraid.

How has the Big Dig affected commuting?
My commute from MetroWest to Fort Point has improved greatly. I take the South Boston exit and it drops me 500 feet from my parking garage.

Whose bed is it anyway?
I’m so glad we haven’t had these problems. (Knock on wood).

38 pitches
Curt Schilling blogs.

Do parents make better managers?
Forbes says they do. I just don’t want Sadie to throw this line back at me in a few years: “Those who didn’t mind sacrificing for their children did better in the performance reviews.”

What it’s like to work at Netflix
Interesting account of the factory floors of the new economy. Reminds me of December 1998 when I got an all-expense-paid trip to Delaware to pack books for the holiday rush.

Blogging your debt-reduction
Interesting article from the Sunday Times about how people are getting a handle on their debt by blogging about it.

Balancing protecting art and displaying it
Ugly crowds at the famous museums are destroying the art. Blame the Da Vinci Code.

Burnout rescue for non-profit workers
The Young Nonprofit Professionals Network is starting a Boston chapter to help people in the non-profit fields avoid burnout.

Natick Mall soon to be Natick Collection
With all sorts of new fancypants stores: Nordstroms, Nieman Marcus, Burberry, Betsey Johnson, Anthropologie, Hanna Andersson. Does this mean I need to shop somewhere other than Brooks Brothers?

Up-to-date Iraq casualties
One of the awesome things about working at the Globe is that I have access to people who *really* know how to find information. One of the researchers turned me on to this site, which has up-to-date data and analysis about Iraq casualties.

Fan’s Guide to Spring Training
We put up this interactive guide to Fort Myers a couple of days ago. It’s starting to get some really good contributions from readers, improving it far beyond what we could do ourselves.

Staying Hungry
James Hong, of “Hot or Not,” writes about what he needs to do to keep himself hungry. Will he coast, riding his existing cash cow, or will he blow it up for the chance at something bigger?

In praise of the forgotten broiler
If I’d told you I had an appliance that could brown like a grill, was as convenient as your oven, and cooked most food in less than 10 minutes, you’d buy it. But you don’t need to.

Praise is overrated
Now that Sadie is starting to understand me, I need to be more careful in how I construct my sentences. Takeaway: always praise effort, not ability.

Why it is so hard to find backup daycare
We’ve been pretty lucky so far with Sadie. We’ve only had to leave work in the middle of the day a few times in the months she’s been in daycare. I hope that will be even more rare when she goes into the toddler room next month.

The joy of programming
Really nice article on why we program (or write, or paint, or play the violin).

Options on Super Bowl tickets
Interesting article from the Globe about how people bought and sold options on Super Bowl tickets based on the likelihood their team would make it.

Rewrite Windows for $3000
Back when I was consulting more often, I ran into a few clients with unrealistic expectations. This RFP is definitely the best one I’ve seen, though.

Red Sox on TV this year
It’s much harder for us to get to games now, so I’m excited that Fox has released their schedule ahead of time, so that we know which Saturday games are in the afternoon (managable) vs. at night (harder).

Dan Savage on Mary Cheney
Gay parent Dan Savage’s take on the Mary Cheney controversy

Off to the Man Cave
I gotta get me one of these.

Home of the week in Holliston
Downtown, next to St. Mary’s.

My husband is not the boss of me
Sometimes a woman can buy a truck on her own.

Harvard Law School nimrod
I cannot emphasize how much I enjoy reading the Boston Police Department’s blog. Karma can bite you in oh-so-many ways.

How to opt-out of various direct marketing lists
Article from the Times describing how to get off many of the lists. I’m especially excited about not getting any more pre-screened credit card offers. My shredder overheats from the weekly mass-shreddings.

Buyers scarce, many condos are for rent
Saw this story coming a mile away. If you want a good deal on a downtown condo, take a look later this year or early 2008. This market won’t come back until 2010. John Keith disagrees.

Horrible intestinal bug going around Boston
The plague monkey hasn’t brought home anything vile for a couple of months. I hope she doesn’t find this beauty.

$225k in Homeland Security dollars coming to Holliston
(Sidenote: Items like this are why I like the way we’re starting to do some regional blogs. This item wouldn’t have made it into the paper, but it’s something people will care about so we still publish it online)

Productivity tricks
Some good ideas in here. At some point I’ll write up a little bit on my own systems.

Danny Sullivan interviews Techmeme’s Gabe Rivera
Techmeme is an incredible resource for anyone in the industry. In this interview, Rivera has some great insights into how he filters the sources and discovers what’s important. I’m always looking to balance the overwhelming flow of incoming information. Techmeme helps a lot.

iPhone Review
The Chicago Sun-Times thinks the iPhone is nearly perfect.

We have an interesting story this morning about an accountant who embezzled millions from a Rehoboth small-businessman, resulting in layoffs for the innocent employees.

A cautionary tale for entrepreneurs everywhere.

Wow, I’m a little behind on my linky goodness. Here are some quicky items that caught my eye in the past couple of months.

A baseball player answers his fan mail fifteen years later
A nice story about a former big-leaguer answering letters he’d lost in his garage.

Why getting married kills your social life
Actually, it wasn’t getting married that killed the social life, it was having the baby. It’s hard to go out to social events in Boston when I must pick up Sadie in Ashland by 5:45.

Is your startup ruthless enough?
Greg Linden is one of my favorite fellow ex-Amazon’ers. Here, he talks about how several prominent startups began in shadier parts of the net.

Yahoo Autos Green Center
A good reference for comparing different hybrid vehicles. When I have to trade in my little sports car for a family truckster next year, this will be my guide.

You can learn a lot from a rich girl
Very interesting article about the perils of consumer credit. “How many hours of work will it take you to buy those jeans?”

The Joe board
The community whiteboard is the best place to keep track of the idiotic things your coworkers say.

SmugMug saves with S3
“Storage as a service” is more efficient in many ways than buying the disks. With all apologies to my friends in the storage business, this is the future for entrepreneurs. Some of the startup ideas I’m playing around with are beginning with the assumption that processing power and storage are essentially free. Ignore those constraints and much more becomes possible.

If Aaron Sorkin wrote a show about baseball.
Studio 60 has been frustrating, but we’ve kept our season pass. So far.

How to create a pop star
Interesting video about how you can take pretty much anyone off the street, apply a little studio magic, and poof! You have a pop star.

LinkedIn has become essential
Jason Calacanis describes how he’s using LinkedIn to recruit new employees. I actually got this recruiting email (Jason C. and I crossed paths once upon a time, and we are linked on LinkedIn), and though I know no one myself for the position, I did pass it along to a couple of folks.

I used LinkedIn for a couple of my Boston.com positions earlier this year, and had a pretty good response rate, including one outstanding candidate. It’s a good deal, and as Jason C. points out, it’s a hell of a lot cheaper than using an executive recruiter. We never got into recruiting as a line of business at PlanetAll, but we did perfect the “Friends of Friends” feature, which has become a core component of LinkedIn and some of the other similar services.

Wow, I’ve been a little behind. Here’s some interesting stuff from around the interwebs…

Where do you stand on the global richlist?

World of Warcraft ruined my life?

10 tips for moving from programmer to entrepreneur

Jay Rosen on citizen journalism

Confessions of a business geek

The myth of keeping up

Seduced by snacks? No, not you…

Don’t poke an angry leopard with a stick

ArsDigita University, 5 years later
More on ArsDigita here.

Bizarre English metaphors
Entertaining for a couple of minutes.

It’s not smart to impersonate an officer
Just another reason I love reading the Boston Police Department’s blog.

NYT AME Photo answers questions
All sorts of interesting tidbits in this Q&A.

An entertainment sage on the Rocketboom fiasco
New media doesn’t change human nature.

Nine ways the real Navy is unlike Starfleet

Advertising will soon be disrupted
Jeff Jarvis writes about how advertising agencies are soon in for a rude awakening.

Tower over South Station approved
They are going to build a 40-story tower over South Station. Like it’s not bad enough around here already with all the construction. Egads.

10 beautiful women who are way more intellegent than you
I knew about Natalie Portman, but Mira Sorvino?

A declaration of war
I can’t believe that media members are advocating an office of censorship.

Vitamin
Many of the web’s leading lights get together to write a magazine-style site about web design and development. Upon quick review, it seems similar to A List Apart or Boxes and Arrows. The authors make it worth reading, though.

Will your web app make money?
One of the first articles from Vitamin, working through the calculus of running your own web apps.

Massachusetts Politics Coverage
Our news team put together a nice overview of the political season here, including candidate profiles, issue overviews, etc. This should be a good reference throughout the gubernatorial campaign.

Cute Overload
Several pictures each day of cute little baby animals, serving as a little break in NetNewsWire each day.

Steve Jobs in front of the Cupertino city council

This is my first time embedding a video in the page. We’ll see how well this works for everyone.

I’m getting back into the habit of stashing linky-goodness links into a working file I have open all day. I hope that will let me post these links a little more regularly.

The truth about interviewing
What it means to really get a job at a major software company. Hint: My 1337 php skillz would not make the grade.

The art of sucking down
Another Guy Kawasaki blog posting, this time about how sometimes the best way to get something down is to actually be nice to the person who can help you.

How to present to geeks
Hint: lighten up on the fluff

Street closings for the marathon
Mac Daniel has started a blog about traffic and commuting around Boston. Here is his notes on road closings for the marathon.

Zillow now has birds-eye views
… and gets just a little bit more addictive.

I’m going to try to spend a little more time on the linky goodness. I’ve been a little lax in how I’ve been stashing my links and notes, and I want to get back to posting the interesting stuff every couple of days.

To make that happen, I’m just leaving an Emacs window open all day to my linky goodness file. I’m dropping items in as I think of them. We’ll see if this makes a difference in how well I can make this work.

So, here we go.

The art of the board meeting
I’ve been reading Guy Kawasaki’s blog for the past few weeks, and I find it consistently entertaining and informative. Here’s a posting about how to compose a board and run a meeting.

WeSmirch
Memeorandum creator Gabe Rivera applies his secret sauce to celebrity news.

Massachusetts home-buyers turning to auction
If you can’t sell it the normal way, try selling it at auction.

Realtor commission structures under siege
Bradley Inman takes a look. Very interesting comments. (Via the New York Times’ Real Estate blog, the Walk-Through)

Boston Baby doesn’t deliver
This is why we ended up skipping all the baby stores and going to Pottery Barn Kids for our crib and Babies ‘r Us for our glider. I’d love to support small businesses, but sometimes (especially when dealing with the baby) I long for a little ruthless corporate efficiency. P.S., we love our crib and glider. (via Universal Hub)

Philip Greenspun’s Tips for Startup Companies

Why the Edgerrin James deal is a disaster for everyone
“When Arizona inked Edgerrin James to a four-year, $30 million deal Sunday, it marked one of those rare and remarkable meteorological moments when clueless management, disenchanted player, greedy agent and pathetic, delusional franchise all conspire to create the perfect storm of dealmaking.”

How to rattle a college basketball player
Invent a love interest, then pass out the incriminating instant messages before a game. Inventive social engineering.

AskMe: Where’s a good place to get an apartment in Boston these days?
I lived in Central Square from 1998-2005, and it definitely got sketchier over the past couple of years. It’s still reasonably safe, but it’s a little creepy at night. Porter and Davis are less scary.

Interesting reminisces about Will McDonough

Wow, it’s been a while since I’ve given up some linky goodness! Bad blogger.

Ethan Stock: Interesting article on the transactional nature of classifieds, and how layering in social elements won’t get you better results.

Another one from Ethan Stock, freshly added to NetNewsWire: The three types of user-created content. Selfish. Social. Selfless.

The 10 best science-fiction films never made. I don’t think of myself as a sci-fi geek, but I’m far too familiar with the works he describes.

This also reminded me of one of the all-time best quotes:

He inched his way up the corridor as if he would rather be yarding his way down it.

What it’s like to sit in the audience at the Daily Show. She picked a great one to go to, and she got an on-air shoutout from Jon himself.

Previously: What it’s like to be on the Daily Show by Steven Johnson, author of Everything Bad is Good for You.

Mark Hurst: The experience experience

I’m afraid many marketers fall in that last camp, thinking that slapping the latest buzzword on their product somehow makes it more competitive. A friend of mine was accosted this week at the fragrance counter in Bloomingdale’s, asked if he wanted “the Hugo Boss experience.” Not surprisingly, he hurried along downstairs to the men’s section where, wouldn’t you know it, there were no actual sales or service people available to help in his actual customer experience.

And, of course, the silly story of the emailing lawyers.