By Scott Kirsner, Globe Columnist

Hoping that I can take next week off for a much-needed blogging vacation. Since I brought this blog to Boston.com, exactly four years ago, I've written more than 1,000 posts. (With very few breaks.) I'm heading to Europe for some R&R... but also can't resist visiting a few spots that could supply material for future blog posts.

I should also let you know that the team at Boston.com's The Hive, under Michael Morisy, have been ramping up their coverage of the local innovation scene. You can follow them on Twitter: @HiveBoston.

I'll see you back here in the office soon... but not too soon. :)

With Boston-based EverTrue raising $5.25 million today, the 2011 class of the TechStars Boston accelerator program has now attracted more funding than any other class. Still a close second is the 2009 Boulder class, and in third place is New York City's winter 2011 class.

"Obviously, dollars raised isn't a great indicator of success. We need to work towards dollars returned to investors," says EverTrue founder Brent Grinna, right. His company helps schools stay in touch with alumni — and ideally, collect more donations from them.

2011 was the year, incidentally, that Katie Rae and Reed Sturtevant took over stewardship of TechStars Boston, which is actually based in Kendall Square.

Here's what the funding totals look like:

(This chart was supplied by EverTrue, using data from TechStars. One note about Boulder 2009: $27 million of its total went to a single company, the e-mail delivery service SendGrid.)

By Scott Kirsner, Globe Columnist

It struck me as a good time to compare Boston Cab's new iPhone app to my experience using Uber, the transportation app which I first reviewed in 2011, just as it launched in Boston. I use Uber about once a week, mostly for riding in cabs or their mid-range UberX vehicles, as opposed to the pricier town cars or SUVs. (Uber now offers four different vehicle types.)

I used Boston Cab's app three times. When I first tried to use the app, to get picked up in Beacon Hill, I entered only the pickup address and not the destination. After waiting on a corner for 10 minutes, I clicked a button in the app to call Boston Cab's dispatch center. While they had seen my request, they hadn't sent a cab because I hadn't punched in my destination. (Uber's app only requires a pick-up address.) I told the dispatcher not to bother sending a taxi, and hopped on the T instead.

But twice yesterday, the Boston Cab app made a taxi materialize in about ten minutes: once at my home in Brookline, and once in Back Bay.

Here's my take on the pros and cons of Boston Cab's app, compared to using the Uber app to request a taxi.

Pros

By Scott Kirsner, Globe Columnist

• Custom jewelry maker Gemvara was featured last Sunday on Oprah Winfrey's "Favorite Things 2012" cable special; Winfrey picked a pair of "naked cushion triple earrings" that range in price from $1109 to $1688, depending on what gemstone the buyer wants. Gemvara founder Matt Lauzon explains that it wasn't a paid placement, exactly: "One of Oprah's people spotted Gemvara and the earrings at a party our PR team hosted, and brought them to Oprah." Winfrey wore the earrings on the show, and gave a pair to everyone in the audience. "That piece was very cool, because they were all spouses of members of the military," Lauzon says.

• Boston-based Kickscout released a new version of its mobile app earlier this month. It lets you snap pictures of products you might want to buy in a store — say, a group gift for grandma — and share them with others to get feedback. If your bigger concern is making sure you get what you want, you can also use Kickscout to keep a visual "wish list" of gifts you'd like to receive.

• FashionPlaytes, a Beverly startup, just introduced a holiday line of apparel and accessories for tween girls, above. All the items can be customized.

• A great destination for unique gifts is Lexington-based Daily Grommet. Paper robot kits designed by former Nintendo engineers? Ceramic bowls that look like cantaloupes and grapefruits? A hand-dyed silk scarf whose purchase helps support women's initiatives in India? This well-curated site is full of stuff you won't find at the mall.

• Likelii founder Radhika Dutt describes her Cambridge startup pretty simply: it does for wine what Pandora does for music, suggesting brands you may like based on what you already know you enjoy. The company raised $450,000 earlier this year, and Dutt says that Likelii will soon offer a mobile app, in addition to its website. Likelii offers free shipping when you order more than $100 worth of wine... and who doesn't need $100 worth of wine to get through the holidays?

• Earlier this month, I wrote about the two cable TV ads that Back Bay merchant Wayfair is running this holiday season. One was made by an edgy San Francisco ad agency, the other by a pair of Wayfair employees who are responsible for shooting all the company's in-house video. In my online vote, more than 80 percent of you said you preferred the one shot by the employees.

• Yes, this might be the final holiday season that Massachusetts residents can shop tax-free on Amazon.com. The silver lining: Amazon continues to add jobs at its Cambridge research-and-development outpost, and a Woburn division devoted to warehouse technology (Kiva Systems, which Amazon acquired back in March.) I counted eighteen open positions at those two locations.

• For gadget hounds who like to be the first on their block to get something new, there's the Equiso smart TV system. For $79, it turns your regular TV into a smart TV capable of viewing web video from sites like Hulu or Netflix; playing games like DrawSomething; updating your Facebook status; or bidding on an eBay auction. (Equiso requires that you have a WiFi network at home and a TV that has a USB port.) The Equiso package comes with a nifty remote control with a few simple buttons on the front, and a full QWERTY keyboard on the back. The Cambridge startup raised $240,000 earlier this year on Kickstarter.

By Scott Kirsner, Globe Columnist

The news wasn't good in the third quarter: only 260 net new jobs were created among the 152 companies he tracks. That's just a 1.9 percent increase over where things were at the start of the quarter. Growth was stronger in Q1 and Q2: 8 percent and 3.2 percent, respectively (see graph below). "This is not a sign of a healthy, growing sector, and it's a result of VC investing being soft in Boston," Barrett writes via e-mail.

By contrast, job growth in New York was 3.2 percent in the third quarter, down from 5.6 percent in Q2. According to Barrett, more of Boston's new jobs are being created by public companies (roughly 75 percent) than is the case in New York (about 55 percent). Barrett's index includes only companies with 10 or more employees, and he follows more than twice as many companies in New York (320) as he does in Boston.

The top 10 companies that saw the largest headcount gains in Boston for Q3 are:

1. Hubspot
2. Wayfair
3. Amazon
4. TripAdvisor
5. Vistaprint
6. Rue La La
7. Google
8. Constant Contact
9. Karmaloop
10. Jumptap

New on that list for Q3 are Amazon, Rue La La, Karmaloop & Jumptap.

And here are 10 more up-and-coming companies that saw significant growth in Q3 (Barrett defines "up-and-coming" as younger venture-backed businesses):

By Scott Kirsner, Globe Columnist

In many ways, buyers of lottery tickets have more information about the game they’re playing than job candidates do. They know the odds, and how the numbers will be chosen, and when. That’s not always true when you fire off a resume, or even when you’re invited to interview.

So I’ve been asking recruiters, founders, and human resources executives about the parts of the hiring process that aren’t especially transparent to job-seekers. What exactly happens as they review resumes, conduct interviews, and make hiring decisions? I broke down their replies into three different phases of the hiring process.

Here's some bonus material from some of the people who contributed to the column... unedited e-mails chock full of advice about hiring really happens, from HR people and recruiters.

By Scott Kirsner, Globe Columnist

Barrett uses LinkedIn to examine 137 Internet and digital media companies that have 10 or more employees in Boston, and see whether they are adding jobs, cutting jobs, or staying the same. (He doesn't include employees added at other offices, and he says he verifies numbers with some of the companies on the list — but not all.) In Q2, Barrett found that his cohort of 137 companies added 400 jobs. Fifty-nine percent increased their headcount, 31 percent decreased it, and 10 percent kept it stable.

The ten Internet and digital media companies that added the most jobs in Boston were:

1. Vistaprint
2. Turbine
3. TripAdvisor
4. Google
5. Wayfair
6. Constant Contact
7. TechTarget
8. HubSpot
9. Care.com
10. Fiksu

Barrett, who works out of Cook Associates' Burlington office, tells me that since he started tracking this data at the beginning of 2012, "we saw a very sharp slow-down in hiring in Boston at the end of April and early May, among early-stage companies. That was not happening in New York." What's going on?

By Scott Kirsner, Globe Columnist

1. What should candidates be doing with social media outlets like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and blogs to improve their chances of getting a job?

2. What shouldn't they be doing?

I collected responses from companies like Communispace, Zipcar, Hill Holliday, Mullen, Vertex Pharmaceuticals, Millennium Pharmaceuticals, and Liberty Mutual. Some appear in Sunday's column, but here's some "bonus material," in unedited form.

By Scott Kirsner, Globe Columnist

So when the stock market soars or swoons, they tend to ignore it. "That's today's news. We're tomorrow's," the thinking goes, no matter how many points the Dow has lost.

Of course, vertiginous plunges in the public markets do tend to impact young companies which must continually raise venture capital money, and which hope to one day go public themselves or be acquired by a bigger entity. They're bad news, as we saw in 2000 and 2008.

But here's how the various players in the innovation economy rationalize away stock market drops and other macro-economic bad mojo...

Venture capitalists: "We are counter-cyclical investors." "Economic slumps are the best times to start a company." "We can invest less and own a bigger chunk." "We're a top-decile firm. We won't be hurt by a shake-out in the VC industry."

Angel investors: "At least the VCs won't be falling all over themselves to invest in my companies and cram me down."

Entrepreneurs: "We'll do better without so many me-too companies getting funded." "My entire net worth is wrapped up in this company. What do I care about the stock market?" "We're developing a product that will disrupt the established players. There are always customers for that." "I don't regret turning down that $100 million acquisition offer last week. The IPO window will open again."

Employees: "It'll be nice not to be distracted by all of those calls from recruiters offering me jobs at other companies." "I never wanted to sell any of my shares on SecondMarket anyway."

Investment bankers: "Without so many IPOs to manage, I'll get to spend more time at my place on Nantucket."

Yesterday's Globe column set out to collect some of the toughest challenges, tests, and questions that interviewees face at job interviews around town.

I received lots of examples that I couldn't fit into the column, many of which I thought were worth quoting in their entirety. So I'm posting them to the "Read Scott's E-mail" blog.

- Steve Vinter, site director at Google Cambridge

- Tuck Rickards (and other executive recruiters) at Russell Reynolds' Boston office

- TripAdvisor engineering VP Andy Gelfond

- Kate Rafferty, HR and business staffing partner at Microsoft NERD

- HubSpot CEO Brian Halligan

- Gemvara CEO Matt Lauzon

- Kristina Palmer Shedd of Sapient

Are there examples of tough challenges, questions or tests you've faced? Go ahead and post a comment...

A number of interesting lists out this month:

- Technology Review's collection of 35 important innovators under the age of 35 includes a few Boston-area folks, like Richard Tibbetts, the chief technology officer of StreamBase Systems, and danah boyd, a researcher at Microsoft Research New England who looks at how people interact on social networks (and who prefers to render her name without capital letters.)

- On Inc. magazine's list of the 5000 fastest-growing companies in the U.S., 184 are based in the Boston area. The two highest-ranking firms here are Carbonite, the online data back-up service (11,208 percent growth over the last three years), and Gazelle (7,120 percent growth over that period), which buys and then resells older consumer electronics.

- Fierce Biotech serves up this list of the top 10 women in the biotech industry, including local lights Deborah Dunsire at Millennium, Daphne Zohar at Puretech and Katrine Bosley at Avila Therapeutics.

- The Game Developers' Choice awards for best online games will be handed out for the first time this October. The nominees include two local companies: Waltham-based Blue Fang Games, for Zoo Kingdom, and Conduit Labs (recently acquired by Zynga), for Music Pets.

- Four female founders were selected for this week's All Things Media bootcamp in New York, organized by Springboard Enterprises. They are Karen Miller from DoInk.com, Beth Marcus from Playsmart, Monika Desai of Open Runway, and Bettina Hein of Pixability. Twenty-one women founders in total will participate; the program offers founders advice, publicity, and the chance for investment.

- Analog Devices founder Ray Stata and Analogic founder Bernard Gordon are among the honorees on the 15th annual Mass High Tech All-Stars list, as is out-going MITX president Kiki Mills.

- Finally, lighting start-up Digital Lumens and NH-based biotech Adimab are two of the New England companies on the World Economic Forum's roster of 2011 Technology Pioneers.

When I needed wheels for a quick trip to Plymouth yesterday, I didn't reserve at the nearest Avis location or grab a Zipcar from one of their designated spots. Instead, I popped the locks on a neighbor's car when he wasn't around and took off. It was cheaper than the other two options.

While it sounds absolutely illicit, borrowing a neighbor's car when it isn't being used is the concept behind RelayRides, a Cambridge start-up company that I wrote about earlier this year. Instead of leasing a fleet of vehicles like Zipcar, RelayRides finds people who have underutilized cars and wouldn't mind earning a little money with them. Car owners pocket some of the hourly rental fee paid by RelayRides members, with the company taking a percentage for facilitating the transaction and insuring the drivers; RelayRides also installs the necessary technology in each car.

The company has been running a pilot test this summer in Cambridge and Somerville, with a few dozen vehicles. I signed up for a membership in late June, and received $25 worth of free rental credit for doing so. A few days later, a membership card arrived in the mail. Embedded inside was an RFID chip that would give me access to the RelayRides fleet.

I perused the RelayRides site a few times in July and August — at one point hunting unsuccessfully for a minivan or large SUV that could fit seven people. It wasn't until this week that the stars aligned and I made a reservation. Since there are no RelayRides cars in my immediate neighborhood, I needed to wait for a day when I had the extra time to walk about twenty minutes to a car parked near Porter Square, just across the Somerville line. (Google Maps pinpointed the parking spot as exactly one mile away, though the RelayRides site claimed the distance as 0.66 miles.)

After deciding against renting a car that was described in member reviews as exuding a distinct eau du pooch, I booked a neighbor's 2003 Toyota Matrix from 10:45 AM to 3:00 PM. (RelayRides offers pet-friendly and pet-free vehicles. The Matrix displayed the pet-free icon.) The car's hourly rate, including gas and insurance, was $7.00.

Here's my take on the pros and cons of the experience.

Pros:

The biggest advantage to RelayRides is cost. My rental totaled $35.33; the use of a newer Toyota Matrix a bit closer to my home with Zipcar would've cost $49.14 (Zipcar's rate for that vehicle is $9.25 an hour, though Zipcar offers discounted rates to members who commit to spending at least $50 a month with the service). RelayRides also lets you reserve cars in 15-minute increments, while Zipcar limits you to half-hour chunks. With Zipcar, that policy would've forced me to pay for fifteen minutes that I didn't need.

I found the car easily, even though it wasn't in a marked spot, and I waved my membership card over a sensor on the windshield. The locks popped open. Inside, I found a key to the ignition, and a note from the owner informing me that I was their first renter. "We're really excited to be part of this new venture," the owner wrote. He also apologized that the driver's side window didn't work (there was a Band-Aid over the button that would've opened it), and said he'd made an effort to get it repaired. Clipped to the note was a $4 "rebate" for my rental (in folded bills), which I decided not to take. On the passenger's seat was a tote bag full of maps. In the tape deck was an adapter that enabled me to plug in my iPhone so I could listen to my own tunes. There was just over one-third of a tank of gas in the car. Though the carpets hadn't been vacuumed recently, the interior was relatively clean.

Unlike Zipcar, RelayRides features a small white digital display and keypad mounted at the top of the windshield, just to the left of the rear-view mirror. It shows you the current time, the miles you've driven, and the start and end times for your reservation. I liked being able to see the "official" RelayRides time, and to be reminded of the time my reservation ended, since RelayRides charges you $50 if you return the car late. (Zipcar has an identical penalty.) Stashed in a slot just behind the display is a credit card that enables you to fill the car up with gas if necessary.

On my return trip, I left Plymouth a bit later than I'd planned, and traffic was worse than I'd expected, so it was quickly clear that I'd need to add an extra half-hour to the reservation. I called the phone number on my membership card and an operator helped me out. Within a few minutes, the updated reservation time showed up on the car's display. The operator mentioned that there is also a way to add time to the rental using the keypad, but that hadn't been readily apparent to me. (I later learned that you can add time yourself only immediately after you turn the car on — and not while you're driving.)

While most Zipcar vehicles have decals all over them that make it clear you're not driving your own vehicle, RelayRides is a bit subtler with its branding. There was a small sticker on the back, and a small one on the front windshield where the RFID sensor is (pictured above).

Cons:

The Matrix had 86,000 miles on it, and once I hit the road, it had a bit of a rattletrap feel. The brakes and suspension were about as loosey-goosey as you'd expect from a seven-year-old car that has done a lot of city driving. The non-functional driver's side window would've been annoying if I'd had to pay any tolls. There was a small banner hanging from the rear-view mirror that I had to remove — I don't like anything that obscures my view for no good reason — and then remember to replace when the rental was done. (I probably forgot to turn the volume on the stereo back down when I checked out of the car, and for that I am sorry.)

Bottom Line:

I've been a Zipcar member for about three years, and while the rental rates are higher than RelayRides, I'll continue using Zipcar for two reasons: convenience and confidence. The cars are closer to where I live (and also convenient to use when I travel to other big cities where Zipcar has a presence), and I'm confident that they'll be well-maintained and relatively new. But if RelayRides starts adding cars closer to me — and especially if they add vehicles that Zipcar doesn't offer — I'll likely start using it more frequently. I called RelayRides founder Shelby Clark after my rental yesterday to check some facts about the service, and he mentioned that a sporty Audi S4 may soon be entering the fleet; they've also occasionally offered access to a Porsche Cayenne. Some minivans or big SUVs would be handy, too, for when you're planning a group outing.

Clark said the service will officially launch on September 1st; the company is also looking for "community organizers" who will help RelayRides expand to towns outside of Cambridge (but within a 50-mile radius of Boston.) RelayRides is still offering $25 in driving credit to new members.

Have you tried RelayRides? Do you rent out your car through the service? Post a comment if you would...

Zynga, the San Francisco purveyor of addictive online games like FarmVille and Mafia Wars, is buying Conduit Labs, a game developer in Cambridge founded by Nabeel Hyatt, and funded by local venture capital firms Prism VentureWorks and Charles River Ventures. The purchase price isn't being disclosed, but one source close to the company tells me it is an all-stock transaction, so Conduit's founders and investors will now be hoping that Zynga turns into a huge success; news reports earlier this year pegged Zynga's valuation at $5 billion.

The Conduit office in Central Square will now become Zynga Boston, and Hyatt will continue to run it, according to today's press release. (The company already operates satellite offices in places like Baltimore, Austin, Los Angeles, Beijing, and Bangalore.)

Hyatt and Zynga executives weren't available for comment this morning, but in the press release, Zynga senior vice president Mike Verdu is quoted saying, "Boston is an epicenter for technology and has a strong talent market, making it an ideal location for us to expand operations." Zynga claims to have 215 million active monthly users.

Conduit, founded in 2007 to develop music-oriented games for the Web, never quite achieved critical mass. Its first game, Loudcrowd, was released last spring. Zynga seems to be acquiring the company less for that property or its user base, but more for the development team and its game industry expertise. (Conduit never revealed how many people played Loudcrowd...though Governor Deval Patrick gave it a spin last year).

Conduit discontinued Loudcrowd last month, and following the Zynga acquisition will kill the two Facebook games it developed, Music Pets and Super Dance, according to a blog post by Hyatt today. "Despite the countless hours we’ve spent working on them, and last month being our best revenue yet, we failed to make these products commercially successful enough," he wrote. "We had to make the decision to focus on what was working, and we think once you see what we’ve got next, you’ll agree it was the right choice.

Conduit raised $8.5 million in venture capital funding, most recently a $3 million round last November. Conduit's two investors were Woody Benson at Prism VentureWorks and Izhar Armony at Charles River Ventures. (As an aside, one of Zynga's board members and investors, Rich Levandov of Avalon Ventures, works out of Boston.)

The $3 million round, I'm told, was intended to help the company transition its strategy from building a stand-alone, Flash-based Web destination to gearing its games to the Facebook audience. In the midst of that transition, Conduit's board hired the Boston investment bank America's Growth Capital to look for prospective buyers. The thinking was that it was becoming hard to sustain a stand-alone games developer — especially one that hadn't yet cranked out a hit game or figured out, like Zynga and Playdom had, how to attract millions of users through Facebook. (ACG's Jon Guido handled the transaction.) The bankers talked to companies like CBS, Sony, Activision, and Playdom (which itself was acquired by Disney last month.) But Zynga was the most interested party.

Conduit's founder and investors aren't yet crowing about their winnings from the acquisition, but instead will now be rooting for Zynga — rumored to be wildly profitable — to go public in a year or two. Zynga CEO Mark Pincus "doesn't want a double or a triple," said one source close to today's deal. "He's looking for a home run or a grand slam."

Earlier this month, I was tipped off (while standing in line for a soft-serve ice cream at Fenway, would you believe it) to the impending acquisition. But when I called Hyatt, Conduit's investors, and a source connected to Zynga, everyone either gave me a "no comment" or didn't return my calls. (I shared that with you on Twitter...)

Occasionally, I guess, the rumors are right.

I was not an early user of Twitter, but I've come to really enjoy it.

A couple notes on what I tweet about, if you are not already following me (@ScottKirsner...and shame on you!)

- Stories that can fit into 140 characters, as soon as I find out about them. (Yesterday: Atlas Venture moving its Massachusetts office from Waltham to Cambridge. A few months back: EqualLogic co-founder Paula Long peeling off from the company. Often: new start-ups I've just heard about.) Many of these tweets don't eventually turn into columns or blog posts — simply because everything worth saying can be said in a tweet.

- Events in the Boston area (and beyond) that you may want to know about.

- Links to great stories (in the Globe and elsewhere) with relevance to those working in New England's Innovation Economy.

- Photos from conferences, parties, and my daily meanderings.

- People in the New England Innovation Economy who are new to Twitter, and worth following.

- Quotes and notes from local conferences and events.

Soon, I'm going to try using Ustream to do occasional live video broadcasts from my phone. I'll send out tweets to give you a heads-up when I'm going live.

What don't I tweet about? I mostly try to avoid the "what I'm eating for lunch tweets." Mostly try not to make my FourSquare check-ins public on twitter. Mostly try not to do public "@replies" to individuals, since I feel like it's confusing/distracting for most followers and prospective followers. (Instead, I do direct message a lot of people back.)

Your feedback is welcome...as I am always trying to become a better tweeter.

The Wilcoxes of Natick embarked earlier this month on a pretty lengthy summer vacation: it began in Athens, and it wraps up next July in Kenya.

When last we heard from Russ Wilcox, the long-time CEO of Cambridge's E Ink, he had left the company after its sale to Prime View International of Taiwan; he'd worked at E Ink for 13 years, shepherding the technology out of MIT's Media Lab and into products like the Amazon Kindle and Sony Reader. (Last month, display-maker Prime View changed its name to E Ink holdings.)

Before embarking on his next entrepreneurial adventure, Wilcox decided to plan an extended trip with his family: they rented out their house for a year, sold their cars, and devised a curriculum for their son and daughter, who would be missing 4th and 7th grade. They also set up a blog, 365 Saturdays, to chronicle the journey (with the kids handling much of the writing.) "We are trying to use the blog as a way for them to practice writing something other than IMs," Wilcox writes in an e-mail.

The itinerary includes London, Paris, Vienna, Egypt, Australia, Thailand, China, Argentina, the Galapagos, and Botswana.

Wilcox is staying fairly well-wired on the trip: an e-mail to him this morning yielded a quick return phone call via Skype. Where was he? Cappadocia, Turkey.

(And yes, in the photo he is wearing a wristwatch with an E Ink display.)

Earlier this month, I tweeted about a report issued by the Australian innovation consulting firm 2thinknow. They'd created a list of the world's 75 most innovative cities, and Boston topped it.

That tweet took off like wildfire — who doesn't like to be ranked #1, after all? It has continued to be re-tweeted over the course of a few weeks, with some people questioning the study's methodology, and others noting that it was almost a year old (I hadn't seen the report before, but on further inspection, the results were issued in July 2009).

So I connected last week with Christopher Hire, the executive director of innovation at Melbourne-based 2thinknow, to talk about the firm's rankings.

"Our index tends to reward well-rounded cities," Hire said, mentioning things like transportation infrastructure, cultural assets, and educational institutions. The index also considers how easy it is to bike or walk around the city, because, Hire explains, "that's part of the network economics idea, that connections are made every day. Boston is a place where you can have serendipitous connections, unlike U.S. cities where you can't get out of your car."

The firm tries to look at independent design shops, art galleries, film and video production, and locally-owned fashion boutiques as a measure of creativity. Interestingly, Hire says they don't look at the number of patents granted in each city: "Patents are kind of over-rated as a measure of innovation," he says.

One of the most surprising data points they consider? The number of Starbucks and independent coffee shops in a city, which serve as important meeting places for entrepreneurs and artistic types. "We give higher preference to cities with a wide range of coffee shops, not just the chains," Hire says.

The 2010 Innovation Cities report comes out in early August. While Hire says that "my view on Boston is that it's fundamentally anchored near the top [of the list], because of the prevalence of MIT and Harvard and the whole infrastructure," he wouldn't tip his hand as to how the city will rank this year.

There is, of course, the natural inclination to shake up the top few spots on any list so it doesn't seem stale. Hire says they may also include some new indicators, like the availability of electric car charging stations. And, he adds, "We're moving a little bit away from arts and culture, and increasing the sports indicators, looking at things like sports stadiums and sports fanaticism," Hire says.

Boston should score well on that count...but stay tuned...

Out next month from Boston authors David Meerman Scott and Brian Halligan is "Marketing Lessons from the Grateful Dead: What Every Business Can Learn from the Most Iconic Band in History." The book's foreword is by Celtics great Bill Walton (a/k/a "Grateful Red"), who attended more than 750 Grateful Dead shows.

Halligan, chief executive at the Cambridge marketing software firm HubSpot, says that he and Scott decided to collaborate on the book after reading an Atlantic Monthly article called "Management Secrets of the Grateful Dead," and then creating a 2010 webinar they called "Marketing Lessons from the Grateful Dead." The pair said they started working on the book together just this past April.

"The Grateful Dead really created a category — they were a fusion of rock, jazz, and country, with radical improvisation layered on top," says Halligan. "In the book, we talk a lot about their unique business model. Instead of optimizing around selling albums, they made the concert experience the center of the business model. Every concert was unique, instead of the same songs played the same way, night after night. It created a strong incentive to see them over and over. And they let people tape the shows, because they figured that more people would be exposed to their music, which would get more people to pay for concert tickets."

Halligan notes that the Dead also created their own mailing list to communicate with fans, asking for addresses at concerts and on album covers, and they sold tickets directly to fans rather than using a ticketing service.

Halligan says he hitch-hiked from Brewster, Mass. to his first Grateful Dead show (in Saratoga, New York) while in high school; Scott also saw his first show in high school, in New Haven, Conn. in 1979.

The back of the book includes perhaps the most unusual mix of endorsements ever: Grateful Dead drummer Bill Kreutzmann, Salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff, and Jim Irsay, co-owner of the Indianapolis Colts (who happens to own the late Jerry Garcia's most famous guitar, Tiger.)

Halligan and Scott will appear on HubSpot's weekly video webcast, HubSpot.tv, today at 4 PM to talk about the book. They'll be doing a signing later this month at the Gathering of the Vibes Music and Arts Festival in Connecticut, where Further (featuring Dead members Phil Lesh and Bob Weir) is performing. Other book related-events are listed on Scott's blog.

Both Halligan and Scott are advisors to the Grateful Dead Archive at UC/Santa Cruz, assisting with Internet strategy, and they're donating 25 percent of the book's proceeds to the archive.

I've updated the "up and down" listings for July (see the box in the upper right corner, with those big arrows), and added three new events happening this month to the calendar (in the middle of that column on the right).

And so I'm planning to take a break from blogging next week...but I may feel compelled to tweet every once in a while. I'll be back fully refreshed on July 12th.

(Coming along on my vacation, incidentally, are a Kindle, an iPad, and a Nook that I've been playing with for a future piece.)

Hope to see you on the beach...

Last year, I offered some advice about getting coverage here, or in my Sunday "Innovation Economy" column in the Boston Globe.

Since then, there are two things I notice changing about the way I choose to cover things; I'm just one person, after all, working a finite number of hours each day (usually, that number is three).

1. On the blog, I'm mainly focusing on trying to cover company formations, financings, important product launches, big-name new hires (and firings), shut-downs, and the like first. (Sometimes, that can be before a company is ready to officially talk to me about the news.) I feel like that delivers the most value to readers — but correct me if I'm wrong. When PR folks or company executives try to interest me in a story after it has been written about elsewhere, my usual response is, "Let's talk when you've got some new news."

When another outlet covers something first that's relevant to Innovation Economy readers, I'm usually happy to point to it from my Twitter account; often, there just isn't much value I can add by covering it again here or in print. I think a lot of other journalists are heading in this direction, too. Our world is getting much more competitive. The implication of that for companies and their PR representatives is that they need to make much more conscious and strategic choices about where they want to be covered first, since they likely won't be covered by everyone.

2. When someone sends me an announcement under embargo, I'm rarely interested. Embargoes ask journalists to hold onto a bit of news until a specified date, at which point lots of other outlets will usually write the story, too. I would usually prefer to spend my time working on unique pieces that'll have a little more juice to them.

When I make the case for being featured here, relative to other local or trade media, I usually say two things. First, compare any other Web site to Boston.com's Web traffic. In print, the Sunday column reaches 485,000 readers, and many of the blog entries here are re-published in print on Mondays, when the paper's print circulation is 313,000. Second, the people who visit Boston.com and read the Globe aren't just prospective investors or business partners (as is the case with many industry/tech/VC-oriented sites), but they're prospective users, customers, and employees, too.

I welcome your comments below: if you're a PR professional, are you seeing the same thing happening? Is it changing the way you work with media? If you're an entrepreneur, or a reader of the blog and/or the weekly column, do you disagree with my strategy?

On Fridays, I regularly post a list of five things worth knowing about, and invite you to add others in the comments.

This week, it's New England start-ups working on new ideas in the financial services space.

- Cambridge-based Blueleaf wants to encourage you to collect all your banking and investment info in one place, and then collaborate with friends, family, or financial advisors to improve your returns.

- Currensee. A social network built especially for foreign exchange traders. It allows participants to discuss strategies and compare performance. Boston-based Currensee has raised $12 million in venture capital so far, from firms like North Bridge and Egan Managed Capital.

- Taking a page from the ING Direct playbook, PerkStreet is a bank without branches or toaster giveaways. Targets consumers who are happy to bank online, ask questions via e-mail, or call up a live person by phone. By keeping costs low, Boston-based PerkStreet can offer rewards for using your debit card that include free Dunkin' coffee, iTunes downloads, or Amazon.com credit.

- Swipely encourages users to share information with friends (or the Web at large) about purchases they've made, and to rate or comment on the things they've bought. Launched a beta last month, and announced $7.5 million in funding. Based in Providence, RI.

- Trefis is building a community of amateur equities analysts, who use the site to share their scenarios for how a particular stock will perform. Nifty visual tools for estimating how good or bad performance in a given line of business will affect the share price.

(One more company worth a mention is WePay, which offers a solution for group payment situations — like renting a Cape house for the summer with a bunch of friends. Founded here by two Boston College alums, it's now based in Palo Alto, unfortunately.)

Who would you add to the list? Post a comment...

...Office space - not server space - is chief among the concerns of Boston's Internet CEOs, whose companies are growing at rates that often surpass 100 percent a month.

An address in Kendall Square in Cambridge carries plenty of prestige, but the commercial vacancy rate in the People's Republic is 0.8 percent, says Realtor Joe Flaherty of Meredith & Grew.

"There's essentially absolutely no space available in Kendall Square," he says.

I spent the past week collecting advice on how not to get hired: what qualified candidates sometimes do that nixes their chances of landing a gig.

And I got way too much good advice to cram into the column in today’s paper.

So I’m collecting ten of my favorite “bonus tips” here, as well as publishing two e-mails directly from the sources: one is from the executive recruiting firm BSG Team Ventures, and the other is from the vice president of human resources at Boston-based CSN Stores.

Ten more things you can do to lose out on that big opportunity:

1. Show up late for an interview, or exceedingly early. “Ten minutes before the interview is probably better than 20 minutes before it,” says Jim French of Hill Holiday. “People don’t have time to entertain you, and showing up too early can be just as aggravating as showing up late.”

2. Don’t look hard for someone in your network who can put in a good word for you. “Getting someone else to provide color commentary on your strengths and skills is extremely helpful, for us and for you,” says Brian Shin of Visible Measures. Using LinkedIn can supply connections you might not know about, says Kristina Shedd of Sapient. Participating in trade groups and professional organizations can help broaden your network, notes Michelle Gordon-Seemore of Children’s Hospital Boston.

3. Don’t admit to ever having encountered a challenge or problem in your work career. “If you can’t tell me about a situation where something went wrong, you usually don’t go further in the process,” says Pamela McNamara at Cambridge Consultants.

4. Make a chauvinistic or culturally insensitive remark. McNamara says it sometimes happens.

5. Accept an interview for one job, and try to negotiate yourself into something with a different title, more seniority, or a higher salary. “The impression you get is, ‘I don’t want this job, but I’d like to have that job,’” says Jeff Anderson of Quick Hit. Usually, you won’t get any job.

6. Stifle your personality. “Most managers want someone who’s innovative, excited, a team player,” says Maria Harris at Rockland Trust. “Your personality needs to come out, because they’re looking to see if you’ll be a good fit with their department.”

7. Conduct a phone interview while you’re distracted. “If you’re at the grocery store, or your children are screaming in the background, or you’re not prepared, ask if you can do the interview at another time,” Harris says. “You want to be in a quiet place. The recruiter will appreciate it, too.”

8. Repeat the same example of an accomplishment you’re proud of over and over. “Come to the interview with a whole bunch of different examples, from different jobs,” says Debbie Mitchell at Feeley & Driscoll. Otherwise, you'll sound like a one-trick pony.

9. Assume people know the companies you’ve worked for. “If you’ve worked for companies that aren’t household names, a little one-sentence explanation on your résumé of what the company does, or how big it is, is helpful to us,” says Christine Lahey at Liberty Mutual.

- Heartland Robotics. iRobot co-founder Rodney Brooks has taken a leave from his prominent post at MIT to start a new venture. Heartland has been short on specifics, but Brooks seems to be developing a new generation of robots to be used as part of the manufacturing process. The company's investors include Waltham-based Charles River Ventures and Bezos Expeditions, the firm that manages  investments for Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos.

Here's Brooks talking about "Remaking Manufacturing with Robotics":

- HubSpot. The Cambridge software-and-consulting company has proven itself a master at promotion and positioning: those who know about HubSpot (through its blogs, live Webcast, or the recent book written by its founders) know the company's software helps you get found on the Web and manage incoming leads. But can the company become a significant national player while ensuring that its existing customers keep renewing their subscriptions to its software?

- Kayak. Can a $60 million marketing budget, a chief marketing officer, a fusillade of TV spots, and a new slogan ("Search one and done") turn the travel search site into a household name? The Concord and Norwalk, Connecticut-based company conducted research and found that only 32 percent of the 120 million people in the U.S. who use the Web to book travel were familiar with it. Elevating that number will be key to an eventual Kayak IPO. Kayak's 2009 ad spend represents almost half its revenue for the year (expected to hit $150 million.)

- On-Q-ity. Aims to provide doctors with new diagnostics tools to help customize the most effective treatment regimen for cancer patients. Founded by Mara Aspinall, a former Genzyme executive, and fueled with $26 million in venture capital funding, some of it from Atlas Venture in Waltham and Bessemer Venture Partners in Wellesley Hills.

- Sun Catalytix. You want big picture? Here you go: solar panels on your roof produce electricity that Sun's device will use to separate water atoms (clean or dirty) into their hydrogen and oxygen components. The hydrogen is used to power a fuel cell, which can charge up your plug-in hybrid vehicle, or power your house at night when the sun isn't out. The technology, developed by Dan Nocera at MIT, received a $4 million grant from the Department of Energy this year, along with $3 million from Waltham-based Polaris Venture Partners. (Here's some video and more background on Nocera's work.)

- Respondents expect to hire on average six new people per company. (One company, Boston-based CSN Stores, said it plans to hire 50+ new employees.)

- The skill sets respondents plan to hire for? Web development, creative, marketing, account services, design, and IT top the list.

- 95 percent of respondents will be hiring for jobs that require a BA/BS; 81 percent are looking for folks with more advanced degrees; 77 percent will be hiring both.

- 81 percent of respondents offer internships; 76 percent of them are paid.

- Most popular ways to find candidates? Colleagues/networking, internships, Craigslist, word-of-mouth, and jobs boards.

- 61 percent say the economy is affecting their hiring decisions, versus 71 percent in last year's survey.

My Sunday Boston Globe column features advice collected from some very efficient people about writing e-mails that recipients will answer -- rather than ignore, or defer until later.

There's also a sidebar: the five essential elements of an e-mail.

I'm publishing some of the best "raw" advice here: e-mails sent to me in response to several questions I asked earlier this week about what people put in the subject line, how they structure messages, and how long they can be. I was also curious whether there are times of the week (or day) when you shouldn't send an e-mail.

- John Maeda, president of the Rhode Island School of Design, and author of "The Laws of Simplicity."

- Don Dodge, Google evangelist

- Edward Boches, Chief Creative Officer at Mullen

- Diane Hessan, CEO at CommuniSpace

- Harvard Business School professor Noam Wasserman

- Tom Hopcroft, president of the Mass. Technology Leadership Council

- Sara Spalding, site director at Microsoft's New England Research & Development Center

- Emily Nagle Green, CEO of The Yankee Group

- Cort Johnson, entrepreneur and founder of DartBoston

- Jana Eggers, CEO of SpreadShirt

- Scott Johnson, managing partner at New Atlantic Ventures

- Ellen Rubin, founder and VP of products, CloudSwitch

- Keith Cline, Dissero & VentureFizz

And from Twitter, I got these compact gems of advice on how to write more effective outbound messages:

- @theboynton: mild flattery, a sincere offer to help, and a firm but non-invasive deadline

- @publicmediagirl: be as specific as possible in subject line re: desired action (feedback? approval?) & topic/substance ("Jones report")

- @semilshah: Scannable subject line, 1-2 paragraphs max, ask the question up front, no unnecessary niceties, get to the point.

- @cgunst: Writing good e-mails is like writing any good content. It's not about you, it's about what the recipient is interested in.

- @hybernaut: after writing any email longer than 2 para, go back and write a 1 sentence summary, identifying your actionable request. with practice you will end up writing that clear request first, and realize that the rest is unnecessary.

- @sarahebourne: Make it easy to see what the question is, and word it so it doesn't take a novel to answer. Offer alt. channel (i.e., phone)

What's missing from this collection of advice? Post a comment if you would...

Each year the World Economic Forum selects a small group of companies as "Technology Pioneers," and there are usually a few local firms in the bunch.

This year, a committee of tech experts have chosen 26 companies developing products that "will have a deep impact on business and society." Most will get an invite to the Forum's annual gathering of CEOs, world leaders, and consciousness-raising celebrities in Davos, Switzerland next month.

Of the 26 "Technology Pioneers" for 2010, 18 hail from the U.S., and six are based in Massachusetts: three of those are life sciences companies (Aura Biosciences, MicroCHIPS, and Proteon Therapeutics), two could be dubbed cleantech (Metabolix and Boston-Power), and just one is in infotech (StreamBase Systems). Two of those six Massachusetts companies are run by women, both of whom came to the Bay State from Europe (Elisabet de los Pinos of Aura is from Spain; Christina Lampe-Onnerud of Boston-Power is from Sweden.)

I caught up with MicroCHIPS chief executive and co-founder John Santini yesterday; the honor comes as his MIT spin-out marks its 10th year in business.

The Friday5 is a list of five things worth knowing about, each with a Boston connection.

In honor of Black Friday, today it's sites and services geared to finding great buys online.

Want to add to the list? Post a comment...

The Friday Five is a list of five things worth knowing about... and a chance for you to build on the list and make it better by posting comments.

This week, it's the most influential companies in Boston's SonicTech cluster.

SonicTech is my term for all things music-related: tools, games, Web sites, marketing platforms. This list was triggered by two upcoming music-related events: Music Hack Day, on Saturday and Sunday at Microsoft NERD in Cambridge (it's sold out), and a much smaller "unconference" event that Charlie McEnerney of Musicians for Music 2.0 is organizing on December 1st in Harvard Square.

Here's my five:

On Fridays, I often post a list of five things, and ask invite you to build on the list by adding more good stuff in the comments.

This week, it’s the five signs that you may have Big Company Syndrome. Big Company Syndrome usually starts to emerge as soon as small businesses pass the 100-person mark, and employees usually contract it after just a few weeks on the job at a Big Company.

You're afflicted by Big Company Syndrome if:

The Friday Five is a list of five things worth knowing about... and in the comments, lots more things that you add.

This week, it's five people I consider "super-connectors" in the Boston tech start-up scene. How do I define a super-connector?

- They have an amazingly vast network
- They're not reclusive: you're likely to see them out and about at networking events
- They're generous about making introductions for you if they believe in your idea

There are lots of people who are important and powerful in Boston, but many of them are too heads-down to be true super-connectors.

Now, a caveat: most of these people won't respond to over-the-transom e-mails or LinkedIn requests. You need to meet them in the right context (sometimes via an introduction from someone else), and they need to sense that you're the real deal.

Here's my list:

I've been talking to female founders this week, preparing a column that will run on Sunday. Here are the five networking groups and resources that have been mentioned most often as helpful by the women I've interviewed.

Know of others? Please add them in the comments...

At an unconference, where many simultaneous sessions compete to lure attendees at the same time, coming up with an appealing title for your session is important.

Topics are determined at the beginning of the day by the attendees, and session titles are posted to a wall that attendees look at to make their decisions about how they'll spend their time. It's an agenda crossed with a bulletin board.

Yesterday was the second annual Innovation Unconference organized by the Massachusetts Technology Leadership Council, and there were some great titles on the board. These were my five favorites.

(Why doesn't every conference have such enticing-sounding workshops and presentations?)

Every Friday, I post a list of five things here, and invite you to build on the list by adding more in the comment section.

This Friday, it's the coolest, most innovative companies in the Boston area.

How was this list created? Last month, at a planning meeting for the new Innovation Open House series, we put a list of 40 or more companies on a whiteboard. (Innovation Open Houses enable a small set of students to get a "backstage pass" to interesting local businesses.) Then, a group of about 25 entrepreneurs, investors, marketing execs, students and trade association heads voted on which ones would be the coolest for students to visit.

These were the top five vote getters (along with a few of the runner-ups.) The list is an interesting mix of home-grown companies and branch offices of out-of-town firms.

The Friday Five is a list of five things worth knowing about.

This week, it's the best on-going networking events in town. I invite you to add your faves in the comments. (Note: this isn't a list of the best networking associations in town, like MITX or the Massachusetts Medical Device Council, but rather regular gatherings of a particular group of people, or around a particular topic.)

In no particular order...

- Focused on Internet and mobile innovation, Web Innovators Group offers a chance to see demos from eight or ten fledgling start-ups; this month's event happens on September 29th. It's always held in the Grand Ballroom of Cambridge's Royal Sonesta, with lots of impromptu meetings happening before and after in the lobby bar downstairs. And the event registration page offers a nice long list of who's planning to attend.

- What could be more fun than hanging out with a couple hundred chemists, genomic experts, venture capitalists, and business development execs from the local bio-pharma cluster? Biotech Tuesday is a schmooze-fest pure and simple: no agenda or speakers, just a really interesting mix of life sciences smarties from academia, start-ups, and power players like Vertex, Novartis, and Pfizer. The next two Biotech Tuesdays take place on October 13th and November 17th.

- Boston Post Mortem usually features a talk by a luminary involved in game development (this past week was Duncan Watt discussing "music as an element of game design.") It happens at The Skellig in Waltham, and the well-lubricated crowd includes game designers and programmers who work in the trenches as well as a handful of more senior game industry executives and investors.

- Cloud computing is an especially hot topic right now, and Silver Lining runs one of the newer gatherings in town. Their October 23rd event will focus on healthcare-related applications of cloud computing.

- If you're interested on the impact of technologies like Twitter, Facebook, and Ning on marketing and communications, Social Media Breakfast Boston is a must-attend event. Speakers can include CEOs like Diane Hessan of Communispace, consultants like Justin Levy of New Marketing Labs, or executives responsible for social media at big companies like EMC. To make sure you get word of upcoming meetings, sign up for the group's e-mail list and follow organizer Bob Collins on Twitter.

What gatherings do you think are worth knowing about? Add 'em to the list by posting a comment below...

Kayak co-founder and CTO Paul English e-mailed earlier this week to let me know about Kayak Trends, a nifty new feature on the site that lets you know which cities are gaining in popularity as travel destinations, and which cities are losing favor.

Kayak teases out the trend data based on what cities people are searching for airfares to -- and the hotels they're considering booking.

So you can see, for instance, that over the past year, travelers' interest in Manchester, New Hampshire has declined 28 percent, while interest in São Paulo, Brazil and Brisbane, Australia has been on the rise (93 percent and 36 percent, respectively.)

Boston, interestingly, joins Vegas, L.A., London, and Orlando on the ten-most-popular destinations list for the past year.

And when in Boston, Kayak says travelers are most interested in staying at the Taj Boston and the Comfort Inn & Suites at Logan -- two very different hotels.

When Bostonians travel, their top three destinations are San Francisco, Washington, DC, and LA.

It's fun stuff to explore...

Here's an early look at a survey that the Massachusetts Technology Leadership Council plans to release tomorrow, examining the state's videogame industry.

Starting last February, the council's Digital Games cluster, headed by Jon Radoff of GamerDNA and Peter Blacklow of WorldWinner, surveyed companies around the state and came up with a conservative estimate that Massachusetts games companies generate more than $2 billion in revenue annually. (The lion's share of that, I'd guess, is attributable to Cambridge-based Harmonix Music Systems, which hit $1 billion in sales of its "Rock Band" game this past March.) The games cluster employs about 1200 people, according to the survey, and executives expect it to grow about 20 percent this year. In our fine state, fifteen colleges and universities offer programs related to (or supporting) the games industry.

"The goal here was to capture and convey the depth, breadth, and growth potential of the digital game sector in order to attract additional talent and companies to the region," Mass TLC director Tom Hopcroft writes in an e-mail. "We are working with UMass Boston over the next 6-12 months to do more in-depth research on the sector." The council is holding a games-related panel on September 24th that will feature execs from Harmonix, ESPN Games, and QuickHit, and tomorrow night the council's monthly Tech Tuesday gathering will celebrate the games industry with a "Beatles: Rock Band" jam session at Microsoft NERD in Kendall Square.

More data on the MA games industry, including charts, after the jump:

Each Friday, I put together a five-item list called the Friday Five.

This week, it's tips on getting covered in my Innovation Economy column on Sundays and on this blog.

Just a note of context first: my goal with both the column and blog is to tell the most interesting stories about what's new in New England — and those stories can originate from a tiny start-up firm in someone's basement, an academic lab, or a giant publicly-traded company.

On to the advice...

Two things are happening this week: those of us with kids are sending them back to school, and General Mills is introducing a new variety of Wheaties cereal called Wheaties Fuel, aimed at men.

What do those two things have to do with one another?

Ever since the 1930s, the front of the Wheaties box has featured a parade of notable athletes, from Lou Gehrig to Jesse Owens to Mary Lou Retton to Michael Jordan. Over the decades, the Breakfast of Champions has exclusively celebrated achievement on the baseball diamond or in the stadium.

But given that Wheaties sales have been slipping (they've declined 14 percent over the past year), here's what I wonder: could Wheaties as a brand be reinvigorated if those bright orange boxes started celebrating achievements of the brain, as well as the body? Would parents feel better about buying a breakfast cereal that inspired their children to become rocket scientists, disease-battling chemists, life-saving biomedical engineers, or billionaire software designers?

And could we use the Internet and Twitter to persuade General Mills to give this a try?

Here's what I'm thinking:

This week's Globe column is dedicated to making you a more effective user of LinkedIn -- even if you think you're already using the site well (as I did).

With the help of venture capitalist Lee Hower (part of the founding team of LinkedIn), David Gowel of Clearly Creative, and Pat O'Malley of Patrick O'Malley & Associates, I collected ten tips that'll make your profile more impressive, make you easier to find, and help you get more out of it as a research/sales/job-hunting tool. Do you know about all ten? Do you have others?

Every Friday, I serve up a list of five things worth knowing about -- and invite you to add more in the comments.

This week, as we all take off to enjoy the last long weekend of summer, the topic is great books about business and innovation, with strong Boston connections.

The Friday Five is a list of five things worth knowing about.

This week, it's locally-produced podcasts about business, technology, and science. Some are video, some audio. Some are streamed live, some are pre-recorded. But all of them are worth checking out. (And two of them even invite you to be part of the live studio audience.)

The Friday Five is a list of five things worth knowing about.

The topic this week is great movies about technology...all of which have interesting but little-known connections to Massachusetts people and places.

Every Friday, I serve up a list of five things worth knowing about.

This week, it's great museums with a focus on technology, science, and innovation around New England. After all, it's mid-August, the kids are out of school for a few more weeks, you may have out-of-town guests, you may be traveling. Why not soak up some air-conditioned learnin'?

The Friday Five is a list of five things worth knowing about.

This week, it's people from the Boston innovation economy who are worth following on Twitter. The list includes people from tech and biotech, entrepreneurs, investors, and social media experts.

Every Friday, I serve up a list of five things worth knowing about.

This week, it's the most popular hang-outs for techies and entrepreneurs.

Every Friday, I'll serve up a list of five things worth knowing about.

This week, it's the best forecasters and futurists in the Boston area. Want to know what's next? Add these folks to your bookmarks or RSS feeds.