I’ve lately been in the downsizing mood. Changing apartments this spring satisfied my need to purge. A family yard sale soon after cleared out the rest of the old junk, including golf shoes (a nice thought); piles of costume jewelry, beanie babies, and cat toys; and the impulse-bought super deluxe grind ‘n’ brew coffee pot used once (a bitch to clean). I consign all clothes I haven’t worn in more than a year and recently downloaded all my CDs onto a hard drive and sold them off. I’m making an effort to keep the hoarding tendencies at bay.

But I haven’t quite been able to quit books. For one, it feels wrong. Two, I like having them around. I’ll buy a book I’m interested in as soon as I hear about it so that I don’t forget, which is why I’ve got piles and piles of high-quality unread books in my bedroom, office, and otherwise scattered throughout the house, and I still have imminent plans to purchase the tell-all by Madonna’s brother.

Enter the Kindle. (more…)

Seth Riney is a systems engineer, and he looks like a systems engineer, in that he’s a little thicker around the middle than some guys in their mid 30’s, but still has boyish good looks. So, it was surprising to find out that this cutting-edge car service owner actually bikes from Cambridge to Everett everyday. In other words, he not only talks the talk, he walks the walk. Well, bikes the walk, anyway.

Riney is the president and founder of Cambridge-based Planet Tran—a hybrid-only car service (read: Priuses) that’s taking over the corporate ride scene, one contract at a time.

Four years ago, Riney decided to take advantage of his technology background to set up a cutting edge dispatching system that uses the Internet, Nextel text paging, and GPS to help arrange pick-ups. Although Planet Tran is young, this former software consultant’s business has grown 50 percent in the past year. By way of comparison, other local car services saw an average annual decline of 40 percent. (more…)