Kendall Square

HubSpot, which offers online marketing software from its offices in Kendall Square, today launched a referral program: Refer a software developer to them, and if they hire him or her, you get $30,000.

Move it!

Happened around 11:10 a.m. at 5 Cambridge Center, AlertNewEngland reports.

Robert Love, who took the photo, reports:

Leak so big, it sounded like a fire hose.

UPDATES: NStar got the gas turned off around 11:40 a.m. Robert Love reported at 12:40 that the streets were re-opened and that people were being let back into their offices - except 3-5 Cambridge Center.

The excavator that caused the commotion. Photo by Robert Love.

Get the handle fixed now, they implore.

It was only a couple of years ago that MIT fixed up the musical installation.

Via Boston Reddit.

MBTA cops with automatic weapons rushed into the Kendall Square Red Line station to pull some alleged fool off a Red Line train at lunchtime. A spokesman reports:

A customer reported that a man aboard a northbound Red Line train had made comments of a threatening nature. The train was held at Kendall while police investigated. The man was removed from the train and questioned by police.

Keith Richard snapped this photo of the bus he'd been on and a taxi in Kendall Square around 5:45 p.m.:

This cab just pulled in front of the CT2 I was riding at Kendall. Bus braked, we all went flying.

Alex Wheeler, also on the bus, reported no injuries, but, naturally, rush-hour traffic quickly backed up as a result.

Limeduck tries out the new bricks-and-mortar version of Bon Me in Kendall Square (same building as the Friendly Toast):

The BBQ pork was zesty, the bread crusty, the carrots crunchy, the pate livery, the mayo spicy, the cilantro uppity, everything in its place and as it should be, dare I say it maybe a tiny bit better than at the truck. This is a $6 sandwich, $8 if you somehow think you need "extra meat," and really, I love this stuff, but I'm pretty sure you do not need extra meat. Same price as at the truck, and you get a roof over your head and music, too.

Cambridge Day reports a local psychologist was seeing so much of his business come from Cambridge's tech corner that he decided to set up shop there. Although he already had offices in Harvard and Central squares, "people were kind of stressed out about taking the time off work" to travel the next stop or two on the Red Line.

The Times marvels: Biotech Players Lead a Boom in Cambridge.

Xconomy seeks answers in the help wanteds for Amazon's local expansion.

With Hubway season almost over, you may not get much use out of this, but file it away for the spring: Chris Snyder recently discovered a trick for getting a Hubway bicycle that's stuck in its docking bay.

A Minnesota visitor who fell on the Red Line tracks at Kendall Square last night was helped out by other passengers, the MBTA reports. According to an MBTA Transit Police report on the incident, shortly before 7 p.m.:

[The woman's husband] stated they were talking with some friends on the inbound platform and [she] was walking backward. He stated that she continued to walk backward into the pit and fell into it. He then jumped into the pit to help get her out and other passengers assisted in lifting her onto the platform. [She] reported injury to the neck, hips, and dizziness.

Luke Timmerman explains why Boston is poised to overtake the Bay Area as the biotech hub of the universe - and his reasons sound a lot like the reasons why the Bay Area overtook the Boston area as the high-tech center of the world:

Success begets success and companies and innovators are drawn here by the unique concentration of companies and innovators already here - and now we've got a unique concentration of start-ups, established Big Pharma, research hospitals, Harvard and MIT. Also, everybody's piled on top of each other, especially in Kendall Square, thanks to smart zoning decisions, which is what you want in a collaborative, cross-pollinating kind of field like biotech. Plus, the Bay Area's now become too expensive for start-ups and people just getting out of college (sound familiar?). Also:

People on the West Coast sometimes like to trot out stereotypes about the sharp-elbowed competitors in Boston, how they just can't collaborate as well as us laid-back West Coasters. That's just not consistent with the Boston I've experienced. If anything, there's more of a tight-knit collaborative community in Boston than in San Francisco. There's a can-do spirit, an energy in Boston that is palpable. It will endure. Boston is reaping what it has sown for decades.

The MBTA reports an Attleboro woman and her son, almost 5, plunged to the tracks around 6 p.m. yesterday, and were taken to the hospital as a precaution, although they did not appear seriously hurt. According to the T, the woman told emergency responders she thought she could get onto the Alewife train in the station at the time from the southbound platform.

The action in the video starts around 0:30. It's the second time this year somebody wound up on Red Line tracks trying to get to a train on the other side of the station.

Cambridge and MIT Police report two recent early-morning holdups in the area of MIT and the Longfellow Bridge.

Sometime late on Aug. 17 or early on Aug. 18, a man walking in the area of MIT was surrounded by a large group of men and women who went through his pockets. One of them flashed a knife when the victim tried to get his passport back. The suspects were all described as being in their mid 20s and black.

Around 4 a.m. on Aug. 20, a man walking near the Longfellow was held up at gunpoint, by a dark-skinned Hispanic male, 20 to 25, between 5'8" and 5'10" and wearing a turquoise hoodie and yellow sneakers. The suspect ran across the bridge towards Boston.

Biking in Heels spots a Google bike in Kendall Square and chats to its rider about the company's fleet of bikes for its Kendall Square employees.

Cambridge Day reports Microsoft this weekend turned on a large plasma-screen sign, in a city where not everybody is enamored of such advertising.

"Terry Ragon was right when he said if we don't watch out our city will look like Las Vegas. It has begun," [Mark] Jaquith said, referring to the plasma display as "a monstrosity."

Ragon was the guy who spent several hundred thousand dollars of his own money fighting a proposal to let companies put their names atop their office buildings.

The Globe reports car traffic in Kendall Square is dropping even as employment is increasing. Credit goes to employer incentives for bike riding and T taking - spurred by city regulations that require landlords to foster car alternatives in exchange for permission to build new parking spaces.

A third-rail problem on the Kendall side of the Longfellow means delays in both directions on the Red Line, as in, power had to be shut off between Park and Kendall so workers can fix it. At 9:41 a.m., Alice B tweeted:

Just deboarded at Central. Red line inbound not moving due to 3rd rail fail at Kendall. No inbound trains for at least 20 min

UPDATE: T announced at 9:52 a.m. the problem was fixed and that service was resuming, with, of course, the ever popular "residual delays."

Leroy "Hitman" Martin, 34, of Brighton, was ordered held in lieu of $100,000 bail at his arraignment on a variety of charges related to a high-chase from Revere to Cambridge that ended with him under arrest in the Kendall Square T stop.

A car chase that started on the Tobin Bridge this afternoon ended in Kendall Square after a state trooper fired at the alleged suspect, who drove away only to crash his car on the other side of the Longfellow, got out of the car, boarded the Red Line at Charles/MGH and then was pulled off the train at Kendall by waiting state troopers.

Power out. Cambridge Police tweet they are diverting cars away from the area at Third and Charles, Third and Binney and Main and Ames.

Rush Hour Race pitted the three transportation modes in a battle to the death, um, fastest commute this morning between Davis Square and Kendall Square. LivableStreets reports bike won, followed nine minutes later by the T. The car sputtered in last.

Steve Annear reports that, yes, the bicyclist stopped for all red lights.

The Tech reports on MIT's latest plans for the area around its campus, from extending the Infinite Corridor to building a new residential tower on Sidney Street. Also in the works: A "river walk" from Kendall Square to the Charles.

Cambridge Day reports on a chat between city councilors and a consultant who says Kendall Square could do with another 3 million square feet of office and research space, some more retail and up to 2,500 housing units. Obviously, the only way to achieve all that is through taller buildings (even if the feds do give up the grassy fields of the Volpe Center); councilors, however, said they want to avoid the mistake that is the Broad Institute - a big blocky fat thing that just squats there, all bloated and massive.

Now that Google's decided to stay in Cambridge (sorry, Innovation District), ArchBoston.org will be tracking the changes that will mean for the area.