Eric did an interview with Matt Cutts. The interview was rather longish. Here is my key takeaways from the interview.

Links that will stand the test of time are links that are typically given voluntarily by someone that’s informed

link baits can stand the test of time as well i.e google does not frown upon link-baits.

original research is a good way to get lots of relevant white-hat backlinks

try to develop relevant link-bait.

Getting links by doing SEM like getting your stories to the homepage of digg is also OK with Google.

Getting links through article syndication is acceptable

reciprocal links are ok, excessive reciprocal links are NOT OK