The passing of Tim Russert, a man I greatly admired, came as the result of a massive heart attack, an event that cannot be predicted. Having suffered a heart attack myself earlier this year, I know this firsthand — the heart is no match for the high-stress, multitasking lives that so many of us lead. And before we know it, our poor habits catch up with us. It’s why I urge you to get yourself to the doctor and get your much-delayed physical. You would be doing yourself, your family and even your startup a favor.

As part of my recovery process, my cardiologist Dr. Eduardo Rame of UCSF suggested that I take some time out of my busy life and spend it on projects that are focused on helping others. It is the best and most effective way to de-stress – doing good and breaking your routines. So I decided to get involved with UCSF and help them raise some funds. (If any of you would like to help, please drop me a note.)

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Michael Crandell is CEO and co-founder of RightScale Inc., a Santa Barbara, Calif.-based company that offers a cloud computing management platform, tools and services.

We’re heading quickly into the next big chapter of the Internet revolution, with tremendous buzz and excitement around the development of cloud computing. As with all major disruptive changes in technology, cloud computing has generated a flurry of definitions in the press and blogosphere, with acronyms and metaphors flying. At the same time, it’s important to remember that companies that are now deploying in the cloud have common problems they’re trying to solve, albeit in different ways using different approaches. We’ve found it helpful to create a mapping of these approaches –- a taxonomy of the cloud, if you will -– to make it simpler to understand product offerings and what benefits they provide for customers. Continue »

The case of Judge Alex Kozinski has a lot to teach us about privacy and community standards on the Internet.

Here’s a quick summary of events so far: Kozinski, chief judge of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, was presiding over an obscenity case when the LA Times reported that the judge was hosting sexually explicit images on his own, publicly accessible, web site.

As Lawrence Lessig explains in a good overview of the situation, the judge sent a link to a file on his server. The server wasn’t very well configured: Visitors could browse its directories at will, even though Kozinski told the LA Times he “was not aware the images could be seen by the public.” A disgruntled plaintiff forwarded a variety of material to the press.

Kozinski requested an investigation into the situation, then subsequently removed himself from the proceedings of the original obscenity case. As he told the San Jose Mercury News earlier this week, “A lot of this is OK in private but looks awful put into the public.” Continue »