new dog old trick

R.I.P. Paul deLay

I just heard the news that blues harmonica player Paul deLay passed away back in March. He was only 55, so like William Clark a few years ago another still young harp player taken from us far too soon. R.I.P. Paul.

If you don't know deLay's music, and you like the blues, you should really give him a listen. His personal life was such that he had paid some dues, but there's a lot of joy in his brand of the blues. He was a tremendous blues harp player - probably one of the two or three best of his generation. He was also a good singer and fronted his band well.

You might want to start with deLay's Nice & Strong for an introduction to his music.

Another good option is his Ocean of Tears CD.

Goog's Enterprise Push

I still keep an eye on what's going on in the software industry so Google's Postini acquisition (announced yesterday) caught my eye.  The implications of this aren't new news - it's been pretty clear for a while that Google was going after parts of Microsoft's enterprise desktop fortress - but Postini fills a pretty major hole in Google's strategy. 

The best analysis of the deal I've seen today is Bill Burnham's post on the deal, found here.  Given the normal quality of Burnham's analysis, I doubt we'll get a better take on the deal from anyone else.

For my money, Google still has the challenge of providing a way to use their apps while the user is off the net.  The enterprise market is full of travellers who need access to their apps on their laptops while they are on airplanes or otherwise off the network.  Until Google addresses this hole, there are large parts of the enterprise market that will continue to be out of their reach.  I know that they are supposedly working on this with Google Gears, so we'll see how that evolves. 

Summer Reading

I have added a couple of recent books to my reading list in the right-hand column.  I've finished two books in the last couple of weeks that I highly recommend.

The first is Amity Shlaes excellent history of the great depression, The Forgotten Man.  This is very well written economic history, which sounds almost oxymoronic but it isn't in this case.  It's definitely revisionist history - FDR does not come off as the insightful economic savior that he is commonly viewed as.  It's amazing how feckless the political leadership of both parties was in dealing with a 10 year long crisis - and how much worse their actions made the crisis.  Lots of information that I had not been aware of.  Whether you agree with all of Shlaes conclusions or not I highly recommend this important book.

The second book is Walter Isaacson's biography of Albert Einstein.  Handles the science well for the general reader but even more so integrates the discussion of the science - and the scientist - into the whole person.  And Einstein was more than just the prototype of the absent-minded scientist.  Quite a bit of interesting information that was new to me - for example, did you realize that Einstein's Nobel Prize in Physics was not for his work on relativity?  I certainly didn't. 

Message in a Bottle...

Message is a Bottle is a great article in the July issue of Fast Company magazine about the bottled water business.  It's by Charles Fishman, one of the best writers working the business magazine beat these days and also author of the excellent The Wal-Mart Effect.  I almost missed the article since I skipped my usual monthly acquisition at the bookstore when I saw Al Gore on the cover and just couldn't take another taste of the Goracle.

Fishman's article is well worth reading for anyone concerned about real "green" principles and sustainability.  One or two sample quotes...

We buy bottled water because we think it's healthy. Which it is, of course: Every 12-year-old who buys a bottle of water from a vending machine instead of a 16-ounce Coke is inarguably making a healthier choice. But bottled water isn't healthier, or safer, than tap water. Indeed, while the United States is the single biggest consumer in the world's $50 billion bottled-water market, it is the only one of the top four--the others are Brazil, China, and Mexico--that has universally reliable tap water. Tap water in this country, with rare exceptions, is impressively safe. It is monitored constantly, and the test results made public. Mineral water has a long association with medicinal benefits--and it can provide minerals that people need--but there are no scientific studies establishing that routinely consuming mineral water improves your health. The FDA, in fact, forbids mineral waters in the United States from making any health claims.

<snip>

In San Francisco, the municipal water comes from inside Yosemite National Park. It's so good the EPA doesn't require San Francisco to filter it. If you bought and drank a bottle of Evian, you could refill that bottle once a day for 10 years, 5 months, and 21 days with San Francisco tap water before that water would cost $1.35. Put another way, if the water we use at home cost what even cheap bottled water costs, our monthly water bills would run $9,000.

It's worth a read.  Or, like the man says, read the whole thing.