All Things Digital

For those heading into the weekend, don’t miss this post from tech blogger Om Malik (pictured here, but the cigar is now a thing of the past), assessing his life and work three months after he suffered a serious heart attack.

Titled “Off Topic: What the Past Three Months Have Taught Me,” it is actually quite on topic for anyone who works a bit too hard and is a bit too connected (that would be everyone reading this right now).

While Malik has changed the obvious things–no more smoking, less meat-eating and adding exercise into his daily life–he notes that it is more the “little things that have proved to be a challenge.”

Because he is a true geek, Malik reaches for tech metaphors when trying to describe the state of his new being, comparing himself to a MacBook Air.

Not the sleek and thin part, but because “the Macbook Air comes with [a] minuscule amount of storage space, so one needs to be careful about how to use it. The machine’s battery power limitations remind me of how much time I have to devote to work on a daily basis.”

Thus, gone from Malik’s hard drive: excessive public appearances, too much travel and too many RSS feeds.

In addition, he realized something my grandmother always used to tell me: There are no indispensable people. Even if your blog is called GigaOm.

Through his experience, Malik said he learned to rely on his team more and stopped micromanaging. “You empower people, and in turn they power you to do good things,” he wrote.

And perhaps most important of all for those who live in the pressure cooker of Silicon Valley: Get a cardiac heart check-up now.

Walt Mossberg and I had a lovely visit with Om Malik yesterday, a get-well-soon summit held at a Starbucks in San Francisco’s Financial District. It was the first time I have seen the well-liked tech blogger of GigaOm fame since he suffered a heart attack during the holidays.

Malik, who will not be smoking cigars any longer as he is pictured here, is newly out of the hospital and in rest-and-recovery mode.

While not ready to subject himself to the withering annoyance of BoomTown’s video–and don’t think I did not ask!–I can report that Malik looked quite spry and as relaxed as one can be, given the circumstances.

Everyone at AllThingsD.com wishes him well and looks forward to his quick and successful recuperation.

Perhaps the only blogger who would have had the exact right take on this somewhat silly Scobleicious day of data portability debates is Om Malik.

Unfortunately for us and mostly for him, he has been sidelined by a sudden heart attack he suffered over the holidays that landed him in the hospital (in fact, Om actually walked himself there, so that is a good sign). According to a blog post he made earlier in the day, that’s where he has been camped out now as he recovers and contemplates a life without fried foods and stress.

The latter might be a little hard for Om, who is probably the hardest-working man in the tech-blog business and on whom I egregiously patterned my own journey into the online-content medium.

Of course, I did, given that Om combines dogged reporting with analytical savvy and typically exacting standards he gleaned from a life in mainstream journalism. He is also a genuine character with an important definitive voice.

We all looked at Om as a real trailblazer when he struck out from the relative safety of a traditional magazine job to move into a still-nascent Internet space, a journey that continues to this day with his interesting expansion of the GigaOm brand into all sorts of related digital arenas like the excellent NewTeeVee and Earth2Tech.

Of course, Om is still the big show and he scooped everyone with the news about his illness in the typical pugnacious but sweet-natured style that I really admire.

“With the support of my family and my team, I am on the road to a full recovery. I am going to be OK,” he wrote. “Now living a healthier life isn’t just one of my New Year’s resolutions, it’s doctor’s orders. Friends and family have purged my apartment of smokes, scotch and all my favorite fatty foods–I am even going to be drinking decaf. I won’t be refashioning my avatar’s stogie with a celery stick, but I will be taking better care of my health.”

While I am glad the cigar is still there–unlit, Om, or else you have me to answer to and you know who will win that fight–please take care and get better soon. The tech Web is a lot less interesting without you.