'Father of Internet' returns to roots with new Google job

Adding to its all-star roster of engineering talent, Google has hired Vinton Cerf, often referred to as the ``father of the Internet.''

Cerf, who was awarded the National Medal of Technology by President Bill Clinton in 1997, joins Google from MCI, where he is senior vice president of technology strategy.

Cerf's role at Google is unclear. But Google executives said they expect ``great things'' from the Internet pioneer.

``It's true Vint has broad interests, and exactly what he'll do, we'll see,'' said Bill Coughran, a vice president of engineering at Google.

Cerf, 62, will join Google in early October, along with his chief of staff from MCI. He'll work from his McLean, Va., home. But Coughran said he expected Cerf to make frequent visits to Google's Mountain View headquarters.

While at MCI for the past 11 years, much of Cerf's focus has been on public policy issues. In an interview, Cerf said he has hungered to return to developing applications.

``What I wanted was to turn my attention to a much higher level of applications, and Google offered me that,'' Cerf said.

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The Growing influence of Liberal Blogs

MyDD just finished a study on blog traffic during the Hurricane and, interestingly, when looking at the 100 most trafficked blogs and netroots sites, the liberal sites had traffic increases of 34% while the conservatives had traffic increases of only 8%.

One factoid I particularly liked:

All six of these blogs (Dailykos, Talking Points Memo, Raw Story, Eschaton, Crooks and Liars and Americablog) now have more traffic than Instapundit, which remains the highest trafficked conservative blog

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Changes in Saturn Rings Baffle Scientists

LOS ANGELES -- New observations by the international Cassini spacecraft reveal that Saturn's trademark shimmering rings, which have dazzled astronomers since Galileo's time, have dramatically changed over just the past 25 years.

Among the most surprising findings is that parts of Saturn's innermost ring _ the D ring _ have grown dimmer since the Voyager spacecraft flew by the planet in 1981, and a piece of the D ring has moved 125 miles inward toward Saturn.


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