The Father of the Intenet Works for Google!?

Wow. I had no idea how behind the times I was. I had lunch yesterday at Cafe De La Presse in the Financial District of San Francisco and at one point my lunch date excused herself for a moment and the conversation going on at the table next to me was so interesting that I had to jump in. It was two Oxford graduates, Damien and Santosh, and Santosh starts working for Google on Monday. Maybe he can fix the blog search so that if you search by Seidman and Vint Cerf you'd actually be able to FIND this post (it doesn't seem to work this way right now).

Anyway, later I looked at the executive page on Google and did see Vint's smiling face. I was thrilled. Why? Two reasons. One, the guy IS one of the nicest people ever. I mean EVER. In fact, while in most cases I would say being nice in business is a perilous path to take, Vinton Cerf has managed to make it work for him and it's really nice to see.

The guy did champion the IP (internet protocol) to the point of wearing "IP On Everything" buttons and whatnot. Hey, it worked. IP is everywhere. Thank you, Mr. Cerf.

His other major claim to fame in my own personal life is that he wrote a very simple password algorithm for MCI's "MCI Mail" product. The algorithm is: consonant, vowel, consonant vowel, etc. It makes for extremely easy to use/remember passwords for sites that make you register that you just don't really care about and has simplified my online life greatly.

It's nice to see things work out so nicely for one of the good guys.