(Senior Technology Editor Jason Levitt is attending the 9th International World Wide Web Conference this week in Amsterdam. The following is a report filed from day one of the conference).

Internet times have changed, and so has the International World Wide Web Conference. The ninth semi-annual event (WWW9), taking place this week in Amsterdam, has a distinctly more corporate flavor than the last one I attended, which was the 2nd International WWW conference in Chicago in 1994. Of course, the Web was still largely a research and academic medium in 1994, and this conference was the only general-purpose meeting for the thinkers and dreamers in the Web community. Compared with behemoth trade shows like Internet World or NetWorld+Interop, it's still a funky, research-oriented show, and a place where ideas matter more than venture capital. Still, it's clear that the suits and ties realize the benefits of participating in the Web research community. Easily half the attendees here are from the commercial sector or from a research arm of a major commercial player. Companies such as AT&T, Boeing, Cisco Systems, Compaq, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Intel, Microsoft, Sun Microsystems, and Unisys are all represented, and many are presenting papers.

Day One Keynote

Egbert-Jan Sol, VP of technology for Ericsson Nederland kicked off the conference with a rousing keynote about the future of the "mobile Internet." Citing statistics such as 100 million PCs sold vs. 275 million cell phones sold in 1999, he sees a very near future where all cell phones (and many other personal digital assistants and Internet mini-appliances) will have their own IP addresses. In Europe, this revolution is starting with the implementation of the Global System for Mobile Communications-based packet IP network, called GPRS (GSM Packet Radio System). Europe, of course, with only one digital carrier standard (GSM), has it much easier than other parts of the world such as the United States, where three or more digital standards (TDMA, CDMA, GSM, etc.) are offered by different cellular service providers. Sol, not surprisingly, heavily promoted Ericsson's Bluetooth technology, a low-power, radio-frequency networking standard with a typical distance limit of 10 meters. Bluetooth is designed for small, probably temporary, connections between devices such as PDAs, keyboards, coffee makers, cell phones, and just about any device in a home or office that doesn't require much bandwidth to get its job done. It's very suitable for replacing infrared connections, because it doesn't suffer from infrared line-of-sight requirements.

An XML Business Case

Wireless technologies and XML were the research front-runners at WWW9, but there was plenty of practical application experience reported on as well. Jeff Barton, a consultant for Visa International, the credit-card company, described how Visa has implemented XML solutions in its various credit-card processing business areas. In particular, he described how Visa uses XML to offer up a single, consistent invoice to all suppliers. The Visa Extensible Markup Language Invoice Specification is an XML language that Visa hopes to make into an industry standard. According to Visa, it's a "cross-industry, interoperable message format to enable processing of enhanced data across regions and industry sectors." Visa's 240-page XML implementation guide and other supporting documentation are available at www.visa.com/xml.

Security Worth Noting

David Kormann and Aviel Rubin, researchers at AT&T Research Labs, pointed out some risks and potential flaws in Microsoft's widely used Passport single sign-on protocol in their paper, "Risks of the Passport Single Sign-on Protocol." Passport is used by Microsoft to allow users to sign on to many different Web merchants' sites by "authenticating themselves only once to a common server." Kormann and Rubin point out that most of the problems with Passport are really problems with the underlying Web technologies (HTTP, JavaScript, certificates in Web browsers, cookies, etc.) that Passport uses and not so much problems with Passport itself. Nevertheless, reports like this deserve attention from E-commerce sites that make use of Passport, as well as from users.

Second Keynote On Day One

Keynotes addresses at the International World Wide Web Conference seem to have a lot more depth than your typical trade-show keynote. Graeber Jordan of GJordan.com LLC proved that by delivering the second keynote of the day, an inspiring account of implementing intranets in Boeing Corp.'s many business areas.

With 2,200 major intranet sites at Boeing, Graeber pointed out how nearly every facet of Boeing's business now depends on, and benefits from, the Web, but he also cited specific savings and profits, such as the $8 million a year saved by streaming video to desktops instead of duplicating videotapes, or the $1 million a day that Boeing grosses by selling spare parts to other airlines over the Web. His descriptions of how to balance chaos and control are a clear set of guidelines for large companies that are interested in reengineering existing corporate departments using the Web. Although Graeber spent 33 years at Boeing, where he cut his teeth on intranet implementation, he also has helped other companies move their infrastructure to the Web, such as Acxiom Corp., a billion-dollar mailing-list vendor. Slide 2 shows (in yellow) those corporate intranet servers that are "showstoppers"--if they go down, the other Web servers will likely fail as well. Graeber says that getting those departments involved in the overall intranet deployment is critical to success.

Going To XML School In Style

It used to be that technical seminars, especially of the Internet variety, were held exclusively in hotel meeting rooms or other semisterile environments. Not any more. Clearly aiming at the typical WWW9 demographic, flyers were everywhere promoting hot new schooling opportunities for those who want to learn XML-related technologies. "XML Excursion 2001 (A Caribbean Caper)" (www.geekcruises.com) is a 10-day Caribbean cruise with top-flight instructors and scenic stopovers at various ports of call (the La Guaira, Venezuela, stopover promises "Geek Entertainment," whatever that means) .

Another interesting schooling opportunity is the "XML Summer School" offered by CSW Informatics. A five-day stay at historic Oxford University in Oxford, England, is the attraction here.

Tomorrow: Lots more fun research.