Google has acquired one of the foremost minds in modern i-technology, and it knows it. If the search colossus, or anyone else, is in any doubt, just read what he had to say recently about the bloated nature of full-blown Web services, versus the simplicity of XML over HTTP.

SYS-CON Media is inviting BEA, Borland, IBM, JBoss, JOnAS, Macromedia, Microsoft, Oracle, Orion, Sun, and Sybase to an 'Application Server Shoot-Out' at the upcoming Web Services Edge Conference & Expo, in Boston next February. The shootout will be a live competition aimed at finding out which app servers support the latest WS-I standards and how they compare in terms of how many transactions they can handle, how many lines of code they require, how they react to simulated network and hardware failures and a whole range of other metrics.

'Don't you have it set up so you can just automatically pull our listings from our Web sites?' the e-mail asked. 'Not yet,' I typed in my response. 'But it's a great idea, and I'm working on it now.'

ColdFusion MX offers a simple and easy way to unleash the power of XSLT for manipulating your XML data. Here's how. From Web services to news and blog data feeds to configuration files, XML is everywhere these days.

Challenges of Building Web Pages from XML Data in XSL Technology Developing professional Web pages based on XML data using XSL has historically been a time-consuming and expensive task due to the following challenges: Basic knowledge of XSL is insufficient for implementing fully-featured Web pages Hand-coding in XSL is very time-consuming Existing XSL code editor and mapper products are not sufficient for building professional-grade Web pages No XSL tools support both XSL and CSS In XSL it is very difficult to incorporate other Web languages such as JavaScript, Struts, VBScript, Php, ASP etc that are necessary to build fully-featured professional Web pages These complexities are exponentially compounded when Web pages need to perform advanced operations such as: joining content from multiple XML sources; reading live XML/RSS feeds; and including other Web pages XSLmaker was developed to overcome these challenges to the widespread realization of the significant benefits of Web pages based on XML. XSLmaker is a development environment that integrates all of the components required to develop fully-featured Web pages using XSL.

Sir Tim Berners-Lee was in fine form at the 13th annual World Wide Web Conference, running this week in New York. He gave a keynote address yesterday devoted to the successor to the WWW, namely the 'Semantic Web.'

Prior to .NET, DCOM existed as Microsoft's solution to remote object access. This technology leveraged the successful COM architecture to provide an infrastructure for remote communication. However, DCOM suffered from a variety of drawbacks and difficulties, and it ultimately led to Microsoft's spirited drive to develop Web services and their associated standards.

In what may or may not be just a high-tech April Fool, Google says it's launching a free e-mail service, leveraging Google search technology to automatically organize and find messages, and coming with a free gigabyte of storage.

In what it's describing as 'another industry first,' a Waltham, MA-based company has announced a 'Web services security' play, releasing what it is claiming is the only way stop a new breed of Web services-related threats before they enter the network.

The biggest technical challenge facing the non-profit corporation with authority over systems that connect computers to Web sites, ICANN, isn't security....it's localization - i.e., what to do as non-English languages become incorporated into the infrastructure of the Internet.

3 weeks ago LinuxWorld carried a story on how Microsoft had filed for certain XML patents. Now comes news from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office that a patent on 'XML script automation' was granted on February 3, and questions are being asked about what it all might potentially mean for the rest of us.

'What does the future hold for IT?' It's a burning question that everyone's asking, but who can answer? At XML-Journal, we went straight to the experts - the world's brightest and most prescient i-technology professionals - and asked them what they expect in the coming year for IT in general and XML in specific. Industrys stakeholders - software vendors, developers, technology investors, and users alike - are looking forward to the year ahead with renewed vigor. The buzz is around XSL, Web services, and the service-oriented architecture. The benefits of XML are clear...and in 2004 they'll become even clearer. Following are some of the predictions we received from industry leaders...if they are an indication of what's to come, it's going to be a great year.

Despite a shortage of sophisticated XML query tools, Internet demands have forced companies to present their data in various formats. In one sense little has changed, as SQL queries have long been used to combine data for different purposes and audiences.

Business has long pursued the goal of making IT more of a strategic tool and less of a necessary evil. Organizations are constantly looking for easier, cheaper, and more logical ways to build applications and unite the silos of functionality they still depend on.

A client recently asked EDS to design and support an EAI implementation based on XML messaging. The implementation of this solution created a need for an internal application that would allow multiple developers and analysts to create and manage a variety of XML documents.

Central Hudson Gas and Electric, a New York State utility company, wanted to find a way to improve its customer service by creating a Web-based platform where customers could view and retrieve bills online. Replacing or rewriting the company's 20-year old mainframe billing application wasn't an option.