A MATHEMATICAL ALGORITHM can predict how people will "surf" the Internet and how many different pages they will look at before giving up, a team of researchers said recently. For example, users of American Online hit an average of three pages at a time, Bernardo Huberman and colleagues at Xerox Palo Alto Research Center said.

Huberman said his team's model assumes that users mak e a sequence of decisions to proceed to another page, continuing as long as the page is useful-a value that can be expressed in numbers. If the value is negative, then it's no longer worth continuing.

They tested their model using "cookies," or bits of information sent to a user's computer to track use. Huberman's group does not suggest using the model to spy on people, but to provide better Internet service. A paper on the subject is available at the site.

O'REILLY & ASSOCIATES (Cambridge, Mass.) offers XML.com , a site focusing on the Web markup language being adopted for e-commerce. The XML 1.0 spec was recently approved by the W3C.

"WITH THE INTERNET, there will be pe riods of bumpiness, but I think it will become the primary instrument for commerce in the first years of the next century-though it may not be TCP/IP.

"It may look and feel different, but as an electronic interchange of information between governments and enterprises and individuals that compute with each other, [the Internet] will become [a reality].

"If this was 1897 and you asked what will be the role of the telephone in business, I would say that what we generically call the 'Internet' will have that same impact."

- Harold Lorin, consultant, and former IBM Systems Research Institute faculty member

EE TIMES ONLINE is conducting a confidential study of "professional development for electronics engineers." You can request a copy of the compiled results, and the first 100 visitors to fill out the surveys will receive a free T-shirt.

THE ELEMEDIA DIVISION of Lucent Technologies offers "Standards Corner"-linked off the home page-which provides updates on Internet and communication-standards-related topics.

MOTOROLA'S SEMICONDUCTOR PRODUCTS SECTOR (Austin, Texas) has added a site focusing on its 8-bit one-time-programmable (OTP) microcontrollers. Find technical documentation, downloadable software and the ability to order
online from distributors.

THE OFFICE OF SYSTEM ARCHITECTURE AND INVESTMENT ANALYSIS (ASD) of the Federal Aviation Administration in Washington has a site. The ASD is responsible for system improvem ents for the National Airspace System, and the site has a wealth of information, including a repository of 65,000 aviation-related documents.

MENTOR GRAPHICS (Wilsonville, Ore.) offers "E-Parts-the EDA Storefront," which provides catalog cores in the form of intellectual property from its IP division, formerly the Inventra division.

AS CORPORATE HOME PAGES GO, engineers usually don't expect much in the way of solid, useful information, but Lucent Technologies (Murray Hill, N.J.) has an above-average presence on the Web.

The site features a showcase of the work being done in networking, wireless, Internet and optical networking, and quite useful are the microelectronics page, the Bell Labs site and the online e-zine.

Lucent's microelectronics division is featured, which recently included coverage of Bell Labs' DSP16000 and its K56flex technology.

The Bell Labs site , offers a virtual tour of the historic grounds, but also delves into the bleeding-edge quantum mechanics research going on there. There's also an online library of programming information on everything from C++ to object-oriented artificial intelligence.

Finally, there's Lucent.context, an e-zine focused on wireless communications that is a bit slanted toward the company, but that also includes solid technical documentation and info on trends and standards.

compiled by larry lange, internet editor

Free Subscription to EE Times First Name Last Name Company Name Title Email address   Click here for your Free Subscription to EETimes Europe