What direction is the World Wide Web going to take? “It is very difficult to predict,” Prof Krithi Ramamrithan, Chair in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at IIT Bombay, said. .

“It was not like this two years ago. Sites like Wikipedia are changing the Web landscape significantly,” he said, talking to reporters on the inaugural day of the five-day World Wide Web conference on Monday.

“Several people at different levels are working to enrich the Web. For one, IIT Bombay has incubated Aaqua, the Web-based social networking forum for farmers. Using this, farmers can post queries on the problems they face. Their peers, who might have solved these problems, could relate their solutions,” he said.

‘Aaqua' would also send SMS alerts to farmers on various issues connected with farming.

Prof. Ramamrithan is not alone in failing to hazard a guess on the future of the Web. Researchers from 50 countries gathered here at the 20{+t}{+h} International WWW conference were also at a loss in predicting its future.

“The participants will focus on the regional and global impact of expanding Open Web platform for application development,” Prof. Sadagopan, Director of IIIT (Bangalore), said.

The theme for this year's conference is ‘Web for All' that aims at promoting inclusive aspects of the Web. Mr Tim Berners-Lee, founder of the Web, would deliver a keynote address on ‘Designing the Web for an open society'. Dr A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, former President, and Prof. Christos H. Papadimitriou of UC Barkeley would also address the conference.

Mr Kris Gopalakrishnan, Chief Executive Officer of Infosys, and Mr N. Chandrasekharan, Chief Executive Officer and Managing Director of TCS, would take part in an industry panel discussion on Tuesday.

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