Mobile Technologies for Sustaining Development Focus of Workshop

2008-03-11: W3C invites people to participate in a Workshop on the Role of Mobile Technologies in Fostering Social Development in São Paulo, Brazil, on 2-3 June 2008. W3C intends for this public Workshop to be a multidisciplinary forum where mobile and Web technology experts, NGO specialists, and egovernment representatives gather to learn more about the specific needs, expectations, and challenges of deploying services for underprivileged populations. Position papers are due 20 April. Read the press release and learn more about the W3C Mobile Web Initiative (MWI) and the Digital World Forum project. (Photo credit: kiwanja.net. Permalink)

W3C Invites Implementations of XQuery Update Facility 1.0 (Candidate Recommendation)

2008-03-14: The XML Query Working Group has published the Candidate Recommendation of XQuery Update Facility 1.0. This document defines an update facility that extends the XML Query language, XQuery. The XQuery Update Facility provides expressions that can be used to make persistent changes (including node insertion, deletion, modification, and creation) to instances of the XQuery 1.0 and XPath 2.0 Data Model. The Working Group also published today two additional documents that will become Working Group notes: XQuery Update Facility 1.0 Requirements and XQuery Update Facility 1.0 Use Cases. Learn more about the Extensible Markup Language (XML) Activity. (Permalink)

User Agent Accessibility Guidelines (UAAG) 2.0: Comments Welcome on First Public Working Draft

2008-03-13: The User Agent Accessibility Guidelines Working Group has published a first public Working Draft of the User Agent Accessibility Guidelines (UAAG) 2.0. UAAG 2.0 addresses accessibility of browsers and media players and their interoperability with assistive technologies. It will cover more advanced Web technologies than UAAG 1.0. Read the invitation to review the UAAG 2.0 Working Draft and about the Web Accessibility Initiative. (Permalink)

Authoring Tool Accessibility Guidelines (ATAG) 2.0: Working Draft

2008-03-10: The Authoring Tool Accessibility Guidelines Working Group published updated Working Drafts of Authoring Tool Accessibility Guidelines 2.0 and Implementation Techniques for ATAG 2.0. ATAG helps developers design tools that are accessible so that people with disabilities can use the tools, and so that the tools help produce accessible Web content. Read the invitation to review the updated ATAG 2.0 Working Drafts and learn more about the Web Accessibility Initiative. (Permalink)

Note: Web Security Experience, Indicators and Trust: Scope and Use Cases

2008-03-07: The Web Security Context Working Group has published the Group Note Web Security Experience, Indicators and Trust: Scope and Use Cases. The Working Group is chartered to recommend user interfaces that help users make trust decisions on the Web. This Note explains the group's technical aims (complementing the group charter), what technologies may be used to achieve the group's mission, and how proposals will be evaluated. This Note also includes an initial collection of use cases that the group expects will drive its technical work. Learn more about the Security Activity. (Permalink)

RDB2RDF Incubator Group to Study Mapping Relational Data into RDF

2008-03-05: W3C is pleased to announce the creation of the RDB2RDF Incubator Group, sponsored by W3C Members Oracle, HP, PartnersHealthcare, and OpenLink Software. The mission of this Incubator Group is twofold: (1) to examine and classify existing approaches to mapping relational data into RDF and assess whether standardization is possible and/or necessary in this area, and (2) to examine and classify existing approaches to mapping OWL classes to Relational data, or, more accurately, SQL queries, moving towards the goal of defining a standard in this area. See the charter for more information. Read more about the Incubator Activity, an initiative to foster development of emerging Web-related technologies. (Permalink)

Last Call: Element Traversal Specification

2008-03-03: The Web API Working Group has published the Last Call Working Draft of Element Traversal Specification. This specification defines the ElementTraversal interface, which allows script navigation of the elements of a DOM tree, excluding all other nodes in the DOM, such as text nodes. It is intended to provide a more convenient alternative to existing DOM navigation interfaces, with a low implementation footprint. Comments are welcome through 3 April. Learn more about the Rich Web Client Activity. (Permalink)

Last Call: Service Modeling Language (SML) 1.1; SML Interchange Format 1.1

2008-03-03: The Service Modeling Language Working Group has published Last Call Working Drafts of Service Modeling Language, Version 1.1 and Service Modeling Language Interchange Format, Version 1.1. The former defines a language for modeling complex services and systems, including their structure, constraints, policies, and best practices. The latter defines an interchange format for SML. The format identifies the model being interchanged, distinguishes between model definition documents and model instance documents, and defines the binding of rule documents with other documents in the interchange set. Comments are welcome through 26 March. Learn more about the Extensible Markup Language (XML) Activity. (Permalink)

W3C Talks in March

2008-03-03: Browse W3C presentations and events also available as an RSS channel. (Permalink)

• 5 March, Seoul, Korea: Towards the Web of Things.Dave Raggett presents at Mobile Wednesday Workshop.
• 5 March, Seoul, Korea: Mobile Web 2.0 Forum Standardization Activities.Seungyun Lee presents at Mobile Wednesday Workshop.
• 7 March, Tokyo, Japan: State of the Semantic Web.Karl Dubost, Ivan Herman present at INTAP Semantic Web Conference 2008.
• 8 March, Austin, TX, USA: Catching up with Accessibility: The Basics Quickly.Shawn Henry presents at SXSW Interactive 2008 Conference.
• 10 March, San Diego, CA, USA: New W3C Standards For Speech and Multimodal Applications.Deborah Dahl presents at Voice Search Conference.
• 10 March, Berlin, Germany: An Introduction to POWDER (tentative).Phil Archer, Thomas Tikwinski give a tutorial at Web 2.0 Telecoms.
• 15 March, Los Angeles, USA: How Web Accessibility Guidelines Apply to Design for the Ageing Population.Shadi Abou-Zahra, Andrew Arch present at CSUN 2008.
• 17 March, Geneva, Switzerland: Video on the Web at W3C.Philippe Le Hégaret presents at Media Distribution over Open Internet.
• View upcoming talks by country
• More talks...

W3C Offices Program: Ten Years of International Outreach

2008-02-25: Today representatives from W3C Offices, regional branches that promote W3C and interact with participants in local languages, celebrate ten years of the Offices program. Offices currently represent 17 regions around the globe, helping to organize meetings, recruit Members, translate materials, and find creative ways to encourage international participation in W3C work. Offices staff gather for a face-to-face meeting in Sophia-Antipolis France to review ten years of experience and to forge improvements to the program. At this occasion, W3C thanks the Offices staff past and present for all of their work! (Permalink)

XMLHttpRequest Level 2: Comments Welcome on First Public Working Draft

2008-02-25: The Web API Working Group has published the First Public Working Draft of XMLHttpRequest Level 2. XMLHttpRequest Level 2 enhances XMLHttpRequest with new features, such as cross-site requests, progress events, and the handling of byte streams for both sending and receiving. Learn more about the W3C Rich Web Client Activity. (Permalink)

CSSOM View Module: Comments Welcome on First Public Working Draft

2008-02-25: The Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) Working Group has published the First Public Working Draft of CSSOM View Module. The APIs introduced by this specification provide authors with a way to inspect and manipulate the view information of a document. This includes getting the position of element layout boxes, obtaining the width of the viewport through script, and also scrolling an element. Learn more about the Style Activity. (Permalink)

Workshop on the Role of Mobile Technologies in Fostering Social Development (Call for Participation)

2008-02-25: Position papers are due 20 April for the W3C Workshop on the Role of Mobile Technologies in Fostering Social Development on 2-3 June 2008 in São Paulo, Brazil. W3C thanks Workshop hosts NIC.br (Network Information Center), CGI.br Internet Steering Committee, and Institute CONIP. The goal of the Workshop is to understand specific challenges of using mobile phones and Web technologies to deliver services to underprivileged populations of Developing Countries. The Workshop scope includes: analysis of using mobile phones in development projects; strengths and weaknesses of SMS technology v. mobile Web v. voice technology; the challenges of integrating information and Communication Technologies in rural communities, and more. Read about W3C Workshops. (Permalink)

Last Call: RDFa in XHTML: Syntax and Processing

2008-02-21: The Semantic Web Deployment Working Group and the XHTML 2 Working Group have published the Last Call Working Draft of RDFa in XHTML: Syntax and Processing. RDFa is a specification for attributes to be used with languages such as HTML and XHTML to express structured data. When publishers can express structured data, and when tools can read it, a new world of user functionality becomes available, letting users transfer structured data between applications and web sites, and allowing browsing applications to improve the user experience. For example, a photo's creator, camera setting information, resolution, location and topic can be published as easily as the original photo itself, enabling structured search and sharing. With RDFa, the rendered, hypertext data of XHTML is reused, so that publishers don't need to repeat significant data in the document content. The RDFa specification explains use of the RDFa attributes with XHTML. Comments are welcome through 21 March. Learn more about XHTML and the Semantic Web Activity. (Permalink)

SKOS Simple Knowledge Organization System Primer

2008-02-21: The Semantic Web Deployment Working Group has published the First Public Working Draft of SKOS Simple Knowledge Organization System Primer. SKOS provides a model for expressing the basic structure and content of concept schemes such as thesauri, classification schemes, subject heading lists, taxonomies, folksonomies, and other types of controlled vocabulary. SKOS has been designed to provide a low-cost migration path for porting existing organization systems to the Semantic Web. The primer is intended to help implementors who have a basic understanding of the Semantic Web to use the capabilities defined in SKOS Reference to represent and publish their concept schemes as SKOS data. The Primer aims to provide introductory examples and guidance in the use of SKOS vocabulary features. Learn more about the Semantic Web Activity. (Permalink)

Codecs, Metadata, and Addressing: Video on the Web Workshop Report

2008-02-19: The report of the W3C Video on the Web Workshop is now available. Thirty-seven organizations discussed video and audio codecs, spatial and temporal addressing, metadata, digital rights management, accessibility, and other topics related to ensuring the success of video as a "first class citizen" of the Web. W3C thanks Cisco for hosting the Workshop, which took place 12-13 December 2007 simultaneously in San Jose, California and Brussels, Belgium. Read the forty-two position papers and Workshop minutes. W3C welcomes feedback on the Report and the topic of video on the Web at public-video-comments@w3.org (archive). (Photo credit: Bob Freund. Permalink)