http://www.w3.org/ -- 18 October 2006 -- The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) announces a public seminar on the technical solutions for the special challenges of mobile Web adoption. The event will be held at L'entrepôt in central Paris, on Thursday 16 November 2006.
"People could access the Web at all times and in all situations, thanks to mobile devices, but Web sites aren't always ready for the diverse range of devices," explains Philipp Hoschka, Mobile Web Initiative Leader. "W3C's Mobile Web Initiative has already produced concrete results to help developers make their Web sites accessible to mobile devices. This seminar gives a valuable opportunity to discuss those results and state of the art techniques."
People worldwide are spending more time online, whether at home or at work. With the widespread adoption of mobile devices, such as PDAs and mobile phones, people are now expecting to use the Web - to get information, connect with each other and make purchases - while they're on the go. They expect the same access and similar rich experiences in both settings.
Ahead of this trend, W3C's Mobile Web Initiative (W3C-MWI) was launched in 2005 to improve the mobile experience on the Web. The W3C-MWI work is focused on developing best practices for "mobileOK" Web sites, and device information needed for content adaptation.
W3C's Mobile Web seminar is a public event which will focus on current results produced by W3C's Mobile Web Initiative. The confirmed speakers include representatives from W3C MWI sponsors such as France Telecom, Jataayu Software, MobileAware, Opera Software, and Vodafone.
W3C is organizing this event to further the MWI mission of educating operators, content developers, and handset manufacturers on available options and new development. The program and materials from the seminar will be made available to the public, and the attendance is free of charge.
The current nineteen MWI sponsors are key players in the mobile production chain, including authoring tool vendors, content providers, adaptation providers, handset manufacturers, browser vendors and mobile operators. They are:
Afilias, Argogroup, Bango.net, Drutt Corporation, Ericsson, France Telecom, HP, Jataayu Software, mTLD, MobileAware, Nokia, NTT DoCoMo, Opera Software, TIM Italia, RuleSpace, Segala, Sevenval, Vodafone, and Volantis.
The W3C was created to lead the Web to its full potential by developing common protocols that promote its evolution and ensure its interoperability. It is an international industry consortium jointly run by the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (MIT CSAIL) in the USA, the European Research Consortium for Informatics and Mathematics (ERCIM) headquartered in France and Keio University in Japan. Services provided by the Consortium include: a repository of information about the World Wide Web for developers and users, and various prototype and sample applications to demonstrate use of new technology. To date, nearly 400 organizations are Members of the Consortium. For more information see http://www.w3.org/