Public Newsletter

W3C Launches Social Web Incubator Group

2009-04-06: W3C is pleased to announce the creation of the Social Web Incubator Group. The group's mission is to understand the systems and technologies that permit the description and identification of people, groups, organizations, and user-generated content in extensible and privacy-respecting ways. The group will be co-chaired by Dan Appelquist (Vodafone), Dan Brickley (Vrije Universiteit), Harry Halpin (W3C Fellow from the University of Edinburgh with support from Eduserv). The following W3C Members have sponsored the charter for this group: ASemantics, Boeing, Cisco, DERI Galway at the National University of Ireland, Garlik, Institut National de Recherche en Informatique et en Automatique (INRIA), Institute of Informatics and Telecommunications (IIT-NCSR), NICTA, Rochester Institute of Technology, SUN Microsystems, Talis, Telecom Italia, University of Bristol, University of Edinburgh, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, University of Versailles, Vrije Universiteit, and Vodafone. Read more about the Incubator Activity, an initiative to foster development of emerging Web-related technologies. Incubator Activity work is not on the W3C standards track. (Permalink)

Five POWDER Documents published; Three Last Call Drafts

2009-04-04: The Protocol for Web Description Resources (POWDER) Working Group published five Working Drafts today. The purpose of the Protocol for Web Description Resources (POWDER) is to provide a means for individuals or organizations to describe a group of resources through the publication of machine-readable metadata. The primary change in these publications relates to the IRI canonicalization sections of the Grouping of Resources document (sections 2.1.3 - 2.1.5). The group published these documents:

• Description Resources (Last Call); which details the creation and lifecycle of Description Resources (DRs), which encapsulate metadata
• Grouping of Resources (Last Call); which describes how sets of IRIs can be defined such that descriptions or other data can be applied to the resources obtained by dereferencing IRIs that are elements of the set.
• Formal Semantics (Last Call); which describes how the relatively simple operational format of a POWDER document can be transformed for processing by Semantic Web tools
• Primer
• Test Suite

Learn more about the Semantic Web Activity. (Permalink)

CSS Template Layout Module

2009-04-02: The Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) Working Group has published the Working Draft of CSS Template Layout Module. This specification is part of level 3 of CSS (“CSS3”) and contains features to describe layouts at a high level, meant for tasks such as the positioning and alignment of “widgets” in a graphical user interface or the layout grid for a page or a window, in particular when the desired visual order is different from the order of the elements in the source document. Learn more about the Style Activity. (Permalink)

eGovernment Stakeholder Meeting Summary Published

2009-04-01: The W3C's eGovernment Interest Group has published a Meeting Summary from its 12-13 March eGovernment stakeholder meeting in Washington, D.C. The purpose of the meeting was to obtain feedback on the First Public Working Draft of the group's Improving Access to Government through Better Use of the Web, published on 1 March 2009. Featured speakers at the meeting included Beth Noveck, US Office of Science and Technology Policy, Ellen Miller, Sunlight Foundation, and Steve Ressler, GovLoop, as well as meeting co-chairs Kevin Novak, American Institute of Architects, John Sheridan, UK National Archives, and W3C Team contact Jose Alonso. Key subject areas addressed by participants were: Openness and Transparency in Government; Social Networking; Data Interoperability and Semantic Web in Government; and Multi-Channel Deliver and Information Access via Mobile Platforms. The term "eGovernment" refers to the use of the Web or other information technologies by governing bodies (local, state, federal, multi-national) to interact with their citizenry, between departments and divisions, and between governments themselves. Learn more about the W3C's eGovernment Activity. (Permalink)

Widgets 1.0: Digital Signatures Draft Published

2009-03-31: The Web Applications Working Group has published a Working Draft of Widgets 1.0: Digital Signatures. This document defines a profile of the XML Signature Syntax and Processing 1.1 specification to allow a widget package to be digitally signed. Widget authors and distributors can digitally sign widgets as a trust and quality assurance mechanism. Prior to instantiation, a user agent can use the digital signature to verify the integrity of the widget package and perform source authentication. This document specifies conformance requirements on both widget packages and user agents. Learn more about the Rich Web Client Activity. (Permalink)