The W3C Social Web Incubator Group has published their final report. The mission of the Incubator Group was 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 report describes a framework for understanding the Social Web and many relevant standards (from both within and outside the W3C), and concludes by proposing a strategy for making the Social Web a "first-class citizen" of the Web. The report recommends that the W3C should offer resources to start a Federated Social Web Incubator Group, and that the W3C host a workshop to investigate identity in the browser with existing communities in order to determine how digital identity fits into the One Web platform. This publication is part of the Incubator Activity, a forum where W3C Members can innovate and experiment. This work is not on the W3C standards track.

W3C announces the results of this year's Technical Architecture Group (TAG) election process: Peter Linss (HP), Ashok Malhotra (Oracle), and Larry Masinter (Adobe) all begin 2-year terms on 1 February 2011. The mission of the TAG is to build consensus around principles of Web architecture and to interpret and clarify these principles when necessary, to resolve issues involving general Web architecture brought to the TAG, and to help coordinate cross-technology architecture developments inside and outside W3C. Peter, Ashok, and Larry join fellow TAG members Dan Appelquist (Vodafone), Jonathan Rees (Creative Commons), and Henry Thompson (U. of Edinburgh). Noah Mendelsohn (unaffiliated) and Tim Berners-Lee co-Chair the TAG. There remains one seat for appointment by the Director. Learn more about the TAG.

The XML Security Working Group has published a Last Call Working Drafts of XML Encryption Syntax and Processing Version 1.1 and XML Signature Syntax and Processing Version 1.1. The former specifies a process for encrypting data and representing the result in XML. The latter specifies XML digital signature processing rules and syntax. XML Signatures provide integrity, message authentication, and/or signer authentication services for data of any type, whether located within the XML that includes the signature or elsewhere. See the explanation of XML encryption changes and XML signature changes. Comments are welcome through 22 December. Learn more about the Security Activity.

The XML Processing Model Working Group has published a Last Call Working Draft of XML Processor Profiles. This specification defines several XML processor profiles, each of which fully determines a data model for any given XML document. It is intended as a resource for other specifications, which can by a single normative reference establish precisely what input processing they require. Comments are welcome through 14 January. Learn more about the Extensible Markup Language (XML) Activity.