W3C is pleased to announce the creation of the Media Analysis Management Interface Incubator Group, whose mission is to discuss the requirements and determine the feasibility of the "Media Analysis Management Interface." That interfaces consists of the data model and exchange protocol for the analysis data of various media, such as video images, RFID sensor data, and so on. The following W3C Members have sponsored the charter for this group: NEC Corporation, Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corp. (NTT), and Fujitsu Limited. 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 but in many cases serves as a starting point for a future Working Group.

The Device APIs and Policy Working Group has published a Working Draft of Contacts API. This specification defines the concept of a user's unified address book - where address book data may be sourced from a plurality of sources - both online and locally. This specification then defines the interfaces on which third party applications can access a user's unified address book, with explicit user permission and filtering. The focus of this data sharing is on making the user aware of the data that they will share and putting them at the center of the data sharing process; free to select both the extent to which they share their address book information and the ability to restrict which pieces of information related to which contact gets shared. Learn more about the Ubiquitous Web Applications Activity.

Registration is now open for the next session of W3C's online training course: Introduction to SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics). Professor David Dailey of Slippery Rock University, Pennsylvania, will lead the course, as he has led previous sessions. The course is six weeks long, starting in January 2011. During the first four weeks (the "core" of the session), participants learn how to create SVG documents, to use basic elements to create effective graphics quickly and easily, add border effects, linear and radial gradients, re-use components, and rescale, rotate and translate images. During the (optional) final two weeks of the course participants learn how to: add animation, use scripting to transform and manipulate images, and create interactive graphics. The last two weeks will most benefit those with some background in scripting. The only pre-requisite for the course is to have some familiarity with HTML/XML and the ability to edit source code directly.

The early bird rate of €124 is available until Thursday, 23 December. After that, the rate is €165. Full details of the course (audience, content, timing, weekly commitment) are available in the Introduction to SVG: Course Description. Learn more about Scalable Vector Graphics.

The Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) Working Group has published a Last Call Working Draft of Cascading Style Sheets Level 2 Revision 1 (CSS 2.1) Specification. CSS 2.1 is a style sheet language that allows authors and users to attach style (e.g., fonts and spacing) to structured documents (e.g., HTML documents and XML applications). CSS 2.1 corrects a few errors in CSS2 and adds a few highly requested features which have already been widely implemented. But most of all CSS 2.1 represents a "snapshot" of CSS usage: it consists of all CSS features that are implemented interoperably at the date of publication. Last Call comments are welcome through 7 January 2011. The Working Group allso published two other first public Working Drafts. CSS Snapshot 2010 collects together into one definition all the specs that together form the current state of Cascading Style Sheets (CSS). CSS Writing Modes Module Level 3 specifies the text layout model in CSS and the properties that control it. It covers bidirectional and vertical text. Learn more about the Style Activity.

W3C publishes today a report from the October Workshop on Privacy and data usage control. As the report indicates, there is an obvious tension on the Web between policy imperatives and economic imperatives (namely: advertising fueled by personal data). Participants discussed requirements on the one hand that users have simple interfaces for managing privacy preferences, and on the other that applications support sophisticated context-specific and rich interactions for b2b scenarios. The report includes information about approaches based on notice and consent (focusing on data collection) versus approaches based on accountability (focusing on data use, not collection). Reconciling this tension will require further discussion across different communities. See the report for more information on joining the conversation. Learn more about Web Privacy at W3C, including W3C's next workshop: How can Technology help to improve Privacy on the Internet?, 8-9 December at MIT.

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.