W3C today launches the RDF Working Group, whose mission is to update the cornerstone standard for the Semantic Web: the Resource Description Framework (RDF). The scope of work is to extend RDF to include some of the features that the community has identified as both desirable and important for interoperability based on experience with the 2004 version of the standard, but without having a negative effect on existing deployment. Some of the anticipated features include JSON and Turtle serializations, and a standard model and semantics for multiple graphs and graphs stores. Learn more about the Semantic Web.

The Efficient XML Interchange Working Group has published a Proposed Recommendation of Efficient XML Interchange (EXI) Format 1.0. EXI is a very compact, high performance XML representation that was designed to work well for a broad range of applications. It simultaneously improves performance and significantly reduces bandwidth requirements without compromising efficient use of other resources such as battery life, code size, processing power, and memory. Comments are welcome through 17 February. Learn more about the Extensible Markup Language (XML) Activity.

The Device APIs and Policy Working Group has published a Working Draft of The Messaging API. This specification defines an API that provides access to messaging functionality in the device, including SMS, MMS and e-mail. Learn more about the Ubiquitous Web Applications Activity.

The Protocols and Formats Working Group (PFWG) invites implementations of the Candidate Recommendation WAI-ARIA, the Accessible Rich Internet Applications technical specification for making dynamic, interactive Web content accessible to people with disabilities. WAI-ARIA and supporting documents are described in the WAI-ARIA Overview. Read the WAI-ARIA CR e-mail announcement and the WAI-ARIA CR blog post for more information, and about the Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI).

The Protocols and Formats Working Group (PFWG) has published a Last Call Working Draft of Role Attribute, an XML attribute that allows the author to add semantic information to documents. Role Attribute supports WAI-ARIA, the Accessible Rich Internet Applications technical specification for making dynamic, interactive web content accessible to people with disabilities. Comments are welcome through 25 February 2011. Read about the Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI).

The Device APIs and Policy Working Group has published a Working Draft of Device API Access Control Use Cases and Requirements. With the emergence of numerous new APIs in Web browsers and runtime engines, the need to control which Web sites and applications can make use of these APIs increases. This document describes use cases and requirements for controlling access to these APIs. Learn more about the Ubiquitous Web Applications Activity.