W3C announced today a Workshop on Social Standards: The Future of Business, 7-8 August 2013, in San Francisco, USA. The event is hosted by AppFusions, sponsored by IBM, and jointly organized with the OpenSocial Foundation. The goal of this workshop is to bring together social business experts and social technology experts to discuss the use-cases that existing specifications and standards don't adequately address, and understand where new standards are needed. This Workshop is open in particular to social business leaders and strategists, federated and decentralized social Web technologists, security experts, and developers. W3C membership is not required to participate. The event is open to all. All participants are required to submit a position paper by 1 July 2013.

A report summarizing the MultilingualWeb workshop in Rome is now available from the MultilingualWeb site. It contains a summary of each session with links to presentation slides and minutes taken during the workshop in Rome. The workshop was a huge success, with approximately 150 participants, focus sessions on topics like Internationalized Domain Names, Best Practices for Multilingual Linked Open Data (BP-MLOD) and an implementation showcase of the upcoming ITS 2.0 specification. The Workshop was hosted by FAO, sponsored by the EU-funded QTLaunchPad project and by Verisign. A new workshop in the MultilingualWeb series is planned for 2014. Learn more about the Internationalization Activity.

The RDF Working Group has published a Last Call Working Draft of JSON-LD 1.0 Processing Algorithms and API. This specification defines an Application Programming Interface (API) and a set of algorithms for programmatic transformations of JSON-LD documents. Restructuring data according the defined transformations often dramatically simplifies its usage. Comments are welcome through 06 June. Learn more about the Semantic Web Activity.

The Web Applications Working Group has published a Last Call Working Draft of Indexed Database API. This document defines APIs for a database of records holding simple values and hierarchical objects. Each record consists of a key and some value. Moreover, the database maintains indexes over records it stores. An application developer directly uses an API to locate records either by their key or by using an index. A query language can be layered on this API. An indexed database can be implemented using a persistent B-tree data structure. Comments are welcome through 07 June. Learn more about the Rich Web Client Activity.

The System Applications Working Group has published two Working Drafts today:

• The app: URI scheme. This specification defines the app: URI scheme and rules for dereferencing an app: URI, which can be used to address resources inside a package (e.g., a packaged application). The dereferencing model relies on HTTP semantics to return resources in a manner akin to a HTTP GET request. Doing so allows this URI scheme to be used with other technologies that rely on HTTP responses to function as intended, such as XHR.
• Messaging API. This specification defines a System Level API which offers a simple interface to get access to mobile messaging services. A typical use case of the Messaging API is the implementation of a messaging client application that allows the user to send SMS and MMS messages as well as to access and manage the received SMS and MMS messages.

Learn more about the Ubiquitous Web Applications Activity.

The Web Real-Time Communication Working Group and the Device APIs Working Group have published a Working Draft of Media Capture and Streams. This document defines a set of JavaScript APIs that allow local media, including audio and video, to be requested from a platform. Learn more about the Ubiquitous Web Applications Activity.

The Research and Development Working Group (RDWG) will hold an online symposium to explore user modeling for accessibility, an approach for generating and adapting user interfaces to address particular user needs and preferences. The Call for Papers is open until 6 June 2013. Learn more about the User Modeling for Accessibility Symposium to be held on 15 July 2013, and the Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI).

The Site Redesign Task Force invites the community to take a short site redesign survey . As discussed in the A List Apart Column "W3C is Getting Some Work Done" W3C is developing a plan to refresh its Web presence for a variety of audiences. We appreciate your input on what you value from the site and what you would like to see us do better. We will be collecting survey responses until 11:59pm Boston time on 29 May 2013.

The System Applications Working Group has published a Working Draft of Raw Socket API. This API provides interfaces to raw UDP sockets, TCP client sockets and TCP server sockets. Learn more about the Ubiquitous Web Applications Activity.

The Web Performance Working Group has published a W3C Recommendation of Page Visibility. This specification defines a means for site developers to programmatically determine the current visibility state of the page in order to develop power and CPU efficient web applications. Learn more about the Rich Web Client Activity.

The Web Applications Working Group has published four Working Drafts today:

• A Working Draft of Shadow DOM. This specification describes a method of establishing and maintaining functional boundaries between DOM trees and how these trees interact with each other within a document, thus enabling better functional encapsulation within the DOM.
• A Working Draft of Custom Elements. This specification describes the method for enabling the author to define and use new types of DOM elements in a document.
• A Working Draft of HTML Imports. HTML Imports are a way to include and reuse HTML documents in other HTML documents.
• A Group Note of Java language binding for Web IDL. This document defines the Java language binding for Web IDL, the interface definition language for the Web platform.

Learn more about the Rich Web Client Activity.

The Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) Working Group has published a Working Draft of CSS Box Alignment Module Level 3. This module contains the features of CSS relating to the alignment of boxes within their containers in the various CSS box layout models: block layout, table layout, flex layout, and grid layout. Learn more about the Style Activity.

The Internationalization Working Group has published a Working Draft of Requirements for Hangul Text Layout and Typography. This document describes requirements for general Korean language/Hangul text layout and typography realized with technologies like CSS, SVG and XSL-FO. The document is mainly based on a project to develop the international standard for Korean text layout. Learn more about the Internationalization Activity.