The eGovernment Interest Group has been rechartered with a new focus Open Government Data and Education/Outreach. The group is open to all (W3C Members and non-Members alike). We encourage participation from people around the world working on improving the interface between citizens and government. Please see the new charter and how to participate. Learn more about eGovernment at W3C.

A Patent Advisory Group (PAG) for the Web Applications Working Group published its report, which suggests that W3C should continue the work on the Widgets 1.0: Updates Specification. W3C launched the PAG when Apple Computer, Inc excluded patent claims from the W3C Royalty-Free licensing commitment. The Group concluded that the US Patent Number 5,764,992 is considered not essential according to Section 8 of the W3C Patent Policy, and provided a set of Recommendations to the Web Applications Working Group.

The Web Applications Working Group has published a Last Call Working Draft of Widgets 1.0: Widget URIs. Resources inside a widget package are identified and located using a method that is specific to widgets technology. Widget URIs reflect this by providing these specific locators with their own syntax so that resources in widget packages can be readily identified. Comments are welcome through 10 November. Learn more about the Rich Web Client Activity.

The Product Modelling Incubator Group has published their final report. The mission of the Incubator Group was to enable the use of the (Semantic) Web for Product Modelling (PM): the definition, storage, exchange and sharing of product data. Product data is information about the structure and behaviour of things that are realized in industrial processes. So principally product data is about things that are manmade, but it can also be about things in the natural world that interact with those industrial processes and/or its resulting products. The report describes the role and scope of product data, and initial work in two technical areas (1) quantities, units, and scales; and (2) product structure - the decomposition of wholes in parts and the interconnection relationships between these parts. 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.

The third and possibly final run of the successful online training course An Introduction to W3C Mobile Web Best Practices is due to start on Monday, 12 October. Participants work at their own pace at times to suit them throughout the 9-week course. The program is well-suited to developers with experience of desktop design and production who wish to apply their HTML and CSS skills to the mobile environment. A mixture of lectures and assignments provide hands-on practical experience in using W3C's Mobile Web Best Practices. Participants will work with both W3C instructors and peers who can share experiences about the real-world challenges of mobile Web design.

Comments from previous participants include:

• "Great course! I really enjoyed it. Found it challenging at times but never felt I was on my own. The forum was an essential element to making me feel part of a community. Kudos!"
• "Thanks for the cool course. I learned a lot."
• "El contenido del curso es excelente, valoro el interes que le prestan a todos los estudiantes y a los temas de los foros."

More information (including a free sample) is available about the course material, registration fee, and intended audience. Learn more about the Mobile Web Initiative.

The W3C community convenes next month in Santa Clara, California for Technical Plenary Week (TPAC) 2009, this year's edition of an annual week-long opportunity for W3C group participants to share news of progress and to address hot-button technical issues face-to-face, including the future of HTML 5, privacy challenges in an era of powerful Web Applications, and how governments are using the Web to increase transparency and accountability. This year, the Internet Society (ISOC), as part of its mission to support the development of open standards, will sponsor TPAC 2009 and actively participate in the event. In addition to ISOC representatives, participants from other standards development organizations will join in discussion about the health of the "Internet Ecosystem" during the Plenary Day. As previously announced, W3C invites the public to a Developer Gathering on 5 November. In addition, the press are invited to attend a Media Breakfast on 3 November from 7:30-8:30am (Pacific Time) for presentations on some of the key topics W3C will cover during the week. Read the press release and learn more about TPAC 2009.

The Math Working Group has published a Last Call Working Draft of A MathML for CSS profile. This document describes a profile of MathML 3.0 that could be used to capture structure of mathematical formulae in the way suitable for further CSS formatting. This profile is expected to facilitate adoption of MathML in web browsers and CSS formatters, allowing them to reuse existing CSS visual formatting model, enhanced with a few mathematics-oriented extensions, for rendering of the layout schemata of presentational MathML. Learn more about the W3C Math Activity.

The Mobile Web Best Practices Working Group has published two Last Call Working Drafts: Mobile Web Application Best Practices and Guidelines for Web Content Transformation Proxies 1.0. The former describes Best Practices for the development and delivery of Web applications on mobile devices. The recommendations expand upon statements made in the Mobile Web Best Practices, especially those that relate to the exploitation of device capabilities and awareness of the delivery context. The latter document provides guidance to implementers of Content Transformation proxies as to whether and how to transform Web content. Content Transformation proxies alter requests sent by user agents to servers and responses returned by servers so that the appearance, structure or control flow of Web applications are modified. Content Transformation proxies are mostly used to convert Web sites designed for desktop computers to a form suitable for mobile devices. Comments on both documents welcome through 6 November. Learn more about the Mobile Web Initiative.

The Web Applications Working Group has published the First Public Working Draft of Widgets 1.0: View Modes Media Feature. This specification is part of the Widgets 1.0 family of specifications. It introduces a feature that allows designers to specify different presentations according to "view modes" (e.g., when a widget is running like any other application, when it is running without "chrome," or when occupying all of the screen). Learn more about the Rich Web Client Activity.

W3C and XBRL International, Inc. are co-sponsoring a Workshop on Improving Access to Financial Data on the Web today and tomorrow, hosted at the offices of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) in Arlington, Virginia (USA). The main goal of the Workshop is to identify opportunities and challenges for improving access to financial data on the Web. Participants will discuss how Extensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL) and related XML data standards can best be utilized, and how using XBRL to provide financial data via the Web relates to broader opportunities for Semantic Web technologies. More than 15 speakers and 100 participants will discuss topics such as interoperability and harmonization of standard data formats and the impact of the increased transparency on the economy and society as a whole. For more information, see the Program Agenda and Media Advisory. Learn more about the Semantic Web Activity.

The SVG Working Group has published First Public Working Drafts of SVG Color 1.2, Part 2: Language and SVG Color 1.2, Part 1: Primer. The former defines features of the Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) Language that are specifically for color-managed environments, including document interchange, publishing, and high-quality display. SVG Color extends the control of color, relative to SVG Tiny 1.2, in three ways. Firstly by adding an additional color space for interpolation and compositing; this means that colors are no longer constrained to the sRGB gamut. Secondly by extending the syntax for Paint, thus allowing colors to be specified as calibrated (ICC and named) and uncalibrated ('device') color. Thirdly, it mandates the color management of embedded images. The Primer explains the technical background and gives guidelines on how to use the SVG Color specification with SVG 1.2 Tiny and SVG 1.2 Full modules. Learn more about the Graphics Activity.

The Rule Interchange Format (RIF) Working Group has published six Candidate Recommendations. Together, they allow systems using a variety of rule languages and rule-based technologies to interoperate with each other and with Semantic Web technologies.

Three of the drafts define XML formats with formal semantics for storing and transmitting rules:

• The RIF Production Rule Dialect (PRD) is designed for the kinds of rules used in modern Business Rule Management systems.
• The RIF Basic Logic Dialect (BLD) is a foundation for Logic Programming, classical logic, and related formalisms.
• The RIF Core Dialect is the common subset of PRD and BLD, useful when having a ubiquitous platform is paramount.

The other drafts:

• RIF Datatypes and Builtins (DTB) specifies the datatypes and standard operations (modeled on XPath Functions) available in all RIF dialects
• RIF RDF and OWL Compatibility specifies how RIF works with RDF, RDFS, OWL 1, and OWL 2.
• RIF Framework for Logic Dialects (FLD) provides a mechanism for specifying extended dialects, beyond BLD, when more expressive power is required.

The group has also published a new version of RIF Test Cases, and three new First Public Working Drafts: RIF Overview, RIF Combination with XML data and OWL 2 RL in RIF.

The Working Group asks all developers to send implementation reports, and other comments, to public-rif-comments@w3.org by 29 October 2009. Learn more about the Semantic Web Activity.

Browse W3C presentations and events also available as an RSS channel.

• 14 October, San Jose, CA, USA: Internationalization: An IntroductionAddison Phillips gives a tutorial at Internationalization and Unicode Conference.
• 15 October, Potsdam, Germany: W3C and W3C Offices - an overviewKlaus Birkenbihl presents at Launch of the W3C Germany and Austria Office.
• 15 October, San Jose, CA, USA: BCP47: Language and Locale IdentificationAddison Phillips presents at Internationalization and Unicode Conference.
• 21 October, London, United Kingdom: Browser StandardizationPhilipp Hoschka participates in a panel at Mobile Web and Applications 2009.
• 23 October, Ede, The Netherlands: The Open WebSteven Pemberton gives a keynote at NLUUG Najaarsconferentie "Het Open Web".
• 29 October, Chicago, IL, USA: WAI-ARIA Introduction: Making Advanced Websites and Web Applications AccessibleShawn Henry presents at ATIA 2009 Chicago.
• 30 October, Philadelphia, USA: Introduction to the Semantic WebIvan Herman gives a tutorial at Company Presentation at Johnson & Johnson.
• 30 October, Chicago, IL, USA: Web Accessibility Standards and Guidelines Update 2009Shawn Henry presents at ATIA 2009 Chicago.

The Web Applications Working Group has published the First Public Working Draft of WebSimpleDB API. User agents need to store large numbers of objects locally in order to satisfy off-line data requirements of Web applications. Whereas the Web Storage specification is useful for storing pairs of keys and their corresponding values, it does not provide in-order retrieval of keys, efficient searching over values, or storage of duplicate values for a key. The new WebSimpleDB API specification provides a concrete API to perform advanced key-value data management that is at the heart of most sophisticated query processors. It does so by using transactional databases to store keys and their corresponding values. Learn more about the Rich Web Client Activity.

The XSL-FO subgroup of the XSL Working Group has published a First Public Working Draft of Design Notes for Extensible Stylesheet Language (XSL) 2.0, which contains initial and early work on XSL-FO 2.0. XSL-FO defines an XML vocabulary for formatting and layout of XML documents; use XSLT to transform documents into XSL-FO for on-screen or paper formatting, for example into PDF. Public comments are requested, both from users and implementors of XSL 1.x and from people who have been waiting for new features before using XSL-FO. Lean more about XML.

The Web Services Resource Access Working Group published updates to five Working Drafts: Web Services Enumeration (WS-Enumeration), Web Services Eventing (WS-Eventing), Web Services Resource Transfer (WS-RT), Web Services Transfer (WS-Transfer), and Web Services Metadata Exchange (WS-MetadataExchange). The first describes a general SOAP-based protocol for enumerating a sequence of XML elements that is suitable for traversing logs, message queues, or other linear information models. The second describes a protocol that allows Web services to subscribe to or accept subscriptions for event notification. The third defines extensions to WS-Transfer that deal primarily with fragment-based access to resources to satisfy the common requirements of WS-ResourceFramework and WS-Management. The fourth describes a general SOAP-based protocol for accessing XML representations of Web service-based resources. The fifth defines how metadata associated with a Web service endpoint can be represented as resources, how metadata can be embedded in endpoint references, and how metadata could be retrieved from a Web service endpoint. Learn more about the Web Services Activity.

The Math Working Group has published a Last Call Working Draft of Mathematical Markup Language (MathML) Version 3.0. MathML is an XML application for describing mathematical notation and capturing both its structure and content. The goal of MathML is to enable mathematics to be served, received, and processed on the World Wide Web, just as HTML has enabled this functionality for text. Comments are welcome through 11 November. Learn more about the Math Activity.

The Timed Text Working Group invites implementation of the Candidate Recommendation of Timed Text (TT) Authoring Format 1.0 - Distribution Format Exchange Profile (DFXP), used to represent timed text media for the purpose of interchange among authoring systems. Timed text is textual information that is intrinsically or extrinsically associated with timing information. The specification provides a standardized representation of a particular subset of textual information with which stylistic, layout, and timing semantics are associated by an author or an authoring system for the purpose of interchange and potential presentation. Learn more about the Video in the Web Activity.

With more than a dozen implementations of OWL 2 reported, the OWL Working Group has published its OWL 2 Web Ontology Language as a Proposed Recommendation. An ontology is a structured set of terms that a particular community uses for organizing data, such as "title", "author", and "ISBN" for data about books. OWL 2 is a compatible extension to OWL 1, providing additional features for people using ontologies. The OWL 2 document set contains 13 documents, of which 4 are instructional: overview , primer, new features and rationale, and quick reference. The rdf:PlainLiteral datatype, developed for use by OWL 2 and RIF, is also a Proposed Recommendation. Learn more about the Semantic Web.

W3C is pleased to announce the creation of the Provenance Incubator Group, whose mission is to provide a state-of-the art understanding and develop a roadmap in the area of provenance for Semantic Web technologies, development, and possible standardization. The group will be chaired by Yolanda Gil. The following W3C Members have sponsored the charter for this group: Renssealaer Polytechnic Institute, Talis Information Limited, University of Manchester, University of Southampton, University of Southern California Information Sciences Institute (USC / ISI), and Vrije Universiteit. 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.

W3C invites people to participate in a Workshop on Access Control Application Scenarios on 17-18 November 2009 in Luxembourg. This Workshop is intended to explore evolving application scenarios for access control technologies, such as XACML. Results from a number of recent European research projects in the grid, cloud computing, and privacy areas show overlapping use cases for these technologies that extend beyond classical intra-enterprise applications. The Workshop, co-financed by the European Commission 7th framework program via the PrimeLife project, is free of charge and open to anyone, subject to review of their statement of interest and space availability. Position papers are due 23 October. See the call for participation for more information. Learn more about the Privacy Activity.

As part of its efforts to broaden participation opportunities in W3C, W3C announces today its first Developer Gathering, to be held 5 November, 2009 during the W3C Technical Plenary Week (TPAC) in Santa Clara, California. Registration is open to the public; W3C is seeking in particular developers and designers who may not participate regularly in W3C groups. Arun Ranganathan (Mozilla), Fantasai, Philippe Le Hégaret, and others will speak on a variety of hot topics with a goal of feeding back comments to the groups developing the relevant technology standards. Learn more about the Developer Gathering.

W3C announces today the new RDB2RDF Working Group, whose mission is to standardize a language for mapping relational data and relational database schemas into RDF and OWL, tentatively called the RDB2RDF Mapping Language, R2RML. From the beginning of the deployment of the Semantic Web there has been increasing interest in mapping relational data to the Semantic Web. This is to allow relational data to be combined with other data on the Web, to link semantics directly to relational data and to aid in enterprise data integration. The creation of this Working Group follows the work of a previous W3C Incubator Group in this area. Read the RDB2RDF Working Group Charter and learn more about the Semantic Web.

The WebCGM Working Group invites implementation of the Candidate Recommendation of WebCGM 2.1. Computer Graphics Metafile (CGM) is an ISO standard, defined by ISO/IEC 8632:1999, for the interchange of 2D vector and mixed vector/raster graphics. WebCGM is a profile of CGM, which adds Web linking and is optimized for Web applications in technical illustration, electronic documentation, geophysical data visualization, and similar fields. The Working Group has adopted a public test suite for WebCGM 2.1 and has produced a preliminary WebCGM 2.1 implementation report. Learn more about the Graphics Activity.

The Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) Working Group invites implementation of the Candidate Recommendation of Media Queries. HTML4 and CSS2 currently support media-dependent style sheets tailored for different media types. For example, a document may use sans-serif fonts when displayed on a screen and serif fonts when printed. "screen" and "print" are two media types that have been defined. Media queries extend the functionality of media types by allowing more precise labeling of style sheets. Learn more about the Style Activity.

The Web Applications Working Group has published Working Drafts of Web Storage and Web Database (a First Public Draft). The former defines an API for persistent data storage of key-value pair data in Web clients. The latter defines an API for storing data in databases that can be queried using a variant of SQL. Learn more about the Rich Web Client Activity.

The Protocol for Web Description Resources (POWDER) Working Group has published a Group Note of Protocol for Web Description Resources (POWDER): Test Suite. This document presents test cases for the POWDER technology, which helps to build a Web of trust and make it possible to discover relevant, quality content more efficiently. The tests facilitate and exemplify the creation of POWDER documents of varying complexity and provide a means to assert the conformance of software applications designed to handle POWDER documents. Learn more about the Semantic Web.

Today, the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) announces a draft work plan for the eGovernment Interest Group, whose mission is to document, advocate, coordinate and communicate best practices, solutions and approaches to improve the interface between citizens and government through effective use of Web standards. The draft charter, in review by the W3C community until the end of September, focuses on two topics: Open Government Data (OGD), and Education and Outreach. In line with its anticipated focus on Open Government Data, the group also announces today a first draft of Publishing Open Government Data, which provides step-by-step guidelines for putting government data on the Web. Sharing data according to these guidelines enables greater transparency; delivers more efficient public services; and encourages greater public and commercial use and re-use of government information. Learn more about the W3C eGovernment Activity.

The Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) Working Group has updated the Candidate Recommendation of Cascading Style Sheets Level 2 Revision 1 (CSS 2.1) Specification. This specification defines Cascading Style Sheets, level 2 revision. 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). This update corrects some errata in the previous draft. Learn more about the Style Activity.

The WebApps Working Group has published a new Working Draft of DOM Level 3 Events, a generic platform- and language-neutral event system which allows registration of event handlers, describes event flow through a tree structure, and provides basic contextual information for each event. DOM3 Events introduces an advanced text and keyboard event model, including composition events for input-method editors and other internationalization issues. Learn more about the Rich Web Client Activity

The Internationalization Core Working Group has published Authoring HTML: Handling Right-to-left Scripts as a Working Group Note. This document describes techniques for the use of HTML markup and CSS style sheets when creating content in languages that use right-to-left scripts, such as Arabic, Hebrew, Persian, Thaana, Urdu, etc. It builds on (but also goes beyond) markup needed to supplement the Unicode bidirectional algorithm, and also touches on how to prepare content that will later be localized into right-to-left scripts. Learn more about the Internationalization Activity.

Today the W3C India Office opened at a new Host: the Department of Information Technology in the Ministry of Communications & Information Technology. Swaran Lata, who is Director of the Human Centered Computing division (TDIL), will run the new Office with the support of deputy manager Somnath Chandra. W3C Offices act as local points of contact for W3C work and help ensure that W3C and its specifications reach an international audience. W3C would like to thank the India Ministry of Communications and Information Technology for their support in ensuring that W3C has a strong presence in India. The previous Office in India, hosted by C-DAC, has already closed. Learn more about the W3C Offices program.

Browse W3C presentations and events also available as an RSS channel.

• 1 September, Florence, Italy: A Roadmap for Making the Web an Inclusive EnvironmentJudy Brewer gives a keynote at AAATE 2009 Conference.
• 2 September, Florence, Italy: Web Accessibility and Older PeopleAndrew Arch, Shadi Abou-Zahra present at AAATE conference.
• 2 September, Hangzhou, China: Introduction to the World Wide Web ConsortiumIvan Herman presents at Zheijiang University.
• 4 September, Bristol, United Kingdom: Web Accessibility Benefits Older UsersAndrew Arch, Shadi Abou-Zahra present at British Society of Gerontology 38th Conference.
• 15 September, Durban, South Africa: M-government: anytime, anywhere connected citizenVagner Diniz presents at GovTech 2009.
• 16 September, London, United Kingdom: Web Applications EnabledMichael Cooper, Shadi Abou-Zahra, various speakers to be confirmed give a tutorial at Techshare 2009.
• 16 September, Amsterdam, The Netherlands: Mobile web development: why so many platforms? How to make a choice? François Daoust, Nick Allot (OMTP) present at WIPJAM@OSiM.
• 17 September, London, United Kingdom: Improving the web experience for older peopleAndrew Arch, Shadi Abou-Zahra present at Techshare 2009.

Today W3C takes steps toward building a Web of trust, and making it possible to discover relevant, quality content more efficiently. When content providers use POWDER, the Protocol for Web Description Resources, they help people with tasks such as seeking sound medical advice, looking for trustworthy retailers, or searching for content available under a particular license (for instance, a Creative Commons license). The POWDER Working Group published three W3C Recommendations today: Grouping of Resources, Formal Semantics, and Description Resources. For more information about POWDER, including a POWDER Primer and a range of tools, see the group home page. Read the press release and learn more about the Semantic Web Activity.

The Mobile Web Best Practices Working Group has published a Group Note of W3C mobileOK Scheme 1.0. mobileOK is designed to improve the Web experience for users of mobile devices by rewarding content providers that adhere to good practice when delivering content to them. Learn more about the Mobile Web Initiative Activity.

W3C announces today the next edition of its successful online course to introduce Web developers and designers to its Mobile Web Best Practices. The next session runs from 7 September to 9 November 2009. W3C received very positive reviews from participants who attended the previous session, including:

• "Every web developer should at least know the basics of mobile web development. So this is the course to take."
• "The best starting point possible!"
• "[The] tutor and student forum to discuss ideas or problems throughout the course was invaluable."

W3C invites you to join the next session, where you will:

• learn about the specific promises and challenges of the mobile platform
• learn how to use W3C's Mobile Web Best Practices to design mobile-friendly Web content and to adapt existing content for mobile
• discover the relevant W3C resources for mobile Web design

Participants have access to lectures and assignments that provide hands-on practical experience of using W3C's Mobile Web Best Practices. Participants will work with both W3C experts on this topic (the instructors) and peers who can share experiences about the real-world challenges of mobile Web design. More information is available about the course material (including a free sample), registration fee, and intended audience. Learn more about the Mobile Web Initiative.

The Voice Browser Working Group has updated the Candidate Recommendation of Speech Synthesis Markup Language (SSML) Version 1.1. SSML is designed to provide a rich, XML-based markup language for assisting the generation of synthetic speech in Web and other applications. Although the Working Group has not formally identified any features as being at-risk, as a result of the previous publication, the Working Group now understands that some features may not receive adequate implementation experience. This draft identifies them in the status section and asks for feedback. A few editorial errors in the previous draft and the Implementation Report Plan document were also fixed. A list of changes from the previous draft is available. Learn more about the Voice Browser Activity.

Tim Berners-Lee announced today that two people will join Sam Ruby (IBM) in co-Chairing the HTML Working GroupPaul Cotton (Microsoft) and Maciej Stachowiak (Apple). Chris Wilson has stepped down as co-Chair and indicated that he will be changing his focus to programmability in the web platform. As Berners-Lee wrote about this transition, "The work of this group is tremendously important to the Web. I am pleased that all three co-Chairs have taken on the responsibility for working closely with the editor and group to make HTML 5 a success." More information about the new Chairs is available in Berners-Lee's announcement. Learn more about the HTML Working Group.

The HTML Working Group has published Working Drafts of HTML 5 and HTML 5 differences from HTML 4. In HTML 5, new features are introduced to help Web application authors, new elements are introduced based on research into prevailing authoring practices, and special attention has been given to defining clear conformance criteria for user agents in an effort to improve interoperability. "HTML 5 differences from HTML 4" describes the differences between HTML 4 and HTML 5 and provides some of the rationale for the changes. Learn more about HTML.

The Voice Browser Working Group has published a Working Draft of Voice Extensible Markup Language (VoiceXML) 3.0. This document specifies VoiceXML 3.0, a modular XML language for creating interactive media dialogs that feature synthesized speech, recognition of spoken and DTMF key input, telephony, mixed initiative conversations, and recording and presentation of a variety of media formats including digitized audio, and digitized video. A list of changes from the previous draft is available. Learn more about the Voice Browser Activity.

SVG Open 2009, the 7th International Conference on Scalable Vector Graphics, will be held 2-4 October, hosted by Google in Mountain View, California, with workshops hosted by IBM, on 5 October. The theme is "SVG Coming of Age", reflecting increased industry support and interest by Web designers and developers. The schedule and confirmed keynote speakers are now available. Over 70 presentations will be delivered by SVG experts from around the globe, on topics including script libraries, authoring tools, mobiles, Web mapping and geo-location services, and much more. Chris Lilley, Doug Schepers, and the W3C SVG Working Group will be participating. Learn more about W3C's SVG Activity.

The Web Applications Working Group has published updates to Working Drafts of XMLHttpRequest and XMLHttpRequest Level 2. The XMLHttpRequest specification is part of the Web application technology stack, enabling Ajax-style development. XMLHttpRequest defines an API that provides scripted client functionality for transferring data between a client and a server. XMLHttpRequest Level 2 offers additional features, such as cross-origin requests, progress events, and the handling of byte streams for both sending and receiving. Learn more about the Rich Web Client Activity.

W3C is pleased to announce the relaunch of the Multimodal Interaction Working Group to develop technology that enables users to use their preferred modes of interaction with the Web. Deborah Dahl (Invited Expert) chairs the group which is chartered to develop open standards to adapt to device, user and environmental conditions, and to allow multiple modes of Web interaction including GUI, speech, vision, pen, gestures, haptic interfaces, sensor data, etc. W3C Members may use this form to join the Working Group. Read about the Multimodal Interaction Activity.

Today W3C announces a new standard that builds a bridge between the world of knowledge organization systems - including thesauri, classifications, subject headings, taxonomies, and folksonomies - and the linked data community, bringing benefits to both. Libraries, museums, newspapers, government portals, enterprises, social networking applications, and other communities that manage large collections of books, historical artifacts, news reports, business glossaries, blog entries, and other items can now use Simple Knowledge Organization System (SKOS) to leverage the power of linked data. The Semantic Web Deployment Working Group also published today two Group Notes with the Recommendation, updating the SKOS Primer and SKOS Use Cases and Requirements. Read the press release and testimonials and learn more about the Semantic Web Activity.

The Web Applications Working Group has published a Last Call Working Draft of Widgets 1.0: APIs and Events. Widgets are full-fledged client-side applications that are authored using Web standards. Examples range from simple clocks, stock tickers, news streamers, games and weather forecasters, to complex applications that pull data from multiple sources to be "mashed-up" and presented to a user in some interesting and useful way. The APIs and Events specification defines a set of APIs and events for the Widgets 1.0 family of specifications. Comments are welcome through 15 September. Learn more about the Rich Web Client Activity.

The Forms Working Group has published a Proposed Recommendation of XForms 1.1. XForms is not a free-standing document type, but is intended to be integrated into other markup languages, such as XHTML, ODF or SVG. XForms 1.1 refines the XML processing platform introduced by XForms 1.0 by adding several new submission capabilities, action handlers, utility functions, user interface improvements, and helpful datatypes as well as a more powerful action processing facility, including conditional, iterated and background execution, the ability to manipulate data arbitrarily and to access event context information. Comments are welcome through 22 September. Learn more about the XForms Activity.

The XML Core Working Group has published the Third Edition of Namespaces in XML 1.0 as W3C Proposed Edited Recommendation. XML Namespaces provide a simple method for qualifying element and attribute names used in Extensible Markup Language documents by associating them with namespaces identified by URI references. The Third Edition as proposed incorporates all outstanding errata. The review period is open until 14 September 2009. Learn more about the XML Activity.

The Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) Working Group has published an updated Working Draft of CSSOM View Module. This specification describes APIs that should be useful for Web application authors. The APIs inspect and manipulate the view information of a document, such as the position of element layout boxes, the width of the viewport, and also an element's scroll position. Learn more about the Style Activity.

The Web Applications Working Group has published a Last Call Working Draft of Widgets 1.0: Access Requests Policy. This specification defines the security model controlling network access from within a widget, as well as a method for widget authors to request that the user agent grant access to certain network resources. Comments are welcome through 20 September 2009. Learn more about the Rich Web Client Activity.

The XML Security Working Group published six documents related to XML signature and encryption. 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.

• XML Signature Best Practices. This Working Draft describes best practices related to improving security and mitigating attacks, yet others are for best practices in the practical use of XML Signature, such as signing XML that doesn't use namespaces, for example.
• XML Signature Syntax and Processing Version 1.1. This Working Draft updates the signature specification.
• XML Signature Transform Simplification: Requirements and Design. This Working Draft outlines a proposed simplification of the XML Signature Transform mechanism, intended to enhance security, performance, streamability and to ease adoption.
• W3C XML Encryption Syntax and Processing Version 1.1. This Working Draft updates the encryption specification.
• XML Security Generic Hybrid Ciphers. This First Public Working Draft augments XML Encryption Version 1.1 by defining algorithms, XML types and elements necessary to enable use of generic hybrid ciphers in XML Security applications.
• XML Security Algorithm Cross-Reference. This Group Note collects the various known URIs for encryption algorithms (at the time of its publication) and indicates which specifications define them.

Learn more about the Security Activity.

Daniel Weitzner has been named Associate Administrator for the Office of Policy Analysis and Development at the US National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA). Danny will have a leading role in fulfilling the NTIA's mandate to provide the President advice on telecommunications and information policy issues.

Danny will thus be leaving the W3C staff, which he joined in 1998 as the Technology and Society Domain Lead. During these 11 years, Danny has contributed significantly to advances in many areas where policy meets technology, including privacy, security, intellectual property, and trust. As Chair of the Patent Policy Working Group, Danny led the effort that culminated in W3C's Royalty-Free Patent Policy, now a cornerstone of W3C's value proposition to the Web community.

Before joining the W3C, Danny was co-founder and Deputy Director of the Center for Democracy and Technology and was Deputy Policy Director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Danny is also Director of the the MIT CSAIL Decentralized Information Group with Tim Berners- Lee and a founding director of the Web Science Research Initiative and holds an appointment as Principal Research Scientist at MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory.

While W3C regrets that Danny will be stepping down from W3C, it is encouraging that US policy may well be shaped by someone who has demonstrated a commitment to open standards as a tool for improving society. Danny, good luck!

The Web Applications Working Group invites implementation of the Candidate Recommendation of Widgets 1.0: Packaging and Configuration. This specification standardizes a packaging format for software known as widgets. Widgets are client-side applications that are authored using Web standards, but whose content can also be embedded into Web documents. The specification relies on PKWare's Zip specification as the archive format, XML as a configuration document format, and a series of steps that runtimes follow when processing and verifying various aspects of a package. The packaging format acts as a container for files used by a widget. The Working Group plans to develop a test suite during the Candidate Recommendation phase. Learn more about the Rich Web Client Activity.

The Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) Working Group has published the First Public Working Draft of CSS Image Values Module Level 3. This CSS Image Values module defines the syntax for image values in CSS. Image values can be a single URI to an image, a list of URIs denoting a series of fallbacks, sprites (image slices), or gradients. Learn more about the Style Activity.

The Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) Working Group has published the First Public Working Draft of Flexible Box Layout Module. The draft describes a CSS box model optimized for interface design. It provides an additional layout system alongside the ones already in CSS. This model is based on the box model in the XUL user-interface language. Learn more about the Style Activity.

The User Agent Accessibility Guidelines Working Group has published an updated Working Draft of the User Agent Accessibility Guidelines (UAAG) 2.0. UAAG defines how browsers, media players, and other "user agents" should support accessibility for people with disabilities and work with assistive technologies. Read the invitation to review the UAAG 2.0 Working Draft and about the Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI).

W3C invites people to participate in a Workshop on Improving Access to Financial Data on the Web on 5-6 October 2009 in Arlington, Virginia (USA). Workshop participants will discuss how to achieve greater transparency and more efficient reporting and analysis of business and financial data for companies and governments. The Workshop is jointly organized by W3C and XBRL International, with hosting support from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC). The extensible business reporting language (XBRL), is being widely adopted all around the world, and is set to become the standard way of recording, storing and transmitting business financial information. While effort on XBRL so far has gone into developing the standards and taxonomies of reporting concepts, comparatively little effort has been spent on how to exploit the expected flood of data. The goal of the Workshop is to identify opportunities, use cases, and challenges for interactive access to financial data expressed in XBRL and related languages, and the broader opportunities for using Semantic Web technologies. The Workshop is free of charge and open to anyone, subject to review of their statement of interest and space availability. Statements of interest (position papers) are due 21 August. See the call for participation for more information. Learn more about the Semantic Web.

The Internationalization Core Working Group has published the Working Draft of Best Practices for Authoring HTML: Handling Right-to-left Scripts. This document provides advice for the use of HTML markup and CSS style sheets to create pages for languages that use right-to-left scripts, such as Arabic, Hebrew, Persian, Thaana, Urdu, etc. It explains how to create content in right-to-left scripts that builds on but goes beyond the Unicode bidirectional algorithm, as well as how to prepare content for localization into right-to-left scripts. Learn more about the Internationalization Activity.

The XML Security Working Group has published a proposed correction to the XML Signature specification. The correction addresses a specification-level security issue that can lead to an authentication bypass (CVE-2009-0217). It will be incorporated into an upcoming Working Draft for the XML Signature 1.1 specification. For information about affected implementations, see CERT Vulnerability Note 466161. For more information about the issue, see the W3C Q&A blog. Learn more about W3C's Security Activity.

The XSL and XML Query Working Groups have published version 1.0 of the XPath 2.0 and XQuery 1.0 Full Text Facility Test Suite, and are requesting that people with implementations report results. The Full Text Facility provides a standard way of searching by word or phrase across multilingual documents or data represented using the XPath and XQuery Data Model. As a result of preliminary implementation experience, and to reflect comments received, the Candidate Recommendation for the Full Text Facility has also been republished: the new version incorporates editorial changes but also clarifies some ambiguities that had been reported. The Working Groups hope to move the document to Proposed Recommendation once more test results have been submitted. The XML Query and XSL Working Groups also published today an update of XQuery and XPath Full Text 1.0 Use Cases. Learn more about the XML Activity.

The Mobile Web Best Practices Working Group and the WAI Education and Outreach Working Group have published Relationship between Mobile Web Best Practices (MWBP) and Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) as a W3C Working Group Note. The groups encourage people to start by reading Web Content Accessibility and Mobile Web: Making a Web Site Accessible Both for People with Disabilities and for Mobile Devices, which shows how design goals for accessibility and mobile access overlap. A third document, Shared Web Experiences: Barriers Common to Mobile Device Users and People with Disabilities, provides examples of barriers that people (without disabilities) face when interacting with Web content via mobile devices, and similar barriers for people with disabilities using desktop computers. Learn more about the Mobile Web Initiative (MWI) and the Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI).

The Geolocation Working Group has published a Last Call Working Draft of Geolocation API Specification. The Geolocation API defines a high-level interface to location information associated only with the device hosting the implementation, such as latitude and longitude. Common sources of location information include Global Positioning System (GPS) and location inferred from network signals such as IP address, RFID, WiFi and Bluetooth MAC addresses, and GSM/CDMA cell IDs, as well as user input. Comments are welcome through 10 August. Learn more about the Ubiquitous Web Applications Activity.

W3C launched a new Device APIs and Policy Working Group, co-Chaired by Robin Berjon (Vodafone) and Frederick Hirsch (Nokia). The group's mission is to create client-side APIs that enable the development of Web Applications and Web Widgets that interact with devices services such as Calendar, Contacts, and Camera. Additionally, the group will produce a framework for the expression of security policies that govern access to security-critical APIs (such as the APIs listed previously). Per its charter, this group will conduct its work in public. Learn more about the Device APIs and Policy Working Group.

The Rule Interchange Format (RIF) Working Group has published six Last Call Working Drafts. Together, they allow systems using a variety of rule languages and rule-based technologies to interoperate with each other and with other Semantic Web technologies. Three of the drafts define XML formats with formal semantics for storing and transmitting rules:

• The RIF Production Rule Dialect (PRD) is designed for the kinds of rules used in modern Business Rule Management systems.
• The RIF Basic Logic Dialect (BLD) is a foundation for Logic Programming, classical logic, and related formalisms.
• The RIF Core Dialect is the common subset of PRD and BLD, useful when having a ubiquitous platform is paramount.

The other drafts:

• RIF Datatypes and Builtins (DTB) specifies the datatypes and standard operations (modeled on XPath Functions) available in all RIF dialects
• RIF RDF and OWL Compatibility specifies how RIF works with RDF, RDFS, OWL 1, and OWL 2.
• RIF Framework for Logic Dialects (FLD) provides a mechanism for specifying extended dialects, beyond BLD, when more expressive power is required.

The Working Group requests comments be sent to public-rif-comments@w3.org by 31 July 2009. Learn more about the Semantic Web Activity.

Originally scheduled for July, W3C has rescheduled a Live Training Sessions On Mobile Web Design for 13 October 2009. Students will attend a full day of lectures and hands on sessions about the W3C Mobile Web Best Practices standard, and more generally on mobile Web design. Read the full announcement, register, and learn more about the W3C Mobile Web Initiative.

Today the Director announces that when the XHTML 2 Working Group charter expires as scheduled at the end of 2009, the charter will not be renewed. By doing so, and by increasing resources in the HTML Working Group, W3C hopes to accelerate the progress of HTML 5 and clarify W3C's position regarding the future of HTML. A FAQ answers questions about the future of deliverables of the XHTML 2 Working Group, and the status of various discussions related to HTML. Learn more about the HTML Activity.

The SPARQL Working Group has published the First Public Working Draft of SPARQL New Features and Rationale. This document provides an overview of the main new features of SPARQL and their rationale. This is an update to SPARQL adding several new features that have been agreed by the SPARQL WG. These language features were determined based on real applications and user and tool-developer experience. Learn more about the Semantic Web Activity.

W3C has published a summary and full minutes of the Workshop on Speaker biometrics and VoiceXML 3.0, that took place in Menlo Park, California on 5-6 March. Participants from 15 organizations focused discussion on Speaker Identification and Verification (SIV) functionality within VoiceXML 3.0, and identifying and prioritizing directions for the functionality. The major "takeaways" from the Workshop were confirmation that SIV fits into the VoiceXML space and creation of the "Menlo Park Model", a SIV available VoiceXML architecture. The Working Group will continue to discuss how to include the requirements expressed at the Workshop into VoiceXML 3.0 and improve the specification. Learn more about the Voice Browser Activity.

Browse W3C presentations and events also available as an RSS channel.

• 2 July, Brisbane, Australia: W3C: a Use Case for Web TechnologiesKlaus Birkenbihl presents at NICTA, Queensland Research Laboratory.
• 7 July, Barcelona, Spain: Acceso a la Información Pública y Redes SocialesJosé Manuel Alonso participates in a panel at V Congreso Internet, Derecho y Política.
• 14 July, Linz, Austria: WCAG 2.0 ist da, was nun?Shadi Abou-Zahra presents at IKT Forum 2009.
• 20 July, Boston, USA: Web Accessibility, Universal Design, and StandardizationJudy Brewer participates in a panel at Accessing the Future: A global collaborative exploration for accessibility in the next decade.
• 20 July, Seattle, WA, USA: Accessibility: It's for Everyone and EverythingShawn Henry presents at Web Design World 2009 Seattle.
• 21 July, Seattle, WA, USA: Accessibility in a Web 2.0 WorldShawn Henry presents at Web Design World 2009 Seattle (discount "Passport" registration code: S9W06).
• 24 July, San Diego, USA: WCAG 2.0 Test Samples RepositoryShadi Abou-Zahra presents at HCI International 2009.
• 27 July, Raleigh, North Carolina, USA: Ex-XHTML HTMLDoug Schepers presents at The Summer XML 2009 Conference.
• 28 July, Raleigh, North Carolina, USA: Open Graphics and the Sustainable Web: Scalable Vector Graphics and CanvasDoug Schepers presents at The Summer XML 2009 Conference.

The Service Modeling Language Working Group has published two Working Group Notes: The SML XLink Reference Scheme and Framework for SML EPR-Based Reference Schemes. The Service Modeling Language specification extends the Extensible Mark-up Language and XML Schema with a mechanism for incorporating into XML documents references to other documents or document fragments. The first note addresses the construction of an SML reference scheme based on the XML Linking Language. The second addresses the construction of SML reference schemes for document or document fragment references that employ WS-Addressing endpoint references (EPRs). Learn more about the Extensible Markup Language (XML) Activity.

The Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) Working Group has published a Last Call Working Draft of CSS3 module: Multi-column layout. This module describes multi-column layout in CSS. It builds on the CSS3 Box model module and adds functionality to flow the content of an element into multiple columns. Comments are welcome through 01 October. Learn more about the Style Activity.

W3C announces the French Authorized Translation of Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0, Règles pour l'accessibilité des contenus Web (WCAG) 2.0. It is the first of several planned WCAG 2.0 Translations: Brazilian Portuguese, Catalan, Chinese, Czech, Danish, Dutch, German, Hindi, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Swedish, and other languages. Translations are listed on the WCAG 2.0 Translations page and announced via the WAI Interest Group mailing list and WAI RSS feed. Learn more about translating W3C documents, Policy for Authorized W3C Translations, WCAG 2.0, and the Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI).

As of 30 June, Steven R. Bratt will step down from his role as W3C CEO in order to pursue full-time the role of CEO of the World Wide Web Foundation. The Web Foundation was announced in September 2008 with a mission to advance the Web, connect humanity, and empower people. Steve has been part-time CEO of the Web Foundation since then.

While W3C COO and then CEO, Steve was responsible for W3C's worldwide operations and outreach, including overall management of Member relations, the W3C Process, the staff, strategic planning, budget, legal matters, external liaisons and major events. His purposeful and thoughtful leadership at W3C was informed by previous experiences in research, industry, and government, where he served on scientific and arms control delegations among others.

While W3C seeks to fill the open position, Ralph Swick assumes Steve's leadership responsibilities. Thomas Roessler steps up in the interim to take on the role of Technology and Society Domain Lead.

The mission of the Web Foundation complements that of W3C, and the two organizations will continue to coordinate their efforts to make the Web useful and available to all. W3C looks forward to Steve's successful leadership of the Web Foundation.

The Mobile Web Best Practices Working Group has published a Group Note of W3C mobileOK Scheme 1.0. W3C's mobileOK is designed to improve the Web experience for users of mobile devices by rewarding content providers that adhere to good practice when delivering content to them. This document describes the mobileOK scheme, which allows content providers to promote their content as being suitable for use on very basic mobile devices. Learn more about the Mobile Web Initiative Activity.

The Web Services Resource Access Working Group published updates to five Working Drafts: Web Services Enumeration (WS-Enumeration), Web Services Eventing (WS-Eventing), Web Services Resource Transfer (WS-RT), Web Services Transfer (WS-Transfer), and Web Services Metadata Exchange (WS-MetadataExchange). The first describes a general SOAP-based protocol for enumerating a sequence of XML elements that is suitable for traversing logs, message queues, or other linear information models. The second describes a protocol that allows Web services to subscribe to or accept subscriptions for event notification. The third defines extensions to WS-Transfer that deal primarily with fragment-based access to resources to satisfy the common requirements of WS-ResourceFramework and WS-Management. The fourth describes a general SOAP-based protocol for accessing XML representations of Web service-based resources. The fifth defines how metadata associated with a Web service endpoint can be represented as resources, how metadata can be embedded in endpoint references, and how metadata could be retrieved from a Web service endpoint. Learn more about the Web Services Activity.

The Workshop on Using Ink in Multimodal Applications, which was planned for 10-11 July 2009 in Grand Bend, Ontario (Canada), has been canceled. The goal of the Workshop was to help the Multimodal Interaction Working Group integrate handwriting modality components (Ink Modality Components) into the MMI Architecture and clarify what should be added to the Multimodal specifications to enable applications to adapt to various modality combinations including Ink. The group is planning to meet face-to-face during W3C's TPAC 2009, and will continue to discuss possible extensions for InkML and how to integrate the specification into the architecture. Read about the Ink Markup Language (InkML) and W3C's Multimodal Interaction Activity.

The Web Applications Working Group invites implementation of the Candidate Recommendation of Widgets 1.0: Digital Signatures. Widgets are full-fledged client-side applications that are authored using Web standards and packaged for distribution. This document defines a profile of the XML Signature Syntax and Processing 1.1 specification to allow a widget package to be digitally signed, helping to ensure continuity of authorship and distributorship. Learn more about the Rich Web Client Activity.

The Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) Working Group has published the Working Draft of CSS Fonts Module Level 3. This CSS3 module describes how font properties are specified and how font resources are loaded dynamically. This draft consolidates material previously divided between the CSS3 Fonts and CSS3 Web Fonts modules. Learn more about the Style Activity.

The Media Annotations Working Group has published the First Public Working Draft of Ontology for Media Resource 1.0. This specification defines an ontology for cross-community data integration of information related to media resources, with a particular focus on media resources on the Web. The ontology is supposed to foster interoperability and counter the current proliferation of video metadata formats by providing full or partial translation and mapping towards existing formats. Learn more about the Video in the Web Activity.

The Web Applications Working Group has published two First Public Working Drafts: Widgets 1.0: Access Requests Policy and Widgets 1.0: URI Scheme. The former defines the security model controlling network access from within a widget, as well as a method for widget authors to request that the user agent grant access to certain network resources. The latter defines a "widget:" URI scheme to help identify resources within a widget package. Learn more about the Rich Web Client Activity.

W3C is pleased to announce the creation of the Open Web Education Alliance Incubator Group, whose mission is to help enhance and standardize the architecture of the World Wide Web by facilitating the highest quality standards and best practice based education for future generations of Web professionals. The goal of this Incubator Group is to bring together interested individuals, companies, and organizations with a strong interest in the field of educating Web professionals, to explore the needs and issues around the topic of Web development education. The group will be chaired by John Allsopp. The following W3C Members have sponsored the charter for this group: Adobe Systems Inc.; Mitsue-Links Co., Ltd; and Opera Software. 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.

The SVG Working Group has published two Working Drafts: SVG Parameters 1.0, Part 1: Primer and SVG Parameters 1.0, Part 2: Language. The SVG Parameters specification is an SVG 2.0 Module to provide a declarative way to incorporate parameter values into SVG content. Often, users may wish to create a single resource, and reuse it several times with specified variations, and this specification provides a means to do so without the use of scripts. The Primer suggests how to use the SVG Parameters specification with SVG 1.2. Learn more about the Graphics Activity.

The Ubiquitous Web Applications Working Group has published a Last Call Working Draft of Delivery Context Ontology. A "Delivery Context" is a source of information that can help create context-aware applications, thus providing a compelling user experience. The Delivery Context Ontology specification provides a formal model of the characteristics of the environment in which devices interact with the Web or other services. The Delivery Context includes the characteristics of the Device, the software used to access the service and the Network providing the connection among others. Comments are welcome through 07 July. Learn more about the Ubiquitous Web Applications Activity.

The OWL Working Group invites implementation of its OWL 2 Web Ontology Language. OWL 2 is a compatible extension to OWL 1, providing additional features for people using ontologies. An ontology is a structured set of terms that a particular community uses for organizing data, such as "title", "author", and "ISBN" for data about books. The OWL 2 document set contains 9 technical specifications and 4 instructional documents. The Recommendation-track specifications are now Candidate Recommendations, indicating that the Working Group and the W3C Director believe this is a good time for systems to begin adopting OWL 2 features on an experimental basis. The group maintains a list of implementations and encourages new information about implementations and other feedback to be sent to it comments address. The 4 instructional documents, which provide an introduction to OWL 2, are now at Last Call: overview, primer, new features and rationale, and quick reference. Finally, a new datatype used within both OWL and RIF, called rdf:PlainLiteral (formerly called rdf:text) is also a Candidate Recommendation. Learn more about the Semantic Web.

The Semantic Web Deployment Working Group has published the Proposed Recommendation of SKOS Simple Knowledge Organization System Reference. SKOS provides a common data model for sharing and linking knowledge organization systems via the Web. SKOS is a vocabulary for expressing the basic structure and content of concept schemes such as thesauri, classification schemes, subject heading schemes, taxonomies, folksonomies, and other similar types of controlled vocabulary. As an application of the Resource Description Framework (RDF), SKOS allows concepts to be composed and published on the World Wide Web, linked with data on the Web and integrated into other concept schemes. Along with this publication of the SKOS Reference Proposed Recommendation the Working Group has published an updated SKOS Primer Working Draft. Comments are welcome through 15 July. Learn more about the Semantic Web Activity.

W3C technical staff and more than 30 W3C Member organizations will present at the Semantic Technology Conference (SemTech) this week in San Jose, California. Sessions led by W3C staff and Member organizations highlight the accelerating rate of adoption and deployment of Semantic Web technologies in the past year. "We have gathered a growing number of Semantic Web use cases and case studies in the past 12 months," said Ivan Herman, Semantic Web Activity Lead for W3C and one of the presenters. "What thrills me is the diversity of application areas for the Semantic Web, including more software, services and tools, as well as successful deployment in business and industry." Read the full press release and learn more about the Semantic Web Activity.

This is a public call for prior art. On 5 March 2009, pursuant to its rights under W3C's Patent Policy, Apple, Inc. disclosed US patent 5,764,992 and claimed that it applies to the Widgets 1.0: Updates specification. Apple excluded all claims from the W3C Royalty-Free License commitment of the W3C Patent Policy given by Participants of the Web Applications Working Group. In accordance with the exception procedures of the Patent Policy, W3C launched a Patent Advisory Group (PAG) to determine possible solutions. The PAG has advised W3C to issue this call for prior art. The PAG seeks information about software update systems available before June 1995 that offer a viable solution that may apply to the use of updates in Widgets. People who wish to provide feedback should refer to the call for prior art for more information.

Today the Office of the Prime Minister in the UK announced that Tim Berners-Lee will "help drive opening of access to Government data on the web over the coming months." The announcement is an important step in helping to fulfill the vision for a Web of Linked Open Data built on W3C's open Semantic Web standards, espoused by Berners-Lee in his TED 2009 talk. "Government data — the people's data — is an important component to the larger Linked Open Data movement," said Berners-Lee. "I look forward to working with multiple government agencies and local enthusiasts to help early adopters bring their data to the bigger picture." In April, Berners-Lee engaged similarly with the US government offering to help them join the "rapidly growing Linked Open Data cloud, to which US recovery data will be a welcome addition." W3C's own eGovernment Interest Group has also been actively building an international network of support to work with governments on issues of transparency, accountability, and efficiency through open data. Learn more about W3C's eGovernment and Semantic Web Activities.

The XML Query Working Group has published a minor update to the Candidate Recommendation of XQuery Update Facility 1.0. This document defines an update facility that extends the XML Query language, XQuery. The XQuery Update Facility provides expressions that can be used to make persistent changes to instances of the XQuery 1.0 and XPath 2.0 Data Model. This draft reflects changes made in response to comments received so far during the Candidate Recommendation period. Learn more about the Extensible Markup Language (XML) Activity.

The WebCGM Working Group has published a Last Call Working Draft of WebCGM 2.1. Computer Graphics Metafile (CGM) is an ISO standard, defined by ISO/IEC 8632:1999, for the interchange of 2D vector and mixed vector/raster graphics. WebCGM is a profile of CGM, which adds Web linking and is optimized for Web applications in technical illustration, electronic documentation, geophysical data visualization, and similar fields. First published (1.0) in 1999, WebCGM unifies potentially diverse approaches to CGM utilization in Web document applications. It therefore represents a significant interoperability agreement amongst major users and implementers of the ISO CGM standard. Comments are welcome through 02 July. Learn more about the Graphics Activity.

The Media Annotations Working Group has published a Working Draft of Use Cases and Requirements for Ontology and API for Media Object 1.0. This document specifies use cases and requirements as an input for the development of the "Ontology for Media Object 1.0" and the "API for Media Object 1.0". The ontology will be a simple ontology to support cross-community data integration of information related to media objects on the Web. The API will provide read access and potentially write access to media objects, relying on the definitions from the ontology. Learn more about the Video in the Web Activity.

The Math Working Group has published Working Drafts of Mathematical Markup Language (MathML) Version 3.0 and A MathML for CSS profile. MathML is an XML application for describing mathematical notation and capturing both its structure and content. The goal of MathML is to enable mathematics to be served, received, and processed on the World Wide Web, just as HTML has enabled this functionality for text. This document describes a profile of MathML 3.0 that admits formatting with Cascading Style Sheets. Learn more about the Math Activity.

Today, the W3C Mobile Web Initiative opens registration for its first ever live training day. Training will take place Thursday, 2 July 2009, in Cambridge, UK. Students will attend a full day of lectures and hands on sessions on the W3C Mobile Web Best Practices standard, and more generally on mobile Web design. This training event is part of the MobiWeb 2.0 project supported by the European Union's 7th Research Framework Programme (FP7). Read the full announcement and learn more about the W3C Mobile Web Initiative.

The SOAP-JMS Binding Working Group invites implementation of the Candidate Recommendation of SOAP over Java Message Service 1.0. The work described in this and related documents is aimed at a set of standards for the transport of SOAP messages over JMS [Java Message Service]. The main purpose is to ensure interoperability between the implementations of different Web services vendors. It should also enable customers to implement their own Web services for part of their infrastructure, and to have this interoperate with vendor provided Web services. The main audience will be implementers of Web services stacks; in particular people who wish to extend a Web services stack with an implementation of SOAP/JMS. This document specifies how SOAP should bind to a messaging system that supports the Java Message Service (JMS). Learn more about the Web Services Activity.

The Protocol for Web Description Resources (POWDER) Working Group has published three Proposed Recommendations: Protocol for Web Description Resources (POWDER): Grouping of Resources, Description Resources, and Formal Semantics. The Protocol for Web Description Resources (POWDER) suite facilitates the publication of descriptions of multiple resources such as all those available from a Web site (see POWDER use cases). The first of these three documents 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. The second details the creation and lifecycle of Description Resources (DRs), which encapsulate POWDER metadata. The third describes the formal semantics of the formalism. Comments are welcome through 05 July. Learn more about the Semantic Web Activity.

Participants in the Japanese Layout Task Force (from four W3C Groups (CSS, Internationalization Core, SVG and XSL Working Groups) published a Group Note of Requirements of Japanese Text Layout. This document describes requirements for general Japanese layout realized with technologies like CSS, SVG and XSL-FO. The document is mainly based on a standard for Japanese layout, JIS X 4051. However, it also addresses areas which are not covered by JIS X 4051. A Japanese version is also available. Learn more about W3C's Internationalization Activity.

The Timed Text Working Group has published a third Last Call Draft of Timed Text (TT) Authoring Format 1.0 – Distribution Format Exchange Profile (DFXP). Timed text is textual information that is intrinsically or extrinsically associated with timing information. The timed text authoring format is a content type that represents timed text media for the purpose of interchange among authoring systems. See changes in this draft. Comments are welcome through 30 June 2009. Learn more about the Video in the Web Activity.

The W3C Advisory Committee has filled four open seats on the W3C Advisory Board. Created in 1998, the Advisory Board provides guidance to the Team on issues of strategy, management, legal matters, process, and conflict resolution. Beginning 1 July, the nine Advisory Board participants are Jean-François Abramatic (IBM), Ann Bassetti (The Boeing Company), Jim Bell (HP), Don Deutsch (Oracle), Eduardo Gutentag (Sun Microsystems), Ora Lassila (Nokia), Charles McCathieNevile (Opera Software), Takeshi Natsuno (Keio University), and Arun Ranganathan (Mozilla). Steve Zilles continues as interim Advisory Board Chair. Read more about the Advisory Board.

The Voice Browser Working Group has published an updated Working Draft of Voice Extensible Markup Language (VoiceXML) 3.0. VoiceXML 3.0 is a modular XML language for creating interactive media dialogs that feature synthesized speech, recognition of spoken and DTMF key input, telephony, mixed initiative conversations, and recording and presentation of a variety of media formats including digitized audio, and digitized video. The primary goal of this version 3.0 is to bring the advantages of Web-based development and content delivery to interactive voice response applications. See the diff-marked version showing changes made since the 19 December 2008 draft. Learn more about the Voice Browser Activity.

Browse W3C presentations and events also available as an RSS channel.

• 4 June, Rabat, Morocco: Content for All: Web Accessibility GuidelinesShadi Abou-Zahra gives a keynote at International Conference on Next Generation Networks and Services.
• 6 June, Danbury, CT, USA: Digital Media for All Jeanne Spellman presents at Connecticut Film Festival.
• 9 June, Premantura, Croatia: International Standards for Web AccessibilityShadi Abou-Zahra presents at Pristupačnost ili informacijske barijere?.
• 11 June, Santander, Spain: Guidelines for Mobile Web Content Adaptation by Third-party ProxiesFrançois Daoust presents at ICT-MobileSummit 2009.
• 11 June, London, United Kingdom: De-Fragmentation & Apps in the CloudPhilipp Hoschka participates in a panel at Open Mobile Summit 09.
• 15 June, San Jose, CA, USA: Introduction to the Semantic WebIvan Herman gives a tutorial at 2009 Semantic Technology Conference.
• 15 June, San Jose, CA, USA: What is New in W3C Land?Ivan Herman presents at 2009 Semantic Technology Conference.
• 16 June, San Jose, CA, USA: Introducing OWL 2Ivan Herman participates in a panel at 2009 Semantic Technology Conference.
• 17 June, San Jose, USA: XBRL and the Semantic WebDave Raggett, Diane Mueller present at 2009 Semantic Technology Conference.
• 30 June, Amsterdam, The Netherlands: The Future of CodeSteven Pemberton presents at Kings of Code.

The Web Applications Working Group has published the Last Call Working Draft of Widgets 1.0: Packaging and Configuration. This document standardizes a packaging format for a class of software application known as a widget. Widgets are full-fledged client-side applications that are authored using Web standards and packaged for distribution. They are typically downloaded and installed on a client machine or device where they run as stand-alone applications, but they can also be embedded into Web pages and run in a Web browser. Examples range from simple clocks, stock tickers, news casters, games and weather forecasters, to complex applications that pull data from multiple sources to be "mashed-up" and presented to a user in some interesting and useful way. Comments are welcome through 19 June. Learn more about the Rich Web Client Activity.

The XML Processing Model Working Group has published an updated Candidate Recommendation of XProc: An XML Pipeline Language. This specification describes the syntax and semantics of a language for describing operations to be performed on XML documents. The status section of the document summarizes the list of changes since the Candidate Recommendation was first published. Learn more about the Extensible Markup Language (XML) Activity.

W3C announces today the launch of the W3C Senegal Office, hosted by the Ecole Supérieure Polytechnique (ESP), attached to the UCAD (Université Cheikh Anta Diop), in Dakar, Senegal. Ibrahima Ngom (ESP) and Alex Corenthin (ISOC Senegal) will jointly manage this new W3C Office. W3C looks forward to increasing interaction with the French-speaking community, especially neighboring countries in West Africa. The opening ceremony will take place 27 May. Read the press release and learn more about the W3C Offices, which assist W3C with promotion efforts in local languages, help broaden W3C’s geographical base, and encourage international participation in W3C Activities.

The Mobile Web Best Practices Working Group and the WAI Education and Outreach Working Group have published an updated Working Draft of Relationship between Mobile Web Best Practices (MWBP) and Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG). This draft is complete and is provided as a last opportunity for public review and comment before publication as a W3C Working Group Note. See the announcement email.

The groups encourage people to start by reading Web Content Accessibility and Mobile Web: Making a Web Site Accessible Both for People with Disabilities and for Mobile Devices, which shows how design goals for accessibility and mobile access overlap. A third document, Shared Web Experiences: Barriers Common to Mobile Device Users and People with Disabilities, provides examples of barriers that people (without disabilities) face when interacting with Web content via mobile devices, and similar barriers for people with disabilities using desktop computers. Learn more about the Mobile Web Initiative and the Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI).

Today W3C publishes the report from the April 2009 Workshop on the Role of Mobile Technologies in Fostering Social Development. Participants discussed how numerous services available on mobile phones could help people in underserved regions. Discussion underlined the need for a concerted effort among all the stakeholders (including practitioners, academics, regulators, governments, and the mobile industry) to build a shared view of the future of the mobile platform as a tool to bridge the digital divide. The Workshop was jointly organized by the W3C Mobile Web Initiative and the Ministry of Science and Technology of the Government of Mozambique, with the generous support of Gold Sponsors UNDP, the Web Foundation, Nokia, and Bharti Telesoft; and Silver Sponsors Opera Software, UNESCO, Microsoft Research, and MIT Legatum Center for Development and Entrepreneurship. This work is part of the Digital World Forum project (European Union's FP7). Learn more about the W3C Mobile Web for Social Development Interest Group and the W3C Mobile Web Initiative.

W3C announces today an online course to introduce Web developers and designers to its Mobile Web Best Practices. The course runs from 1 June to 31 July 2009. Participants will:

• learn about the specific promises and challenges of the mobile platform
• learn how to use W3C's Mobile Web Best Practices to design mobile-friendly Web content and to adapt existing content for mobile
• discover the relevant W3C resources for mobile Web design

Participants will have access to lectures and assignments that provide hands-on practical experience of using W3C's Mobile Web Best Practices. Participants will work with both W3C experts on this topic (the instructors) and peers who can share experiences about the real-world challenges of mobile Web design. More information is available about the course material (including a free sample), registration fee, and intended audience. Learn more about the Mobile Web Initiative.

The Authoring Tool Accessibility Guidelines Working Group has published an updated Working Draft of Authoring Tool Accessibility Guidelines (ATAG) 2.0 in preparation for the Last Call Working Draft. ATAG defines how authoring tools should help Web developers produce Web content that is accessible and conforms to Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0. ATAG also defines how to make authoring tools accessible so that people with disabilities can use them. Read the invitation to review the ATAG 2.0 Working Draft and about the Web Accessibility Initiative.

In response to comments about potential unresolved issues on four Proposed Edited Recommendations published earlier this month, W3C has rescinded the drafts and closed the review period. The rescinded drafts are:

• XHTML™ 1.1 - Module-based XHTML - Second Edition
• XHTML™ Basic 1.1 - Second Edition
• XHTML-Print - Second Edition
• XHTML™ 1.0

The W3C Process indicates that Proposed Edited Recommendations must formally address all issues raised about the documents since the previous Recommendations. Open issues against the XHTML documents were not cited during the process of deciding to advance the documents. The XHTML2 Working Group may request publication of the four Proposed Edited Recommendations later on, based on proper review of outstanding issues. The decision to rescind these specifications has no bearing on existing Recommendations for these technologies.

W3C will again this year sponsor SVG Open 2009, the 7th international conference on Scalable Vector Graphics, hosted by Google in Mountain View, California on 2-4 October 2009. SVG Open provides an opportunity for designers, developers and implementers to share ideas, experiences, products and strategies. Members of the W3C SVG Working Group will be attending and presenting at the conference, which will include a Working Group panel session on future SVG developments. A day of workshops will also be scheduled adjacent to the main conference. The conference organizers have indicated that proposals for presentation abstracts and course outlines are welcome through 15 May. Learn more about the W3C Graphics Activity.

Today W3C announces new standards that make it possible to use XML tools to improve the quality of increasingly sophisticated systems and services built from the XML family of standards. Now developers can validate sets of XML documents, either in place, using Service Modeling Language 1.1 (SML), or as a package, using SML Interchange Format 1.1 (SML-IF). Read the press release and testimonials, and learn more about the Extensible Markup Language (XML) Activity.

The Mobile Web Initiative Test Suites Working Group has published a Group Note of Guidelines for writing device independent tests. As support for Web technologies grows, it is important that tests writers develop test suites that will work as well as possible across devices. This document offers guidance in the form of simple guidelines to follow to create device-independent tests. Learn more about the Mobile Web Initiative Activity.

The eGovernment Interest Group has published a Group Note of Improving Access to Government through Better Use of the Web. This document is an attempt to describe, but not yet solve, the variety of issues and challenges faced by governments in their efforts to apply 21st century capabilities to eGovernment initiatives. It provides examples of existing, applicable open Web standards. Where government needs in the development of eGovernment services are not currently met by existing standards, those gaps are noted. Learn more about the eGovernment Activity.

The Timed Text Working Group has published a Working Draft of Timed Text (TT) Authoring Format 1.0 – Distribution Format Exchange Profile (DFXP). Timed text is textual information that is intrinsically or extrinsically associated with timing information. The timed text authoring format is a content type that represents timed text media for the purpose of interchange among authoring systems. The Distribution Format Exchange Profile (DFXP) provides a standardized representation of a particular subset of textual information with which stylistic, layout, and timing semantics are associated by an author or an authoring system for the purpose of interchange and potential presentation. Learn more about the Video in the Web Activity.

The Mobile Web Best Practices Working Group has published a Working Draft of Mobile Web Application Best Practices. This document specifies Best Practices for the development and delivery of Web applications on mobile devices. The recommendations expand upon statements made in the Mobile Web Best Practices 1.0 (BP1), especially those that relate to the exploitation of device capabilities and awareness of the delivery context. Learn more about the Mobile Web Initiative Activity.

The Voice Browser Working Group has published an updated Working Draft of State Chart XML (SCXML): State Machine Notation for Control Abstraction. SCXML is a general-purpose event-based state machine language that may be used in a number of ways, including as a high-level dialog language controlling VoiceXML 3.0's encapsulated speech modules, or as a multimodal control language in the MultiModal Interaction framework. The main differences from the previous draft are (1) a revision of the send and invoke elements and (2) the introduction of Event I/O processors to support them. Learn more about the Voice Browser Activity.

The XHTML2 Working Group has published four Proposed Edited Recommendations:

• XHTML™ 1.1 - Module-based XHTML - Second Edition, which serve as the basis for future extended XHTML 'family' document types
• XHTML™ Basic 1.1 - Second Edition, includes the minimal set of modules required to be an XHTML host language document type, and in addition it includes images, forms, basic tables, and object support.
• XHTML-Print - Second Edition, designed for mobile printers and in environments where it is not feasible or desirable to install a printer-specific driver and where some variability in the formatting of the output is acceptable.
• XHTML™ 1.0

These updates incorporate known errata; each document links to a list of changes. The review period is open until 4 June. Learn more about the HTML Activity.

The XML Schema Patterns for Databinding Working Group has published two Group Notes: Basic XML Schema Patterns for Databinding Version 1.0 and Advanced XML Schema Patterns for Databinding Version 1.0. Schema patterns describe the ways people use XML for common data structures in programming languages. The data structures described are intended to be independent of any particular programming language, database or modelling environment. Learn more about the Web Services Activity.

Browse W3C presentations and events also available as an RSS channel.

• 4 May, Atlanta, GA, USA: Advancing Web AccessibilityShawn Henry presents at STC Technical Communication Summit.
• 7 May, Hammamet, Tunisia: Web Accessibility with WCAG 2.0: International Cooperation, Local ImplementationShawn Henry gives a keynote at ICTA 2009 International Conference on Information and Communication Technology & Accessibility.
• 7 May, Oslo, Norway: WCAG 2.0 - addressing the needs of people with disabilities and older people.Andrew Arch presents at Do Web Accessibility Guidelines guarantee Universal Design?.
• 9 May, Hammamet, Tunisia: Improving Your Web Site with WCAG 2.0Shawn Henry gives a tutorial at ICTA 2009 International Conference on Information and Communication Technology & Accessibility.
• 26 May, Amsterdam, The Netherlands: Introduction to the Semantic WebIvan Herman gives a tutorial at PhD School Course, Netherlands Bioinformation Centre.

The XML Schema Working Group invites implementation of the Candidate Recommendation of XML Schema Definition Language (XSD) 1.1. The specification consists of Part 1: Structures and Part 2: Datatypes. XSD provides tools for describing the structure of XML content and constraining the contents of XML documents. Part 2 provides tools for defining datatypes (dates, times, numbers, strings, etc.) to be used in XML Schemas as well as other XML specifications. Information about changes to structures and changes to datatypes since XML Schema 1.0 is available. Learn more about the Extensible Markup Language (XML) Activity.

W3C invites people to participate in a Workshop on using Ink in Multimodal Applications within the W3C's Multimodal Architecture and Interfaces on 10-11 July 2009 in Grand Bend, Ontario (Canada), hosted by the University of Western Ontario. The goal of the Workshop is to help the Multimodal Interaction Working Group integrate handwriting modality components (Ink Modality Components) into the MMI Architecture and clarify what should be added to the Multimodal specifications to enable applications to adapt to various modality combinations including Ink. Attendees will discuss requirements for changes, extensions and additions to Ink standards especially in Multimodal Applications developed based on the W3C's MMI Architecture as a means of making InkML more useful in current and emerging markets. Position papers are due 1 June 2009. Read about the Ink Markup Language (InkML) and W3C's Multimodal Interaction Activity.

The XML Security Working Group has published a Working Draft of XML Signature Properties. This document outlines proposed standard XML Signature Properties syntax and processing rules and an associated namespace for these properties. The intent is these can be composed with any version of XML Signature using the XML SignatureProperties element. Learn more about the Security Activity.

The Media Fragments Working Group has published the First Public Working Draft of Use cases and requirements for Media Fragments. The aim of this specification is to enhance the Web infrastructure for supporting the addressing and retrieval of subparts of time-based Web resources. Example uses are the sharing of such fragment URIs with friends via email, the automated creation of such fragment URIs in a search engine interface, or the annotation of media fragments with RDF. This specification will help make video a first-class citizen of the World Wide Web. In addition to describing use cases for the Media Fragments 1.0 specification, this document discusses syntax and processing of media fragment URIs, and offers survey of technologies that address multimedia fragments. Learn more about the Video in the Web Activity.

The Web Applications Working Group has published the Last Call 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 mechanism to ensure continuity of authorship and distributorship. A user agent can use the digital signature to verify the integrity of the widget package and to confirm the signing key(s). Comments are welcome through 01 June. The Working Group also published an updated Working Draft of Widgets 1.0: Requirements. Learn more about the Rich Web Client Activity.

The Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) Working Group published three first public drafts today. SVG is a language for describing vector graphics, but it is typically rendered to a display or some form of print medium. The first new publication, SVG Compositing, adds support for raster and vector objects to be combined to produce eye catching effects via advanced alpha compositing, masks, and clipping paths. The other specifications are for SVG Referenced Parameter Variables: Part 1: Primer and Part 2: Language. The Referenced Parameter Variables specification provides a declarative way to incorporate parameter values into SVG content. Often, users may wish to create a single resource, and reuse it several times with specified variations, and this specification provides a means to do so without the use of script. Learn more about the Graphics Activity.

The Evaluation and Repair Tools Working Group (ERT WG) today published an updated Working Draft of Evaluation and Report Language (EARL) 1.0 Schema. This document provides the formal schema of EARL 1.0, a vocabulary to express test results. EARL is a format to exchange, combine, and analyze results from different evaluation tools. Read the invitation to review EARL 1.0 Schema and learn more about the Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI).

The Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) Working Group updated the Candidate Recommendation 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 (the most important being a new definition of the height/width of absolutely positioned elements, more influence for HTML's "style" attribute and a new calculation of the 'clip' property), 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. This draft incorporates errata resulting from implementation experience since the previous publication. Learn more about the Style Activity.

The Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) Working Group invites implementation of the Candidate Recommendation of Media Queries. HTML4 and CSS2 currently support media-dependent style sheets tailored for different media types. For example, a document may use sans-serif fonts when displayed on a screen and serif fonts when printed. ‘screen’ and ‘print’ are two media types that have been defined. Media Queries extend the functionality of media types by allowing presentations to be tailored more precisely to device characteristics. Learn more about the Style Activity.

The Web Applications Working Group has published a Working Draft of Widgets 1.0: APIs and Events. Widgets are full-fledged client-side applications that are authored using Web standards. Examples range from simple clocks, stock tickers, news streamers, games and weather forecasters, to complex applications that pull data from multiple sources to be "mashed-up" and presented to a user in some interesting and useful way The APIs and Events specification defines a set of APIs and events for the Widgets 1.0 family of specifications. The specification allows application writers to access widget configuration information, monitor changes in the widget display, determine locale information, monitor updates to the widget, and more. Learn more about the Rich Web Client Activity.

The Web Applications Working Group has published four First Public Working Drafts of specifications for APIs that enhance the open Web platform as a runtime environment for full-featured applications:

• Web Storage provides APIs for persistent client-side data storage by Web applications.
• Web Workers defines an API for enabling thread-like operations (using message-passing) in Web applications, so that certain application tasks can be run in parallel.
• Web Sockets API provides an API for full-duplex communication between a Web application and a remote host.
• Server-Sent Events defines an API for opening an HTTP connection for receiving push notifications from a server in the form of DOM events.

The Web Storage, Web Sockets API, and Server-Sent Events specifications were previously published as parts of the HTML 5 specification, but will now each become Recommendation-track deliverables within the Web Applications Working Group. Learn more about the Rich Web Client Activity.

The HTML Working Group has published a Working Draft of HTML 5. HTML 5 adds to the language of the Web: features to help Web application authors, new elements based on research into prevailing authoring practices, and clear conformance criteria for user agents in an effort to improve interoperability. This particular draft specifies how authors can embed SVG in non-XML text/html content, and how browsers and other UAs should handle such embedded SVG content. See also the news about moving some parts of HTML 5 to individual drafts. The full list of changes since the previous draft are listed in the updated companion document HTML 5 differences from HTML 4. Learn more about the HTML Activity.

Tim Berners-Lee, W3C Director and inventor of the Web, delivered the opening keynote address at the WWW2009 Conference earlier today in Madrid, Spain; keynote slides are available. During his talk, titled "Twenty Years," he touched on the future as well, including topics such as Web applications, open social networking and open linked data. Shortly before his keynote, Berners-Lee joined Dame Wendy Hall, Robert Caillau, Vint Cerf, Dale Dougherty and Mike Shaver on a panel to share thoughts on the twentieth anniversary of the Web. W3C encourages people to join the W3C track, which this year features two "camps": the Mobile Widgets camps on 23 April and the Social Web Camp on 24 April. Follow discussion on the #w3ctrack twitter feed.

The OWL Working Group has published new Working Drafts for OWL 2, a language for building Semantic Web ontologies. An ontology is a set of terms that a particular community finds useful for organizing data (e.g., for data about a book, useful terms include "title" and "author"). OWL 2 (a compatible extension of OWL 1) consists of 13 documents (7 technical, 4 instructional, and 2 group Notes). For descriptions and links to all the documents, see the OWL 2 Documentation Roadmap. This is a "Last Call" for the technical materials and is an opportunity for the community to confirm that these documents satisfy requirements for an ontology language. This is a second Last Call for six of the documents, but because the changes since the first Last Call are limited in scope, the review period lasts only 21 days. For an introduction to OWL 2, see the four instructional documents: an overview, primer, list of new features, and quick reference. Learn more about the Semantic Web.

The OWL Working Group and the Rule Interchance Format (RIF) Working Group have jointly published a Last Call Working Draft of rdf:text: A Datatype for Internationalized Text. This datatype, compatible with XML Schema 1.1 Datatypes, is used within RIF and OWL 2 to provide support for text in various languages and scripts (identified by a BCP 47 tag such as "fr" for French). The document defines the datatype, discusses its relationship to RDF Plain Literals and the XML Schema string datatype, and specifies functions (compatible with XPath) for operating on rdf:text data values. It also discusses how to use this feature within RDF serializations. Learn more about the Semantic Web.

The XSL and XML Query Working Groups have published eight Proposed Edited Recommendations for Second Editions of XSL Transformations (XSLT), XQuery 1.0: An XML Query Language, XML Syntax for XQuery 1.0 (XQueryX) and XML Path Language (XPath) 2.0, together with their supporting documents, XQuery 1.0 and XPath 2.0 Data Model (XDM), XQuery 1.0 and XPath 2.0 Formal Semantics, XSLT 2.0 and XQuery 1.0 Serialization and XQuery 1.0 and XPath 2.0 Functions and Operators. The second editions, if approved, will add the generate-id function from XSLT to XPath and XQuery, and will also incorporate the outstanding errata, including a number of clarifications that may affect implementations. Enhanced test suites are being augmented and will be published shortly. Review welcome by 31 May 2009. Learn more about XML.

The Technical Architecture Group has published the First Public Working Draft of Usage Patterns For Client-Side URI parameters. The goal of this draft TAG finding is to initially collect the various usage scenarios that are leading to innovative uses of client-side URI parameters, along with the solutions that have been developed by the Web community. As highly interactive applications get built using Web parts (HTML, CSS and JavaScript component resources) that are themselves Web addressable, there is an increasing need for encoding interaction state as part of the URI. The Web is beginning to discover and codify design patterns based on fragment identifiers for many of these use cases. Learn more about the Technical Architecture Group.

The Ubiquitous Web Applications Working Group has published the Group Note of W3C Personalization Roadmap: Ubiquitous Web Integration of AccessForAll 1.0. This document describes an activity of integrating personalization with device context for the delivery of content materials and interface components that are customized to meet both individual personal needs and preferences and delivery context. It brings together the work of separate standards and specifications organizations and working groups, notably W3C Ubiquitous Web Applications working group, IMS Global Learning Consortium Accessibility Special Interest group, ISO/IEC JTC1 SC36 Information Technology for Learning, Education and Training: Human Diversity and Access For All working group and associated working groups in SC36. The document should be viewed as a roadmap for the work to be undertaken and includes description of the basis for the work, the organizational context, the likely technologies and a partially complete description of how the technologies fit together. Learn more about the Ubiquitous Web Applications Activity.

After 12 years of successful work at Fraunhofer (or former GMD) the W3C Germany and Austria Office moves from Sankt Augustin (near Bonn) to Potsdam (near Berlin). The University of Applied Sciences in Potsdam (FHP) is the new host of the Office. A ceremonial launch is planned for September 2009. Felix Sasaki will be the new Office Manager at FHP.

W3C would like to thank Fraunhofer and the W3C Germany and Austria Office staff, led by Thomas Tikwinski and Klaus Birkenbihl before him, for their contributions to W3C and the Web during the past 12 years. Learn more about the W3C Offices, regional W3C representatives that help promote the W3C mission.

The Efficient XML Interchange Working Group has published a Working Draft of Efficient XML Interchange Evaluation. This document presents the anticipated benefits of the EXI format 1.0 compared to XML and gzipped XML. Additionally, tests for compactness include comparison to ASN.1 PER. The points of comparison are the requirements set by the EXI Working Group charter, based on the results of the XML Binary Characterization Working Group. Learn more about the Extensible Markup Language (XML) Activity.

W3C invites people to attend the W3C Track at WWW2009, in Madrid, Spain on 23-24 April 2009. Part of WWW2009, the first day of the track is a Mobile Widgets Camp and the second a Social Web Camp. Conference participants and the local developer community are invited to submit topics of discussion in advance, via the W3C Track wikis. In addition to the W3C Track, Tim Berners-Lee, W3C Director and inventor of the Web, will deliver the WWW2009 opening keynote titled "Twenty Years: Looking Forward, Looking Back". Read the press release.

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.

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.

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.

Browse W3C presentations and events also available as an RSS channel.

• 1 April, Maputo, Mozambique: A Web that Empowers All PeopleSteve Bratt gives a keynote at Africa Perspective on the Role of Mobile Technologies in Fostering Social Development.
• 17 April, Washington, DC, USA: Interoperability and Web ApplicationsKevin Novak presents at eGov Washington Workshop: Putting Open Standards to Work for Transparency, Security and Interoperability.
• 21 April, Madrid, Spain: Web Accessibility and Older Users - We Are There!Andrew Arch gives a keynote at W4A2009 - International Cross-Disciplinary Conference on Web Accessibility.
• 23 April, Madrid, Spain: Panel on Multilingual Web SitesRichard Ishida participates in a panel at 18th World Wide Web Conference (WWW2009).
• 23 April, Lisbon, Portugal: Improving Society through Better Use of Web StandardsDaniel Dardailler participates in a panel at ITU World Telecommunication Policy Forum.

Today is the first day of the W3C Workshop on the Africa Perspective on the Role of Mobile Technologies in Fostering Social and Economic Development, in Maputo, Mozambique. The agenda of the Workshop focuses on the challenges of using mobile phones and Web technologies to deliver services to underprivileged populations of developing countries. International experts, local actors, researchers, and NGOs are participating in the meeting, hosted by the Ministry of Science and Technology of the Government of Mozambique and organized as part of the Digital World Forum project (European Union's FP7). The W3C Mobile Web Initiative (MWI) thanks the Workshop sponsors for their support.

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.

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.

The OWL Working Group has published the First Public Working Draft of OWL 2 Web Ontology Language Document Overview. This document, part 1 of 13 in the OWL 2 document set, serves as an introduction to OWL 2 and the various other OWL 2 documents. It describes the various syntaxes for OWL 2, the different kinds of semantics, the defined profiles (sub-languages), and the differences between OWL 1 and OWL 2. Learn more about the Semantic Web Activity.

In accordance with the W3C Patent Policy, W3C has launched a Patent Advisory Group (PAG) in response to a disclosure related to the Widgets 1.0: Updates specification; see the PAG charter. The WebApps Working Group develops this specification. W3C launches a PAG to resolve issues in the event a patent has been disclosed that may be essential, but is not available under the W3C Royalty-Free licensing requirements. Learn more about Patent Advisory Groups.

W3C invites public feedback on a beta release of a W3C site redesign. The new site features a harmonized design, simplified information architecture, new style for technical reports, and new content, including calendars and aggregated blogs. W3C welcomes feedback on the usability of the site, links to useful information, contributions of content to new pages, and bug fixes. Take a 10-minute screencast tour of the site, learn more about the redesign, and find out how you can help.

The CSS and SVG Working Groups delivered today five new specifications for public review, aimed at enabling more compelling content creation with open Web technologies. The five drafts are: SVG Transforms 1.0, Part 2: Language, CSS 2D Transforms Module Level 3, CSS 3D Transforms Module Level 3, CSS Animations Module Level 3, and CSS Transitions Module Level 3. SVG Transforms allows two-dimensional objects to be transformed using three-dimensional transformations. CSS 2D Transforms allows elements rendered by CSS to be transformed in two-dimensional space. CSS 3D Transforms extends CSS Transforms to allow elements rendered by CSS to be transformed in three-dimensional space. CSS Animations allow an author to modify CSS property values over time. CSS Transitions allows property changes in CSS values to occur smoothly over a specified duration. The groups are working closely together to make implementing and authoring these features easy and consistent across Web languages. Learn more about the Style Activity and Graphics Activity.

The Web Applications Working Group has published the Working Draft of Cross-Origin Resource Sharing. This document defines a mechanism to enable client-side cross-origin requests. Specifications that want to enable cross-origin requests in an API they define can use the algorithms defined by this specification. If such an API is used on http://example.org resources, a resource on http://hello-world.example can opt in using the mechanism described by this specification (e.g., specifying Access-Control-Allow-Origin: http://example.org as response header), which would allow that resource to be fetched cross-origin from http://example.org. Learn more about the Rich Web Client Activity.

The Web Services Resource Access Working Group published five First Public Working Drafts: Web Services Enumeration (WS-Enumeration), Web Services Eventing (WS-Eventing), Web Services Resource Transfer (WS-RT), Web Services Transfer (WS-Transfer), and Web Services Metadata Exchange (WS-MetadataExchange). The first describes a general SOAP-based protocol for enumerating a sequence of XML elements that is suitable for traversing logs, message queues, or other linear information models. The second describes a protocol that allows Web services to subscribe to or accept subscriptions for event notification. The third defines extensions to WS-Transfer that deal primarily with fragment-based access to resources to satisfy the common requirements of WS-ResourceFramework and WS-Management. The fourth describes a general SOAP-based protocol for accessing XML representations of Web service-based resources. The fifth defines how metadata associated with a Web service endpoint can be represented as resources, how metadata can be embedded in endpoint references, and how metadata could be retrieved from a Web service endpoint. Learn more about the Web Services Activity.

The Semantic Web Deployment Working Group invites implementation of the Candidate Recommendation of SKOS Simple Knowledge Organization System Reference. This document defines the Simple Knowledge Organization System (SKOS), a common data model for sharing and linking knowledge organization systems via the Web. SKOS—Simple Knowledge Organization System—provides a model for expressing the basic structure and content of concept schemes such as thesauri, classification schemes, subject heading lists, taxonomies, folksonomies, and other similar types of controlled vocabulary. As an application of the Resource Description Framework (RDF), SKOS allows concepts to be composed and published on the World Wide Web, linked with data on the Web and integrated into other concept schemes. The Working Group also published today a Working Draft of SKOS Simple Knowledge Organization System Primer. Learn more about the Semantic Web Activity.

In February, W3C Director Tim Berners-Lee spoke at TED 2009 about the Semantic Web and linked data (see slides). The video of his TED talk is now available.

The User Agent Accessibility Guidelines Working Group has published an updated Working Draft of the User Agent Accessibility Guidelines (UAAG) 2.0. UAAG defines how browsers, media players, and other "user agents" should support accessibility for people with disabilities and work with assistive technologies. Read the invitation to review the UAAG 2.0 Working Draft and about the Web Accessibility Initiative.

The Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) Working Group has published the Last Call Working Draft of Selectors Level 3. Selectors are patterns that match against elements in a tree, and as such form one of several technologies that can be used to select nodes in an XML document. Selectors have been optimized for use with HTML and XML, and are designed to be usable in performance-critical code. Comments are welcome through 07 April. Learn more about the Style Activity.

The Evaluation and Repair Tools Working Group today published Pointer Methods in RDF as a First Public Working Draft. This document provides a framework for representing pointers to identify locations in content or portions of content, using Resource Description Framework (RDF). This document is part of Evaluation and Report Language (EARL) and can be used to extend the EARL 1.0 Schema. Read the invitation to review Pointer Methods in RDF and learn more about the Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI).

The eGovernment Interest Group has published the First Public Working Draft of Improving Access to Government through Better Use of the Web. 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. Recognizing that governments throughout the World need assistance and guidance in achieving the promises of electronic government through technology and the Web, this document seeks to define and call forth, but not yet solve, the variety of issues and challenges faced by governments. The use cases, documentation, and explanation are focused on the available or needed technical standards but additionally provide context to note and describe the additional challenges and issues which exist before success can be realized. This document has been published in time for W3C's eGovernment stakeholder meeting in Washington, D.C.. Learn more about the eGovernment Activity.

W3C is pleased to announce the creation of the Semantic Sensor Network Incubator Group, sponsored by W3C Members CSIRO, Wright State University, and OGC. The group's mission is to begin the formal process of producing ontologies that define the capabilities of sensors and sensor networks, and to develop semantic annotations of a key language used by services based sensor networks. 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.

The W3C Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) announced Translations of Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0, including draft Authorized W3C Translations. W3C's Policy for Authorized W3C Translations provides a process for stakeholder review and designation as an official translation. Learn more about WCAG 2.0 Translations in-progress, WCAG 2.0, and the Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI).

Browse W3C presentations and events also available as an RSS channel.

• 2 March, San Diego, USA: Frontiers in Interaction: The Power of Multimodal StandardsDeborah Dahl presents at Voice Search 2009.
• 6 March, Utrecht, The Netherlands: XForms and Declarative ApplicationsSteven Pemberton presents at MozCamp.
• 14 March, Austin, TX, USA: Making Web Widgets Accessible: Tools and TechniquesMichael Cooper participates in a panel at South by Southwest Conference.
• 19 March, Los Angeles, CA, USA: The New WCAG 2: Web Accessibility Q&A with the EditorsShawn Henry, Michael Cooper, Loretta Guarino Reid participate in a panel at CSUN International Technology and Persons with Disabilities Conference.
• 19 March, Los Angeles, CA, USA: Towards a More Accessible BrowserJeanne Spellman, Jim Allan present at CSUN Center on Disabilities 24th Annual International Technology and Persons with Disabilities Conference.
• 21 March, Prague, Czech Republic: XML Processing and ChoreographyMohamed Zergaoui presents at XML Prague 2009.
• 22 March, Prague, Czech Republic: Exploring XProcNorman Walsh presents at XML Prague 2009.
• 27 March, Frankfurt, Germany: Mobile Access – Device-independent or AccessibleDominique Hazaël-Massieux participates in a panel at European Accessibility Forum.

The Web Security Context Working Group has published the second Last Call Working Draft of Web Security Context: User Interface Guidelines. This specification deals with the trust decisions that users must make online, and with ways to support them in making safe and informed decisions where possible. In order to achieve that goal, this specification includes recommendations on the presentation of identity information by Web user agents. It also includes recommendations for handling errors in security protocols. This second Last Call Working Draft incorporates feedback gathered during the first Last Call period, both from the public and from implementers participating in the Working Group. Comments are welcome through 19 March 2009. Learn more about the Security Activity.

The HTML Working Group has announced that Web Forms 2.0 has been superseded by material published in drafts of HTML 5. Learn more about HTML.

The XML Security Working Group has published a set of eight Working Drafts. The XML Signature 1.1 and XML Encryption 1.1 First Public Working Drafts make changes to the default sets of cryptographic algorithms in both specifications. XML Security Use Cases and Requirements and XML Signature Transform Simplification: Requirements and Design are documents that we expect to help guide the group's work on a future version of the XML Security specifications that might make more radical changes than the 1.1 series of these specifications. The Working Group would like to receive early feedback on these four drafts.

Additionally, the XML Security Derived Keys specification introduces mark-up for key derivation, for use with both XML Signature and XML Encryption. XML Signature Properties defines commonly used signature properties. XML Security Algorithms is a cross-reference for the algorithms and their identifiers used with the XML security specifications, bringing in one place information located in a number of documents. XML Signature Best Practices is a revised Working Draft for Best Practices in using the XML Signature specification.

On 12-13 March, W3C's eGovernment Interest Group will hold a special stakeholder meeting in Washington, DC to address a number of issues of high interest to government policy makers, elected officials, and managers of government information technology. Participants will document progressive solutions for electronic government and develop a road map for developing Web standards related to topics such as participation and citizen engagement, open government data, identification and authentication, and long-term data management. The meeting is open to the public, but advance registration is required and seating is limited. W3C thanks the American Institute of Architects for hosting this meeting. Read the media advisory and learn more about the W3C eGovernment Activity.

The Protocols and Formats Working Group published the Last Call Working Draft of Accessible Rich Internet Applications (WAI-ARIA). WAI-ARIA defines a way to make Web content and Web applications more accessible to people with disabilities. It especially helps with dynamic content and advanced user interface controls developed with Ajax, HTML, JavaScript, and related technologies.

The Working Group also published a First Public Working Draft of the WAI-ARIA User Agent Implementation Guide that provides guidance on how browsers and other user agents should expose WAI-ARIA features to platform accessibility APIs. The updated Working Draft of WAI-ARIA Best Practices that was published today describes how Web content developers can develop accessible rich Web applications using WAI-ARIA. These WAI-ARIA documents are described in the WAI-ARIA Overview. Read details in the review announcement, and about the Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI).

The Authoring Tool Accessibility Guidelines Working Group has published an updated Working Draft of Authoring Tool Accessibility Guidelines (ATAG) 2.0 that is synchronized with the finalized WCAG 2.0. ATAG defines how authoring tools should help Web developers produce Web content that is accessible and conforms to Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0. ATAG also defines how to make authoring tools accessible so that people with disabilities can use them. Read the invitation to review the ATAG 2.0 Working Draft and about the Web Accessibility Initiative.

The Service Modeling Language Working Group has published the Proposed Recommendations of Service Modeling Language, Version 1.1 and Service Modeling Language Interchange Format Version 1.1. SML extends the coherence-checking mechanisms of W3C XML Schema from individual documents to collections of documents. SML-IF extends the utility of SML by providing mechanisms for gathering together a set of documents whose coherence is guaranteed by an SML schema, which itself is part of the resulting package. Comments are welcome through 12 March. Learn more about the Extensible Markup Language (XML) Activity.

The HTML Working Group has published Working Drafts of HTML 5 and HTML 5 differences from HTML 4. In this version of HTML5, new features are introduced to help Web application authors, new elements are introduced based on research into prevailing authoring practices, and special attention has been given to defining clear conformance criteria for user agents in an effort to improve interoperability. Learn more about the HTML Activity.

As part of ensuring the Web is available to all people on any device, W3C published a new standard today to enable interactions beyond the familiar keyboard and mouse. EMMA, the EMMA: Extensible MultiModal Annotation Markup Language, promotes the development of rich Web applications that can be adapted to more input modes (such as handwriting, natural language, and gestures) and output modes (such as synthesized speech) at lower cost. The document, published by the Multimodal Interaction Working Group, is part of a set of specifications for multimodal systems, and provides details of an XML markup language for containing and annotating the interpretation of user input. Read the press release and testimonials, and learn more about the Multimodal Interaction Activity.

The Web Applications Working Group has published the First Public Working Draft of Widgets 1.0: APIs and Events. This specification defines a set of APIs and events for the Widgets 1.0 Family of Specifications that enable baseline functionality for widgets. The APIs and Events defined by this specification defines, amongst other things, the means to:

• access the metadata declared in a widget's configuration document,
• receive events related to changes in the view state of a widget,
• determine the locale under which a widget is currently running,
• be notified of events relating to the widget being updated,
• invoke a widget to open a URL on the system's default browser,
• requests the user's attention in a device independent manner,
• and check if any additional APIs requested via the configuration document's feature element have successfully loaded.

Learn more about the Rich Web Client Activity.

The RDB2RDF Incubator Group published their final report. In the report, the group recommends that the W3C initiate a WG to standardize a language for mapping Relational Database schemas into RDF and OWL. 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.

The Emergency Information Interoperability Framework (EIIF) Incubator Group published their final report. The group also published Emergency Information Interoperability Frameworks, which describes some critical requirements for an interoperability information framework for emergency management, and provides candidate components of an ontology that can support interoperability for some common use cases. The approach discussed outlines how one can achieve information interoperability across the stakeholder functions within the area of emergency management. The group recommends that W3C initiate an Interest Group to continue the work of the Incubator Group and expand the outreach to standards development through partnerships with professional communities and interoperability workshops. 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 published today a report from the W3C Workshop on Security for Access to Device APIs from the Web. Workshop participants identified a number of challenges as high-priority work items, including:

• Declaration of APIs used by web applications and widgets
• Policy description
• API patterns and concrete APIs

W3C invites follow-up discussion on the public mailing list public-device-apis@w3.org (public archive). Learn more about the W3C Mobile Web Initiative.

Tim Berners-Lee, Director of W3C, addresses TED2009 today in Long Beach, California on the subject of Linked Data. Berners-Lee's talk highlights the many possibilities that arise when governments, enterprises, scientists, and others in the community choose to share and link data on the Web using Web standards.

W3C has published a report from the Workshop on the Future of Social Networking. Observations from the fifty-five organizations that participated (and submitted 72 position papers) include:

• By enabling users to share profiles and data across networks, social networking sites can grow further and open possibilities for a decentralized architecture for the Social Web.
• Contextual information, especially for mobile device users, can significantly enrich the social networking user experience.
• Many users remain unaware of the impact of social networking on their privacy.

The report highlights the need for an interoperable distributed social Web framework and suggests concrete next steps for W3C. W3C now welcomes interested parties to contribute to public discussion. See video highlights from the Workshop, read the press release and learn more about the Mobile Web Initiative (MWI).

The WebCGM Working Group has published a Working Draft of WebCGM 2.1. Computer Graphics Metafile (CGM) is an ISO standard, defined by ISO/IEC 8632:1999, for the interchange of 2D vector and mixed vector/raster graphics. WebCGM is a profile of CGM, which adds Web linking and is optimized for Web applications in technical illustration, electronic documentation, geophysical data visualization, and similar fields. First published (1.0) in 1999, WebCGM unifies potentially diverse approaches to CGM utilization in Web document applications. It therefore represents a significant interoperability agreement amongst major users and implementers of the ISO CGM standard. Learn more about the Graphics Activity.

The XML Schema Working Group has published the Last Call Working Drafts of W3C XML Schema Definition Language (XSD) 1.1 Part 1: Structures and Part 2: Datatypes. This former specifies the XML Schema Definition Language, which offers facilities for describing the structure and constraining the contents of XML documents, including those which exploit the XML Namespace facility. The schema language, which is itself represented in an XML vocabulary and uses namespaces, substantially reconstructs and considerably extends the capabilities found in XML document type definitions (DTDs). The latter defines facilities for defining datatypes to be used in XML Schemas as well as other XML specifications. The datatype language, which is itself represented in XML, provides a superset of the capabilities found in XML document type definitions (DTDs) for specifying datatypes on elements and attributes. Comments are welcome through 20 February. Learn more about the Extensible Markup Language (XML) Activity.

Dan Connolly, an active member of the HTML community for many years, has received support from Adobe to work on HTML 5 materials for authors. The HTML Working Group Chairs have requested additional resources to ensure that HTML 5 meets the needs of authors and browser developers alike. As a provider of Web development and authoring tools, W3C Member Adobe is not only participating in the Working Group, they have also provided financial support for the open standards process. Learn more about HTML.

Browse W3C presentations and events also available as an RSS channel.

• 2 February, Denver, Colorado, USA: (TBD)Dan Connolly gives a keynote at Web Directions North.
• 4 February, Malmö, Sweden: Standarder och Open SourceOlle Olsson presents at DFS-seminarium.
• 6 February, Paris, France: World Wide Web 2010Steve Bratt gives a keynote at Netexplorateur Forum 2009.
• 12 February, Gijón, Spain: Innovative Uses of Mobile ICTs for DevelopmentJosé Manuel Alonso participates in a panel at II International Meeting on ICT for Development Cooperation.
• 25 February, Cambridge, MA, USA: W3C's Semantic Web in Heath Care and Life Sciences Interest GroupLee Feigenbaum, Susie Stephens, Eric Prud'hommeaux give a tutorial at Conference on Semantics in Healthcare and Life Sciences (C-SHALS) .

The XHTML2 Working Group has published the Group Note of XHTML Media Types - Second Edition. Many people want to use XHTML to author their Web pages, but are confused about the best ways to deliver those pages in such a way that they will be processed correctly by various user agents. This Note contains suggestions about how to format XHTML to ensure it is maximally portable, and how to deliver XHTML to various user agents - even those that do not yet support XHTML natively. This document is intended to be used by document authors who want to use XHTML today, but want to be confident that their XHTML content is going to work in the greatest number of environments. Learn more about the HTML Activity.

The XML Core Working Group has published the W3C Recommendation of XML Base (Second Edition). This document describes a mechanism for providing base URI services to XLink, but as a modular specification so that other XML applications benefiting from additional control over relative URIs but not built upon XLink can also make use of it. The syntax consists of a single XML attribute named xml:base. The functionality is similar to the base element in HTML. This document is part of W3C's ongoing work to maintain the core XML technologies. Learn more about the Extensible Markup Language (XML) Activity.

The Media Annotations Working Group has published the First Public Working Draft of Use Cases and Requirements for Ontology and API for Media Object 1.0. This document specifies use cases and requirements as an input for the development of the "Ontology for Media Object 1.0" and the "API for Media Object 1.0". The ontology will be a simple ontology to support cross-community data integration of information related to media objects on the Web. The API will provide read access and potentially write access to media objects, relying on the definitions from the ontology. Learn more about the Video in the Web Activity.

The XHTML2 Working Group invites implementation of the Candidate Recommendation of CURIE Syntax 1.0. This document defines a generic, abbreviated syntax for expressing URIs. This syntax is intended to be used as a common element by language designers. The intended audience for this document is Language designers, not the users of those Languages. Track implementations in an ongoing implementation report and learn more about the HTML Activity.

Today began a 2-day Workshop on the Future of Social Networking, organized by W3C to explore the landscape of social networking technologies. Participants submitted 72 position papers on a wide range of topics regarding the growth and future of social networking, including, but not limited to, the mobile context. The meeting is hosted in Barcelona, Spain by Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya and ReadyPeople. Many thanks to the hosts and to Silver Sponsors Ayuntamiento de Zaragoza, Flock, and Peperoni for their support.

The W3C Advisory Committee has elected John Kemp (Nokia), Larry Masinter (Adobe), and T.V. Raman (Google) to the W3C Technical Architecture Group (TAG). Continuing TAG participants are Ashok Malhotra (Oracle), Noah Mendelsohn (IBM, appointed), Jonathan Rees (Science Commons, appointed), and Henry Thompson (U. of Edinburgh). The Director is expected to appoint one individual as well. 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.

Browse W3C presentations and events also available as an RSS channel.

• 9 January, Amsterdam, The Netherlands: Never is a long time - Disruptive technology and the WebSteven Pemberton presents at Freelance Factory.
• 29 January, Orlando, USA: Update on Accessibility Guidelines for Browsers, Media Players, Cell phones, PDAs and Other User AgentsJeanne Spellman presents at Assistive Technology Industry Association Conference 2009.
• 30 January, Orlando, USA: Web Accessibility Update 2009: WCAG 2.0, WAI-ARIA, Section 508Shawn Henry presents at Assistive Technology Industry Association .
• 31 January, Orlando, USA: Accessible Social Networking and Web 2.0 ContentJeanne Spellman presents at Assistive Technology Industry Association.