NEWSLETTER W3C Kantoor Benelux - Bureau W3C Benelux - Benelux W3C Office
July - juillet - juli 2009
Website: http://www.w3c.nl -- http://www.w3c-benelux.org
Daniel Weitzner Named to Run US
Government Internet Policy Unit
2009-07-30: 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!
W3C Organizes Workshop on Improving Access to Financial Data on the Web
2009-07-16: 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.
W3C Invites Implementations of Widgets
1.0: Packaging and Configuration
2009-07-24: 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.
XML Signature Correction Addresses
Security Issue
2009-07-14: 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.
XPath 2.0 and XQuery 1.0 Full Text
Facility Test Suite Published
2009-07-09: 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.
W3C Launches Device APIs and Policy
Working Group
2009-07-03: 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.
Live Training Sessions On Mobile Web
Design Rescheduled
2009-07-03: 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.
XHTML 2 Working Group Expected to Stop
Work End of 2009, W3C to Increase Resources on HTML 5
2009-07-02: 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.
Summary of Workshop on Speaker
Biometrics and VoiceXML 3.0 Available
2009-07-02:
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.
