W3C Talks in October
Wednesday, September 30, 2009 - World Wide Web Consortium - Web Standards
2009-10-01: Browse W3C presentations and events also available as an RSS channel. (Permalink)
WebSimpleDB API First Draft Published
Tuesday, September 29, 2009 - World Wide Web Consortium - Web Standards
2009-09-29: 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. (Permalink)
XSL-FO 2.0 First Draft Published
Tuesday, September 29, 2009 - World Wide Web Consortium - Web Standards
2009-09-29: 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. (Permalink)
W3C Invites Implementations of Timed Text (TT) Authoring Format 1.0 - Distribution Format Exchange Profile (DFXP)
Thursday, September 24, 2009 - World Wide Web Consortium - Web Standards
2009-09-24: 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. (Permalink)
Last Call: Mathematical Markup Language (MathML) Version 3.0
Thursday, September 24, 2009 - World Wide Web Consortium - Web Standards
2009-09-24: 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. (Permalink)
Five Web Services Drafts Updated
Thursday, September 24, 2009 - World Wide Web Consortium - Web Standards
2009-09-24: 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. (Permalink)
OWL 2 is a Proposed Recommendation
Tuesday, September 22, 2009 - World Wide Web Consortium - Web Standards
2009-09-22: 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. (Permalink)
W3C Launches Provenance Incubator Group
Tuesday, September 22, 2009 - World Wide Web Consortium - Web Standards
2009-09-22: 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. (Permalink)
W3C Organizes Workshop on Access Control Application Scenarios
Tuesday, September 22, 2009 - World Wide Web Consortium - Web Standards
2009-09-22: 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. (Permalink)
Trendsmap puts trends on the map
Tuesday, September 22, 2009 - Alex Schleifer
Nice Twitter & Google Maps mash-up that adds another dimention to trending. We'd love to see a bit more action once you focus on smaller cities, towns and even countries but loving the UI and overall execution.
Trendsmap puts trends on the map
Tuesday, September 22, 2009 - Alex Schleifer
Nice Twitter & Google Maps mash-up that adds another dimention to trending. We'd love to see a bit more action once you focus on smaller cities, towns and even countries but loving the UI and overall execution.
Developer Gathering during W3C Technical Plenary Week
Monday, September 21, 2009 - World Wide Web Consortium - Web Standards
2009-09-21: 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 H??garet, 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. (Permalink)
New W3C Group to Standardize Relational Database, RDF Mapping
Wednesday, September 16, 2009 - World Wide Web Consortium - Web Standards
2009-09-16: 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. (Permalink)
CSS Working Group Updates Candidate Recommendation of CSS3 Media Queries
Tuesday, September 15, 2009 - World Wide Web Consortium - Web Standards
2009-09-15: 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. (Permalink)
W3C Invites Implementations of WebCGM 2.1
Monday, September 14, 2009 - World Wide Web Consortium - Web Standards
2009-09-15: 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. (Permalink)
Kindle Statistics
Sunday, September 13, 2009 - Matt
Dear Kindle Team, one of my favorite features of Google Reader has always been its “Trends” or more simply its statistics that give you insight into your reading patterns and volume.
As the Kindle has become a bigger and bigger part of my life, much of my reading time has shifted from RSS-based sources to content on my Kindle, but I’m really curious how much time, how many words, at what times of day, etc I’m consuming all this new content. I think providing stats would also encourage people to read more, and highlight to them how the Kindle has changed their habits.
WP on Palm Pre
Thursday, September 10, 2009 - Matt
Web Storage; Web Database Drafts Published
Wednesday, September 9, 2009 - World Wide Web Consortium - Web Standards
2009-09-10: 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. (Permalink)
Protocol for Web Description Resources (POWDER): Test Suite Note Published
Wednesday, September 9, 2009 - World Wide Web Consortium - Web Standards
2009-09-10: 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. (Permalink)
New eGovernment Activity Focus Proposed; Guidelines for Publishing Open Government Data Published
Wednesday, September 9, 2009 - World Wide Web Consortium - Web Standards
2009-09-09: 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. (Permalink)
Automattic Aquires AtD
Tuesday, September 8, 2009 - Matt
Automattic just purchased a company and service called After the Deadline, an amazingly smart contextual spelling and grammar checker, and can catch errors even the New York Times misses. It’s now live for 7.5 million WordPress.com blogs and available as a free plugin for .org users, it replaces the built-in spell checker on TinyMCE. It’s a cool story, they were actually rejected from Y Combinator and a few other seed funds but kept at it anyway, and has now found a home in the Automattic family. I found out about the service from Hacker News.
Authoring HTML: Handling Right-to-left Scripts Group Note Published
Tuesday, September 8, 2009 - World Wide Web Consortium - Web Standards
2009-09-08: 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. (Permalink)
New Draft of DOM Level 3 Events Published
Tuesday, September 8, 2009 - World Wide Web Consortium - Web Standards
2009-09-08: 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 (Permalink)
Cascading Style Sheets Level 2 Revision 1 (CSS 2.1) Candidate Recommendation Updated
Tuesday, September 8, 2009 - World Wide Web Consortium - Web Standards
2009-09-08: 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 1. 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. (Permalink)
W3C Opens New India Office
Monday, September 7, 2009 - World Wide Web Consortium - Web Standards
2009-09-07: 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. (Permalink)
RSS Cloud
Monday, September 7, 2009 - Matt
RSS Cloud support has been turned on for WordPress.com and you can download a plugin for WordPress.org. Both are first iterations and will continue to be improved over the next few weeks, and I’ll be at the RSS Cloud meetup on Wednesday.
W3C Opens new India Office
Monday, September 7, 2009 - World Wide Web Consortium - Web Standards
2009-09-07: 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. (Permalink)
Keep WordPress Secure
Saturday, September 5, 2009 - Matt
How to Keep WordPress Secure, by me on the WordPress dev blog.
W3C Talks in September
Friday, September 4, 2009 - World Wide Web Consortium - Web Standards
2009-09-04: Browse W3C presentations and events also available as an RSS channel. (Permalink)
How Twitter Works
Thursday, September 3, 2009 - Matt
How Twitter works in theory, by Kevin Marks. “Phatic” gestures are important to understand if you’re building on the web.
A Sprinkle of POWDER Fosters Trust on the Web
Tuesday, September 1, 2009 - World Wide Web Consortium - Web Standards
2009-09-01: 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. (Permalink)
W3C mobileOK Scheme 1.0 Note Published
Tuesday, September 1, 2009 - World Wide Web Consortium - Web Standards
2009-09-01: 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. (Permalink)