Australian W3C Office
Australian W3C Office Welcome to the April 2004 newsletter from the Australian W3C Office. In this edition we include information on regional events, Tim Berners-Lee, Math Activity, DOM and WAI.
The Australian W3C Office will be running a number of free events around the country during May and June, the following information is about the May events only, information on confirmed June events (on Semantic Web Services and XForms) can be located at: http://w3c.dstc.edu.au/eventsOz.html
Visiting W3C Team Member, Dr Max Froumentin, will give a presentation W3C’s Voice Browsing Activity. W3C recently published five new recommendations enabling speech recognition and synthesis for the Web. Users will be able to navigate, request information and even fill in Web forms using speech and other forms of input. The Speech Interface Framework includes VoiceXML (Voice Extensible Markup Language), SRGS (Speech Recognition Grammar Specification), Speech Synthesis, Call Control and Semantic Interpretation. A key goal of the Framework is to increase interoperability between the Web and voice applications, making it possible to expand access to the Web to allow people to interact via key pads, spoken commands, as well as listening to prerecorded and synthetic speech. This will allow any telephone to be used to access appropriately designed Web-based services, and will be a boon to people with visual impairments or needing Web access while keeping their hands and eyes free. This talk will introduce the Framework and its Components, with a focus on the practical benefits it provides for the Web application developer. Related work at W3C, such as Multimodal Interaction, will also be described, as well as the ongoing work of the Working Group to define the next generation of voice interaction languages.
This project is funded under the Commonwealth Government's Innovation Access Program. An initiative of Backing Australia's Ability, the Commonwealth Government's commitment to Innovation and supported by the Queensland Government's Information Industries Bureau, Software Engineering Australia, Queensland Branch and DSTC.
Event Registration: http://w3c.dstc.edu.au/events/voice_web_may04.html
Voice Browser Activity: http://www.w3.org/Voice/
Information Industries Bureau: http://www.iib.qld.gov.au/
DSTC: http://www.dstc.edu.au/
AusIndustry: http://www.ausindustry.gov.au/
Dr Froumentin will repeat the above presentation in Canberra and will be joined on the program by W3C Team member Dr Dean Jackson and Dr Jane Hunter from the Australian W3C Office.
The rumours of the death of the browser are greatly exaggerated. While it may appear that some things have stagnated, the truth is that a new breed of browsers are emerging. The functionality and deployment of browsers on Mobile devices will soon outstrip desktop systems. Many existing and new client-side technologies are being developed and are seeing widespread adoption, such as XHTML, SVG, CSS, SMIL and XForms. Also, there are formats developed outside the W3C that have having a large impact on today's Web, such as RSS, Atom and FOAF. Web applications and mixed markup technologies are on the rise. Dr Jackson’s presentation will describe the current state of the Web Client what the near future holds, and why this is important.
Dr Hunter’s talk will provide an overview of the W3C Semantic Web activities and describe the current state of ontologies, languages, tools, significant research projects, applications and anticipated future developments in the area.
This project is funded under the Commonwealth Government's Innovation Access Program. An initiative of Backing Australia's Ability, the Commonwealth Government's commitment to Innovation. The workshop is also supported by the National Library of Australia, DSTC, Australian Computer Society, Canberra Branch, The Distillery, Department of Urban Services, ACT, the Australian Government Information Management Office and the Australian Interactive Media Industry Association.
Event registration: http://w3c.dstc.edu.au/events/cnbworkshop_may04.html
AusIndustry: http://www.ausindustry.gov.au/
National Library of Australia: http://nla.gov.au/
DSTC: http://www.dstc.edu.au/
ACS Canberra Branch: http://www.acs.org.au/act/
The Distillery: http://www.thedistillery.com.au/
Department of Urban Services: AusIndustry: http://www.ausindustry.gov.au/
AGIMO: http://www.agimo.gov.au/
AIMIA: http://www.aimia.com.au/i-cms?page=1
Semantic Web Homepage: http://www.w3.org/2001/sw/
SVG Homepage: http://www.w3.org/2001/sw/
Voice Browsing Homepage: http://www.w3.org/Voice/
Multimodal Interaction Homepage: http://www.w3.org/Voice/
This year the conference series celebrates its 10th year. AusWeb04 will be held at the Nara Sea World Resort on the Gold Coast, Queensland, from 3rd to 7th July. The program consists of keynote addresses by national and international speakers, referred paper tracks, a poster session and pre and post conference tutorial and workshop sessions on a wide range of topics. Join delegates from all over and Australia and overseas for a special 10th anniversary conference. Early Bird registrations rates close 30th April 2004.
Conference Home Page: http://ausweb.scu.edu.au
Call for Papers and Posters: http://ausweb.scu.edu.au/aw04/papers/index.html
Online Registration and Payment: https://www.scupayments.com/conf/ausweb04/
The National Information and Library Service (NILS) is running a "Web and Online Accessibility Workshop" in Melbourne on 22 April 2004. (NILS is a joint venture of Vision Australia Foundation, Royal Blind Society of NSW and the Royal Victorian Institute for the Blind).
Workshop info: http://www.visionaustralia.org.au/webaccessibility/workshops/
W3C is pleased to announce that the Finnish Technology Award Foundation board has unanimously presented its first Millennium Technology Prize to W3C Director Tim Berners-Lee. The award is given in one of four disciplines for "outstanding technological achievements that directly promote people's quality of life, are based on humane values, and encourage sustainable economic development."
Millennium Technology Prize: http://www.technologyawards.org/
Tim Berners-Lee: http://www.w3.org/People/Berners-Lee/
Press Release: http://www.technologyawards.org
W3C's Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) has provided an initial response to the Web Access Report released 14 April 2004 by the UK Disabilities Rights Commission. The DRC Report explores the state of Web site accessibility and usability in the UK, and in some sections makes recommendations regarding work done by W3C's Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI).
Initial response: http://www.w3.org/2004/04/wai-drc-statement.html
WAI homepage: http://www.w3.org/WAI/
W3C is pleased to announce the relaunch of the Math Activity. The W3C Membership approved the Math Interest Group and its charter. The group will maintain the MathML W3C Recommendation and continue its task of facilitating the use of mathematics on the Web, for use in science, technology and education. Participation is open to W3C Members.
Charter: http://www.w3.org/Math/Documents/Charter2004
MathML: http://www.w3.org/TR/MathML/
W3C Members: http://www.w3.org/Consortium/Member/List
Math Homepage: http://www.w3.org/Math/
W3C is pleased to announce the advancement of XML Inclusions (XInclude) Version 1.0 to Candidate Recommendation. XInclude introduces a generic mechanism for merging XML documents (information sets) using existing XML constructs-elements, attributes and URI references. Comments and implementation reports are welcome through 28 May.
Xinclude 1.0: http://www.w3.org/TR/2004/CR-xinclude-20040413/
XML Homepage: http://www.w3.org/XML/
Through joint efforts, the RDF in XHTML task force of the Semantic Web Coordination Group and the HTML Working Group has published a Coordination Group Note. Gleaning Resource Descriptions from Dialects of Languages (GRDDL) is a mechanism for encoding RDF statements in XHTML and XML to be extracted by programs such as XSLT transformations.
GRDDL: http://www.w3.org/TR/2004/NOTE-grddl-20040413/
Semantic Web: http://www.w3.org/2001/sw/
HTML Homepage: http://www.w3.org/MarkUp/
The XML Core Working Group has released the First Public Working Draft of xml:id Version 1.0. The specification introduces a predefined attribute name that can always be treated as an ID and hence can always be recognized. Comments are welcome.
xml:id 1.0: http://www.w3.org/TR/2004/WD-xml-id-20040407/
XML Homepage: http://www.w3.org/XML/
The World Wide Web Consortium today released two Document Object Model (DOM) specifications as W3C Recommendations. With DOM Level 3 Core, software developers and script authors manipulate the content, structure and style of Web documents. DOM Level 3 Load and Save allows programs and scripts to load, serialize and filter document contents.
DOM Level 3 Core: http://www.w3.org/TR/2004/REC-DOM-Level-3-Core-20040407/
DOM Level 3 Load and Save: http://www.w3.org/TR/2004/REC-DOM-Level-3-LS-20040407/
Press Release: http://www.w3.org/2004/03/dom-level-3-pr
DOM Homepage: http://www.w3.org/DOM/
So far this year W3C has produced 20 recommendations which is more than were produced in the four years from 1996 to 1999 in total. There are those who say that the core web technologies are established and that there is no longer a role for W3C other than correcting errors and slightly modifying existing recommendations. The record so far in 2004 shows that this is not so. Most of this year's recommendations have been under development for several years and lay the foundation for the Semantic Web. Others in the Voice and Speech lay the foundation for linking the telephone and web together to provide further variety in the forms of publication that can be delivered to your customer from the single XML source document of your information.
Full article at: http://www.w3c.rl.ac.uk/newsletters/04mar.html
Voice Browser talks in Australia: http://w3c.dstc.edu.au/eventsOz.html
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