Australian W3C Office
Australian W3C Office Hello and welcome to the first newsletter from the Australian W3C Office.
The World Wide Web Consortium was created in October 1994 to lead the World Wide Web to its full potential by developing common protocols that promote its evolution and ensure its interoperability. W3C is a vendor neutral organisation with more than 400 Member organizations. The consortium is jointly hosted by three institutions: the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Laboratory for Computer Science (Americas); the National Institute for Research in Computer Science and Control (INRIA, Europe) and Keio University (Asia).
W3C develops technologies (specifications, guidelines, software, and tools) that create a forum for information, commerce, inspiration, independent thought, and collective understanding. W3C's team of experts works with its Members to advance the state of the art in each of the four Domains: Architecture, User Inteface, Technology and Society and the Web Accessibility Initiative. Each Domain is responsible for investigating and leading development in several Activity areas which are critical to the Web's global evolution and interoperability.
Information on W3C activities is freely available at: http://www.w3.org/
DSTC Pty Ltd is the Australian W3C Office. Through DSTC the Australian W3C Office will provide an avenue for Australians to have greater input into W3C activities. W3C will benefit from this interaction by gaining a wider focus and different views of technology and social/cultural impact.
Australian W3C Office offers you:
* regular email newsletters
* a forum for feedback to W3C and from W3C to the local members.
* a national "W3C Day" in Sydney during May 2001. W3C Day will
showcase W3C activities and local membership involvement.
* information and guidance about joining W3C
Australian organisations wishing to work with on a W3C event or project are encouraged to contact the Office.
Australian W3C Office
Level 7, General Purpose South
Staff House Road
The University of Queensland, Qld 4072
Ph: 07 3365 4310
Fax: 07 3365 4311
w3c-dstc@dstc.edu.au
There is one W3C staff member in Australia - Charles McCathieNevile lives and works in Melbourne. He is a member of the Web Accessibility Initiative domain of W3C, working as the Staff contact for the authoring Tool Accessibility Guidelines working group and a member of several other groups. Charles' interests in accessibility include authoring, multimedia and mobile devices, and the use of accessibility as a tool for promoting sound information design.
"Multimedia is an essential component of Web content, and done properly can be a great boon to accessibility. Although it is often used today in a way which makes it a barrier, it is a poorly-built barrier that authors could, and should easily turn into an enhancement of their site. With a fondness for communication and a great diversity Australians are ideally placed to be leaders in this area, which makes this a good time to be here," said Charles.
He also gives presentations on accessibility and works in the Protocols and Formats group reviewing W3C specifications. "It gives me a good broad view of what is going on around the consortium," he said.
Charles can be phoned on 0409 134 136 or emailed - charles@w3.org
On 21 June 21, about 100 people witnessed the first public tests and demonstrations of the Platform for Privacy Preferences Project (P3P). The interoperability session gave companies the opportunity to unveil new prototypes, to test them with other P3P services, and to provide input into the P3P design process. The prototypes are early versions of P3P-compliant tools expected to be offered to end users in the coming year.
The User Agent demonstrations were:
IDcide Privacy Companion: a browser extension allowing users to find out whether a site is using cookies, and to block selected cookies. Note the ticked items below following P3P on the top row indicating that the site has a good P3P policy as far as the user is concerned and IDcide allows the cookies to be exchanged.
ENC's Privacy Information Management System: The browser part uses a proxy server to fetch P3P policies and compares them with user preferences. The system also includes an authoring tool to generate P3P policies and a site bureau where Web sites can register their privacy policies.
YOUpowered's Orby Privacy Plus: allows users to accept or deny cookies and determine how well a site matches their privacy preferences. The Orby Trust Meter displays a trust rating determined by analyzing a site's P3P policy. Here is a view of the Orby toolbar.
AT&T and Microsoft's User Agent: this is a jointly developed browser helper object for Internet Explorer. It adds a privacy button to the browser window that allows users to set up their privacy preferences, check how well a site's P3P policy matches their preferences, and view a site's privacy policy in P3P or human-readable format. This shows that the site uses P3P and cookies. It has a privacy seal and the user can click to find out its policy.
A Conference, MathML and Math on the Web, will take place on 19-21 October at the University of Illinois. A tutorial, Practical Scientific and Technical Publishing Using MathML on the first day will give a practical introduction to MathML 2.0. An overview of applications for rendering, computing, and authoring MathML will be presented.
The Conference itself starts on Friday, 20 October. W3C will be presenting the MathML support provided by Amaya including the editing of MathML within the browser/editor.
Full details can be found at the web site http://www.mathmlconference.org/
Dr Hoylen Sue will deliver a presentation on XML at the XML Summit in Sydney on 5th September. Hoylen will give an overview of W3C, talk about the benefits of using XML and how XML enables eCommerce. He will also discuss the future directions of XML. For more information see: http://www.ibcoz.com.au/GX80
The total number of W3C Members has risen to 437. Recent new Members are:
B-Bop Associates: known as the XML Platform Company, B-Bop is a provider of an XML platform for Web-based content management and e-business information exchange applications to enable businesses to transform, store, and repurpose critical information between their customers, suppliers and business partners.
Charles Schwab & Co., Inc.: the financial services provider and the world's largest online broker.
Enterworks, Inc.: Web-enabled data integration solutions for healthcare, financial services, telecommunications, manufacturing, and government customers.
Evalis AG: a German Decision Making Company.
Extreme Logic: Atlanta-based Extreme Logic, previously Omni Technology Centers, builds and delivers e-business solutions, focusing on technology strategy, business process design, application development and technical architecture.
Hiawatha Island Software Company: HiSoftware of Concord, New Hampshire, recently launched metaPackager, a knowledge management software solution that enables cataloging and archiving of unstructured, previously un-indexable information, such as email, PDFs, maps, drawings, scanned paper documents, and Wave files.
Invention Machine Corporation: this Boston Company's motto is Powering the Semantic Web. Companies use Invention Machine's technology to automatically build knowledge bases and populate Internet portals and Web sites.
Labyrinten Data AB: Labyrinten is a subsidiary of Dolphin Computer Access Ltd, United Kingdom. Dolphin is a leading company within the area of adaptive computer equipment for people who are non sighted or partially sighted. Labyrinten Data AB specialises in digital audio, multimedia and applications for people with disabilities.
Massachusetts Medical Society: founded in 1781, the MMS is the oldest continuously operating medical society in the United States.
MEGA International: an e-business modeling company. The company is a contributor to the development of OMG's UML specification and is active in the bodies associated with e-business and XML. MEGA has been active in the Electronic Business XML Initiative (ebXML) which is a joint venture of the United Nations' Centre for Trade Facilitation and Electronic Business (CEFACT) and the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS). ebXML is an open, vendor-neutral project to establish a global technical and semantic framework that will enable XML to be used in a uniform and consistent manner for the exchange of all electronic business information via the Internet.
National Research Council Canada: NRC is Canada's premier science and technology research organization, a leader in scientific and technical research, the diffusion of technology and the dissemination of scientific and technical information.
Netegrity, Inc.: this Waltham based company's major product is SiteMinder, an e-commerce infrastructure solution that provides secure portal management capabilities as well as single sign-on and authentication management, entitlement management, distributed administration and affiliate services.
ObjectSpace, Inc.: OpenBusiness is Dallas-based ObjectSpace's e-service solution that enables B2B partners to build integration solutions rapidly without the need for alterations to existing software applications.
POCIT Labs AB: a Stockhom-based company.
Seiko Epson Corporation: the colour solutions company.
Shana Corporation: this Canadian company is developing and demonstrating the use of XForms-compliant XML documents in various components of its integrated e-form management solution that addresses the fundamental challenge of managing large numbers of electronic forms across the enterprise.
Vocal Point, Inc.: San Francisco-based Vocal Point software allows end-users to obtain Web content using spoken commands via any telephone, including wireless without content rewriting.
Vordel Ltd.: Dublin-based Vordel provides fast track B2B solutions. TalkXML is a powerful suite of applications that enable an enterprise to easily establish secure communication channels to any organisation in its B2B business network.
YOUpowered Inc.: based in New York, it is a leading provider of permission based personalization software for ebusiness and consumers. The company offers software that allows computer users to take advantage of P3P to match their privacy preferences to the privacy policy at websites.
ZoomON AB: the company's innovative Java-based graphics technology and content management tools allow users to zoom, pan and focus on visual details with remarkable clarity via any standard Web browser.
Many thanks to Charles McCathieNevile and the UK W3C Office for contributions.
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W3C http://www.w3.org
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Charles McCathieNevile http://www.w3.org/People/Charles
DSTC http://www.dstc.edu.au
W3C Members http://www.w3.org/Consortium/Member/List
The following are examples of P3P compliant Web sites:
AOL http://www.aol.com
AT&T http://www.att.com
Microsoft http://www.microsoft.com
W3C's P3P testbed site http://p3ptestbed-1.w3.org/
The White House http://www.whitehouse.gov
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