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Call for sponsors for the Web and TV workshop

December 23, 2010

W3C just annonced a sponsorship program dedicated to the 2nd Web and TV workshop, to happen in Berlin, on 8-9 February 2011.

W3C proposes this sponsorship program to enable organizations to showcase their business and underscore their commitment to the shared goals of the W3C. The sponsorship benefits detailed below allow workshop sponsors to reach out to all stakeholders and decision makers worldwide and to be associated with breakthrough innovations that are paving the future of the Web.

The deadline for requesting to take part in this opportunity is 1 February 2011.

Sponsorship benefits:

  1. For non-W3C Members — 4000 Euros

    For organizations that are not members of W3C:

    • Sponsor logo in print and online marketing communications:
      • All Workshop Web pages
      • On-site printed materials
      • On-site signage
    • Spoken acknowledgment at the workshop
    • Sponsor mention in press release
    • One guest pass to observe Workshop
  2. For W3C Members — 2500 Euros

    For W3C Members:

  • Sponsor logo in print and online marketing communications:
    • All Workshop Web pages
    • On-site printed materials
    • On-site signage
  • Spoken acknowledgment at the workshop
  • Sponsor mention in press release

For further information about this sponsorship program please contact Marie-Claire Forgue <mcf@w3.org>.

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Web and TV – W3C workshop in Berlin

November 25, 2010

As part of a series of workshop to bring the Web community, the television industry and other producers of consumer electronics together, the OMWeb Team is proud to announce the Second W3C Web and TV Workshop, hosted by Fraunhofer-FOKUS in Berlin, Germany, on 8-9 February 2011.

Participants in this workshop will share insights on:

  • State of the Art, e.g. the role of Web-based approaches for nomadic user interfaces
  • HTML5 and TV, e.g. the advantages of supporting HTML5 such as its rich feature set, global language support, or support of broadcast video using the <video> element.
  • Standardization Needs, e.g. the requirements for extensions to existing standards to improve support of broadcasting on various non-PC devices
  • Accessibility, e.g. the value provided by Web technologies for TV accessibility
  • Hot Topics such as the integration of P2P and the Web for TV content distribution, support for “second screen” scenarios, or the role of DRM and micro-payment for Web and TV.

The Call for Papers details the topics of interest and provides useful information on participation and Position Papers submission. Deadline for Position Papers is 7 January 2011, but an expression of interest is encouraged as soon as possible to help organizers plan the workshop.

This second workshop is a follow-up of the first one held in Japan in September 2010. It will serve to continue the discussions (see summary of the workshop, minutes, the workshop agenda (including talk slides) and the position papers submitted). A W3C Interest Group on “Web and TV” is currently being created (see draft charter), and the results of the second workshop will be fed into the work of this interest group.

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Can Web people and TV people really get along?

October 13, 2010

I sure hope so – but there’s work to be done first.

Last night I attended a networking event in London that looked at the issue of the Web on TV. There was a good deal of discussion about accessing TV content on PCs, mobiles and tablet computers, as well as traditional TVs of course. David Mercer from Strategy Analytics talked about some research they’d done asking people what is the one device they wouldn’t want to be without. Taken overall, just over half of the UK population said it was their TV. Limit the age range to the under 30s and the number of people who say the TV is their most important consumer electronics device falls to 25%. Following the event on Twitter, Vodafone’s Dan Appelquist commented “for my kids, BBC iPlayer + Apple TV = TV. They are (mostly) not interested in live TV.”

However, we mustn’t lose sight of the enormous legacy of scheduled TV. It remains the method by which most TV viewed. Switching on the telly shouldn’t automatically mean a consumer has to search through thousands of choices to find a programme to watch.

From my point of view, perhaps unsurprisingly, the key speaker was Anthony Rose. Having lead the development of the BBC iPlayer he’s now CTO of Project Canvas, now branded youview. Set for launch in Britain next year, this will be a single set top box (probably under-set box to be honest!) that will handle live TV plus catch up services, PayTV and includes a PVR. With this, and his experience of the BBC iPlayer in mind, Anthony used the term Augmented TV. Now that sounds promising.

The programme you’re watching may be part of a linear schedule or something you’ve specifically chosen, but if you can interact with it, either through the TV itself or another device in your hand/on your lap, then we’re making progress towards an integrated user experience. Programmes like BBC Question Time regularly trend on Twitter already.

However… depressingly, Web technologies were not generally discussed. There was a question from Steve Clee of Datpresenter about semantics and search which, worryingly, got an answer along the lines of “oh the standards aren’t in place for that yet, there’s a long way to go to get all that integrated.” I hope I wasn’t the only one wanting to challenge that assertion (I mean, destroy that assertion) but the time for questions was limited and I didn’t have my say. Looking quickly at the tech specs around youview, there’s no reference to linking the metadata. Likewise, another UK IPTV service, SeeSaw, doesn’t appear to expose any metadata. And yet everyone in the room acknowledges the need for better search, better aggregation and greater personalisation, perhaps through social networking. Facebook and the IMDB’s use of RDFa in their Open Graph Protocol seems a shoe-in for this, but will the broadcasters embrace it?

And here we hit the big issue: DRM. I paraphrase Turner Broadcasting’s Casey Harwood only slightly by saying “it’s our content, we own the rights and we’ll do what we want with it.” Of course that’s true, and proper copyright control is important for the marketplace. That attitude appears at first sight to sit poorly with the Web which is built on the principle of openness and shared resources. However, the reality is that the Web has been a rather successful platform for eCommerce! It offers huge potential for augmented programming, search, recommendations and more – just the things the broadcasters want. But you’d never know it from this event.

Technically, TV and the Web are converging. Culturally and ideologically, it seems that we have a much bigger gap to navigate.

These are the kind of issues I look forward to developing at our forthcoming TPAC meeting in Lyon where I’ll be moderating a session with panellists including Daniel Park from Samsung and my colleague Kazuyuki Ashimura who lead the recent Web on TV workshop in Tokyo and who is now working on a new Interest Group Charter.

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Introduction to SVG: Online Course Open for Early Bird Registration

September 13, 2010

As part of the OMWeb Project, W3C will be running online training courses to help developers make the most of the latest opportunities in rich media on the Web. The first such course is an introduction to Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) which begins on Monday 11th October.

W3C began working on SVG, back in 1998 with stable standards first emerging in 2003 so it’s hardly ‘new.’ The standards have been implemented in a number of environments for years, however, as work on the second edition of the core standard is reaching the advanced stages of development, widespread attention has been prompted recently due to Microsoft’s announcement of its intention to provide native support for SVG within Internet Explorer 9. This means that all the major Web browsers from Apple, Google, Microsoft, Firefox and Opera support SVG natively. Cell phone and mobile device manufacturers like Ikivo, BitFlash, Apple, Qualcomm, Nokia, Sony Ericsson, Motorola, Samsung, LG, and Siemens all provide various levels of support too.

SVG’s time has come. It’s an incredibly powerful technology for creating high resolution, interactive, dynamic graphics to add real power to any Web site, whether viewed on a small screen or a stadium-sized display.

To lead the course, W3C is delighted to have secured the services of professor David Dailey of Slippery Rock University in Pennsylvania. Participants on the course will have access not only to materials created by Prof. Dailey but will receive feedback directly from him on assignments submitted and questions posed in the discussion forum.

Registration for the course is now open with full price at €125, but early bird registration is available until Friday 1st October for just €95.

Full details of the course content, how W3C online courses work and more can be found in the course description.

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W3C SVG Meetup – 6 September 2010, Paris

September 6, 2010

W3C is organizing a SVG meetup in Paris on Monday 6 September at La Cantine, from 7pm. Four speakers will  give  updates on the SVG specification and its integration with HTML5, and more:

  • Chris Lilley (W3C)
  • Erik Dahlström (Opera Software)
  • Doug Schepers (W3C)
  • Julien Quint (Consultant)

There will be live demos (not to be missed!) that will show the power of SVG and how this Web standard will soon be crucial to numerous applications.

Find out more at the W3C SVG meetup page and register online  at La Cantine’s Web site.

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W3C Opens Typography on the Web

August 17, 2010

W3C attends TypeCon 2010 this week for community discussion about Web Open File Format (WOFF), the new open format for enabling high-quality typography for the Web. WOFF expands the typographic palette available to Web designers, improving readability, accessibility, internationalization, branding, and search optimization.

Though still in the early phases of standardization, WOFF represents a pivotal agreement among browser vendors, foundries and font service providers who have convened at W3C to address the long-standing goal of advancing Web typography.

“As a key Web font standard developed by W3C, WOFF 1.0 represents a universal solution for enabling advanced typography on the Web,” said Vladimir Levantovsky, W3C WebFonts Working Group chair and senior technology strategist at Monotype Imaging, Inc. “With the backing of browser companies and font vendors, who are making their fonts available for licensing in WOFF, this new W3C Recommendation-track document will bring rich typographic choice for content creators, Web authors and brand managers.

The standardization of WOFF reflects cross-industry collaborative effort to make a single, interoperable format for WebFonts. Participants in the Web Fonts Working Group includes representatives from browser vendors, font foundries and typeface designers: Adobe, Apple, Bitstream, Google, LettError, Microsoft, Monotype Imaging, Mozilla, Open Font Library, Opera, Tiro Typeworks, and Type Supply. Chris Lilley is W3C staff contact for the group.

Roger Black (the End User Perspective), Bryan Mason (Font Metrics), Raph Levien (Google Developments), and the members of the Web Fonts Working Group, will participate in a panel at TypeCon 2010 on Friday, 20 August.

Read the press release.

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Augmented Reality: A Point of Interest for the Web

July 22, 2010

Last month’s Augmented Reality on the Web workshop in Barcelona has sparked a good deal of debate within and around W3C. As the final report shows, the workshop brought together many different companies and organizations working on or with a direct interest in the field of Augmented Reality – but how can W3C help in this area?

One outcome is clear: we need a method for representing data about points of interest and proposals are advancing to achieve this in a new POI Working Group. Quite what data needs to be represented concerning Points of Interest depends on who you ask. For some it’s a question of annotating a given point on the Earth’s surface where the longitude, latitude and altitude are all key identifiers. For others it’s more a question of the point at a given distance and angle from an object that may or may not be static as seen by an observer who may themselves also be moving.

Different communities are involved here: as well as the augmented reality community, the linked data community has a keen interest. There are other facets to the discussion too and this is what will make the POI working group’s work interesting!

The workshop also recommended that a new POI WG should go further and consider the wider picture of how AR does, or might, relate to the Web. Privacy is a major concern; device APIs are critical enablers; do CSS and SVG have sufficient power to support AR functions? Even the use of HTTP as a transport mechanism is questioned by some given the real time nature of AR.

To join the debate about all this, please subscribe to the Point of Interest mailing list and keep an eye out for calls for review of the charter in the near future.

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HTML5 is available in W3C’s Cheatsheet!

July 20, 2010

This is another reason why you can use HTML5 today!

Dominique Hazaël-Massieux (W3C) has managed to integrate the various new elements and attributes of the HTML5 specification in the  latest release of the cheatsheet.  As a reminder, the cheatsheet is a mobile-friendly Web application that provides a compilation of useful knowledge extracted from W3C specifications (both available in the Web version and in the Android application.)

All the data are extracted from HTML: The Markup Language Reference, the specification maintained by Mike Smith that describes the markup aspects of HTML5.

Please contribute to the work! Feedback, comments and suggestions are very much appreciated!

Screenshot of video element in autocomplete listScreenshot of details on video element

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Web on TV – W3C Workshops

July 15, 2010

W3C has begun to organize a series of workshops to bring the Web community, the television industry and other producers of consumer electronics together.  Participants in these workshops will have the opportunity to share their own perspectives, requirements, and ideas to ensure that emerging global standards meet their needs.

Evolution of Web technologies

The explosion of the mobile device market demonstrates how consumers have come to expect and rely on access to the network from anywhere, at any time, including from mobile computers, phones, automobiles, and more.  Though consumers do not yet have the same expectations about their televisions, this will surely change in the near future given the importance of television in people’s lives, ongoing display and feature improvements, and the opportunity for new services created by increased connectivity, such as:

  • the ability to immediately purchase through the Internet items advertised during a commercial
  • using applications running in a browser on the television to dim lighting in the home, program a DVR, or control other consumer electronics
  • automatically pausing a program when receiving a videoconference request (through VoIP) on the screen
  • watching Internet TV on a television set

There are significant business opportunities in rising to the challenge of satisfying this desire for connectivity and ensuring that people have access to the Web from their televisions.

The demand for access to applications, video, and other network services continues to grow.  The Web platform itself continues its expansion to support mobile devices, television, home appliances, in-car systems, and more consumer electronics.  To meet the growing demand, the Web platform of the future will require smarter integration of non-PC devices with Web technology so that both hardware and software vendors can provide richer Web applications on various devices at lower costs.

First W3C workshop in Tokyo, Japan ; 2-3 Sept. 2010

Participants in this first Workshop will share insights on topics such as the advantages of supporting HTML5 (such as its rich feature set, global language support, and support for accessibility), compatibility with existing television technology, performance issues, the transition from existing approaches to Web-based ones, digital rights management, nomadic user interfaces (where users change devices without losing the flow of their activity), and more.

Web on TV
2-3 September 2010
Mita, Tokyo, Japan
http://www.w3.org/2010/09/web-on-tv/

Plans for a Second W3C workshop in Europe ; beg. 2011

The OMWeb team plans for a second Workshop, in Europe, likely during the first quarter of 2011.  If you are interested in early involvement in the Workshop in Europe  (such as joining the program committee), please contact us!

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Augmented Reality on the Web – a Brief Synopsis and a Call to Action!

June 24, 2010

AR Work to Start at W3C – Make Yourself Heard!

Last week’s W3C Workshop: Augmented Reality on the Web attracted over 40 participants and 22 papers. The participants represented a broad range of telecom operators, device manufacturers, AR service delivery companies, AR users from the advertising world, academics and standards bodies – a very diverse group of people brought together as users of an equally diverse range of technologies.

A full report is being prepared but this brief blog post gives an overview of the event and invites you to help create and join the working group that is being formed as a result of it. All papers and slides are linked from the workshop agenda.

We heard how AR is used in the building industry and medicine, how it can be used to visualise sensor data, and how reality can be augmented with audible overlays just as much as visual ones using very similar technologies. AR is not a new technology – it’s used extensively already to help with city planning and medical practices, and there is a lot of exciting work going on to create and manipulate 3D images.

The focus of the workshop, however, was very much on the kind of AR that matches a dataset against a user’s context, primarily their location (so mobile is a key word here as well). Examples include the AR browsers from Wikitude, Layar and Acrossair. Want to see what the Brandeburg Gate looked like when the Berlin Wall was still in place? Point your smartphone at this most famous of European landmarks and you’ll see it on your screen. Likewise streets through the ages, the occupants of modern buildings, Wikipedia articles on nearby points of interest and so on.

The possibilities for AR are very exciting and everyone at the workshop was keen to see rapid progress but there are factors holding us up. One of these is, rightly, privacy concerns. Being able to point your phone at someone at a conference, have it recognise that person and pull up lots of adapt about them sounds really attractive – but such a system will rely on data published in, say, a social network that was never designed to be used in that way. Is that clever technology or an invasion of privacy? In truth it’s probably both. Given enough information about you and your preferences, all sorts of icons, offers and pointers could be added to your phone’s field of view – not least commercial advertising. Should your phone’s view of the Eiffel Tower or the Statue of Liberty be ‘augmented’ with a clip from a forthcoming movie set in that location?

The other factor slowing down AR development, particularly on the Web, is a lack of relevant interoperable standards. The existing Web standards stack has a lot to offer: HTML, XML, JSON, SVG, CSS and more are all used to good effect, but there are some steps required for the integration of a live image with a data stream (pretty much the definition of AR) that are not yet available outside proprietary systems.

Access to device functions is a key area and both the W3C Device API and Policy Working Group and the Geolocation Working Group are addressing many of these between them. But what about the data? How can data about points of interest be published and used in the kind of open way that underlies the success of the Web itself? How should this fit in with linked data? How can we safeguard user privacy and publishers’ business models?

This will be the starting point for a new Points of Interest Working Group. There’s a lot to do yet, not least make sure we have good communications with the Open Geospatial Consortium, owners of KML, the standard used in Google Earth, the Web 3D Consortium, the OMA, and others who have a keen interest in this space. Some existing efforts in this area are highly relevant too: we hope to include the expertise and experience behind ARML and the KHARMA framework within the Working Group.

Work will begin very shortly on a charter for the new group but you don’t have to wait until it’s set up. On the contrary, you can help to shape the charter (which sets out what W3C will ask it to do) by subscribing to the mailing list right now. This is a public list with archive. If you want to know more about developments in AR at W3C drop me a line directly.

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