[Fwd: News Release: A Sprinkle of POWDER Fosters Trust on the Web]

In case you missed this... POWDER is now a Recommendation :-)

I've said it before but I'll say it again: thank you to the WG members 
and for the companies and organisations that supported them, the folk 
who reviewed and commented on the drafts as they emerged and to the 
many, many people who have contributed ideas and suggestions. I'd list 
them but the danger, of course, is missing someone out which would be 
very, very bad.

If you've been to a POWDER face to face, if you've been collared at 
TPAC, if you've read anything about POWDER and sent comments to the 
public list, if you've asked a question, no matter how awkward, if 
you've been a team contact (we've had two officially plus input from 
others) - my deepest thanks.

Now... we just have make sure everyone knows what POWDER can do and how 
it can help.

Raise a glass...

Phil.


-------- Original Message --------
Subject: News Release: A Sprinkle of POWDER Fosters Trust on the Web
Resent-Date: Tue, 01 Sep 2009 16:12:20 +0000
Resent-From: w3c-ac-members@w3.org
Date: Tue, 01 Sep 2009 18:11:45 +0200
From: Marie-Claire Forgue <mcf@w3.org>
To: w3c-ac-forum@w3.org

Dear W3C AC Representative,

W3C just issued a press release announcing the publication of 3 POWDER
documents as W3C recommendations.

The announcement is at:
	http://www.w3.org/2009/09/powder-pr.html

and quoted below.

Kind regards,

- Marie-Claire Forgue, W3C Communications

-------------------
A Sprinkle of POWDER Fosters Trust on the Web

New W3C Standard to Raise Confidence in Site Quality, Relevance and
Authenticity

http://www.w3.org/ — 1 September 2009 — 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).

"People ask me how to pick out useful content among the vast amounts of
information on the Web," said POWDER Working Group Chair Phil Archer of
the Institute of Informatics & Telecommunications (IIT), NCSR
Demokritos. "POWDER contributes to the solution. POWDER statements
combined with authentication technology can help people find information
that meets their own standards for quality, automatically."

Kai Scheppe of Deutsche Telekom AG added, "From a content provider's
perspective this new means of describing Web resources opens up new
possibilities for our customers to discover content with a higher degree
of relevance. We are currently in the process of bringing POWDER
documents online and look forward to broad spectrum adoption of this
technology by information providers, aggregators and users alike."

POWDER Descriptions Help Automate Content Discovery

When content providers use POWDER descriptions, people can use tools to
help discover relevant content. For instance, a site wishing to promote
the mobile-friendliness of its content or applications can tell the
world using POWDER. Content providers start by creating content that is
conformant with W3C's mobileOK scheme and validating it with the
mobileOK Checker. The checker generates POWDER statements that apply to
individual pages. But a key feature of POWDER is that it lets content
providers make statements about groups of resources — typically all the
pages, images and videos on a Web site. Other tools such as the i-sieve
POWDER generator (not from W3C) generates POWDER statements about the
mobile-friendliness of entire sites. Once these POWDER statements are in
place they can be used by search engines or other tools to help people
find mobile-friendly content.

POWDER statements alone do not guarantee quality or relevance, but
POWDER statements do promote accountability: they are always attributed
to a "publisher." Knowing that people seek to build trust via the Web,
publishers can take the next step by ensuring that their POWDER
statements can be authenticated automatically. One consequence is that
people will no longer have to "click to verify" trustmarks. Instead,
tools can automate the verification, making life simpler for users while
reducing the likelihood of spoofing.

"We continue to study the application of POWDER," said Phil Archer.
"With support from the EU we are examining POWDER and general trustmarks
(in the Quatro Plus project) and identifying quality health-related Web
resources (the MedIEQ project)."

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.

Press Contacts:
--------------
Contact Americas, Australia —
     Ian Jacobs, <ij@w3.org>, +1.718.260.9447 or +1.617.253.2613
Contact Europe, Africa and the Middle East —
     Marie-Claire Forgue, <mcf@w3.org>, +33 6 76 86 33 41

About the World Wide Web Consortium [W3C]:
-----------------------------------------
The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is an international consortium where
Member organizations, a full-time staff, and the public work together to
develop Web standards. W3C primarily pursues its mission through the
creation of Web standards and guidelines designed to ensure long-term
growth for the Web. Over 400 organizations are Members of the
Consortium. W3C is jointly run by the MIT Computer Science and
Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (MIT CSAIL) in the USA, the European
Research Consortium for Informatics and Mathematics (ERCIM)
headquartered in France and Keio University in Japan, and has additional
Offices worldwide. For more information see http://www.w3.org/

###





-- 


Phil Archer
W3C Mobile Web Initiative
http://www.w3.org/Mobile

http://philarcher.org

Received on Tuesday, 1 September 2009 16:33:27 UTC