News Release: W3C Launches Incubator Activity

W3C is launching an Incubator Activity, a new initiative to encourage  
discovery of emerging Web-related technologies that complements the  
current W3C Recommendation Track.

"With the Incubator Activity, W3C Members and Invited Experts can now  
combine Web technology discovery with the outstanding technical  
resources of W3C and see what develops," explained W3C Chief  
Executive Officer Steve Bratt. "We are now seeing multiple proposals  
which are likely to test their wings in the W3C Incubator."

For more information, contact Janet Daly <janet@w3.org> at +1 617 253  
5884 or the W3C Communications Team representative in your region.


W3C Launches Incubator Activity
New Option Available for Exploratory Technical Work at W3C

Web resources

   This press release
	In English: http://www.w3.org/2006/02/incubator-pressrelease.html.en
	In French: http://www.w3.org/2006/02/incubator-pressrelease.html.fr
	In Japanese: http://www.w3.org/2006/02/incubator-pressrelease.html.ja

   W3C's Incubator Activity
         http://www.w3.org/2005/Incubator/

    The charter for the first Incubator Group, to work on Content Labels
         http://www.w3.org/2005/Incubator/wcl/

http://www.w3.org/ -- 8 February 2006 -- Today, the World Wide Web  
Consortium (W3C) announces the launch of its Incubator Activity, a  
new initiative to foster development of emerging Web-related  
technologies that complements the current W3C Recommendation Track.  
The Incubator Activity offers the W3C Membership and the Web  
community a new, streamlined process for discussing and developing  
interesting and possibly controversial ideas that are not (or not  
yet) clear candidates for standardization.

"With the Incubator Activity, W3C Members and Invited Experts can now  
combine Web technology discovery with the outstanding technical  
resources of W3C and see what develops," explained W3C Chief  
Executive Officer Steve Bratt. "We are now seeing multiple proposals  
which are likely to test their wings in the W3C Incubator."

The first Incubator Group will address the topic of "Content Labels."  
The W3C Members who are sponsoring this first Incubator Group are:  
@semantics; Internet Content Rating Association (ICRA); Institute of  
Informatics & Telecommunications, NCSR; Institute for Learning and  
Research Technology (ILRT); University of Bristol; Segala; T-Online;  
Vodafone; and Yahoo!

W3C Provides New Approach for Discovery-stage Work

The W3C Recommendation Track process has a record of success for  
engineering standards that are fundamental to the Web's  
infrastructure. The Recommendation Track facilitates the development  
of high-quality standards that reflect the consensus of the  
Membership, Team, and the public. Coordination within the community,  
interoperability testing, and thorough review are all important  
aspects of the Recommendation Track process.

The Web community has also sought to conduct more exploratory work  
within W3C. The Incubator Activity is designed to nurture emerging  
concepts that may or may not contribute to the future core Web  
architecture, and also technologies traditionally considered part of  
the applications layer. The new streamlined process enables focused  
groups of interested W3C Members and invited experts to start and  
progress new work quickly in an Incubator Group (called an "XG"),  
culminating in an "Incubator Group Report." The Incubator Activity is  
designed to make it easy to move work to the W3C Recommendation Track  
when there is momentum to standardize the results.

First W3C Incubator Group to Study Content Labels

The charter for the W3C Content Label Incubator Group states that a  
goal for the group is to to find " a way of making any number of  
assertions about a resource or group of resources. In order to be  
trustworthy, the label containing those assertions should be testable  
in some way through automated means."

"The XG is really about making it easy for content providers to  
publish data on key characteristics of their material. This will  
allow search engines, aggregators and other systems, having validated  
the data in some way, to personalize the content they offer to end  
users," explained Phil Archer, Chief technical officer for ICRA. "Our  
initial use cases look at identifying such things as suitability for  
mobile devices, conformance with accessibility guidelines,  
trustmarks, relevance to school study and, in ICRA's area of  
interest, suitability for children."

The group expects to publish two documents within one year:

    1. A report that describes the work done by the XG and provides  
the normative framework for making assertions about a resource or a  
group of resources.
    2. A proposal to offer the defined method as an alternative to,  
or perhaps a replacement for, Platform for Internet Content Selection  
(PICS)

Contact America --
     Janet Daly, <janet@w3.org>, +1.617.253.5884 or +1.617.253.2613
Contact Europe --
     Marie-Claire Forgue, <mcf@w3.org>, +33.492.38.75.94
Contact Asia --
     Yasuyuki Hirakawa <chibao@w3.org>, +81.466.49.1170


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, Keio University in Japan, and has  
additional Offices worldwide. For more information see http:// 
www.w3.org/

Received on Wednesday, 8 February 2006 17:52:30 UTC