In a move to get more users to access the Web via mobile devices, the World
Wide Web Consortium (W3C) and the Open Mobile Alliance (OMA) have inked an
agreement to collaborate on specifications.
The two standards bodies Thursday said they will share information to guard
against creating dueling standards for making it easier for users to access
the Internet via Web-enabled phones, cameras or personal digital
assistants.
The W3C and OMA, which develops standards for mobile data services, will
share technical information and specs to help provide solid, workable
standards that benefit developers, product and service providers and users.
The groups will hold meetings together to discuss each other’s progress, but
W3C officials said no timetable has been set for the meetings.
Max Froumentin, spokesman for the W3C’s Multimodal and Voice Working
Group, whose group writes specs to adapt Web content on mobile gadgets, said
the move is an attempt to avoid doing the same work twice — and
differently.
“Now that we have devices that access the Web, there is a potential overlap
between standards bodies,” Froumentin told internetnews.com.
For example, Froumentin’s group works on multimodal communications that
allow speech recognition, keyboard, touch screen and a stylus to be used in
the same session. This would alleviate the clumsiness of using a keyboard on
a mobile smartphone. OMA could conceivably craft service standards that
repeat the work of the multimodal group, causing redundancies.
The W3C/OMA pact comes at a time when the demand for mobile applications
based on platforms such as Microsoft’s .NET or Java is growing
despite the relative immaturity of technologies and the lack of standards to
facilitate them. W3C and OMA hope to change that by collaborating on common
specs that may evolve into standards.
Philipp Hoschka, Interaction Domain Leader at the W3C, said another
reason for the pact is a significant uptake in the interest of the W3C’s
mobile Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) and Synchronized Multimedia
Integration Language (SMIL).
“These are very much driven by the needs of the mobile community,” Hoschka
told
internetnews.com, noting that SVG and SMIL are the basis for
Multimedia Messaging Service, a descendant of Short Messaging Service, which
the OMA is working on. Hoschka said MMS will allow users to send
applications that support slide shows, audio and video from mobile devices.
In other standards news, the Securities and Exchange Commission said it is
seeking public comment on alternative methods and the costs and benefits
associated with data tagged by Extensible Business Reporting Language
(XBRL), an open
specificatio
n
for software that uses XML data tags to describe financial information
for businesses.
The SEC said in a statement it will consider an SEC staff proposal to accept
voluntary supplemental filings of financial data using XBRL, which would
help the agency get a gauge on the types of data tagging currently available
in the market.
The agency may propose a rule this fall that would establish the voluntary
XBRL-tagged filing program beginning with the 2004 calendar year-end
reporting season.
Industry experts love the possibilities of XBRL, which is heartily supported
by software giant Microsoft, which produces its financial statements in
XBRL.
