Tim Berners-Lee on government data

During TPAC, we sat down for a chat with the Director of the W3C, Sir Tim Berners-Lee. During the interview, Tim filled us in about his goals for this year with regards to getting the world’s  governments to open up the people’s data (yes “raw data now!”). We grilled him about what that means: does it really mean “raw” or is it really an RDF conspiracy? Tim has some great anecdotes about the uses of raw data and what we, as citizens, can achieve if we work together and get governments to give us raw data now! (don’t be shy! shout it out! I sure as hell did).

Tim Berners Lee on Govenment Data from Standards Suck on Vimeo.

TPAC Wrap-up

Whoa! Apologies for dropping off the radar! I was supposed to upload this video before Anne and I took off to Tanzania to climb Mt Kilimanjaro, but had a crazy week at work and didn’t get time. Anyway, here is the Anne’s, Lachlan’s, and Marcos’ take on TPAC. What we learned, some interesting (and hopefully still relevant) news about the W3C, and a summary of what some of the key working groups (HTML, Web Apps, CSS) reached consensus on during the week! Enjoy!

Uhuru Peak

On top of the roof of Africa, Marcos and I took a nineteen second holiday break to bring you the following Standards Suck episode. It hopefully explains why we went on hiatus for a while. Publishing of the remaining episodes made during TPAC will hopefully resume shortly.

Chaals on Web Apps and HTML5

Here in Mandelieu Marcos Caceres interviewed Anne’s manager on Web Apps, being a chair, and RDF & HTML5. Charles McCathieNeville works for Opera Software (duh) and is the Chief Standards Officer there. He travels around the world promoting standards and discussing them. And in some other time he chairs the W3C Web Apps Working Group and edits the progress events specification.

Standards Suck at TPAC 2008!

Anne, Lachlan, and Marcos will be bringing you coverage from W3C’s most important event of the year: Technical Plenary / Advisory Committee Meetings Week (TPAC). It’s basically W3C’s social event where all the working groups have a chance to intermingle, exchange ideas, eat too much and get really drunk! yes, we will have the cameras ready to catch all the action!:)

In this episode, Marcos and Anne talk about which groups are meeting throughout the week and other happenings.

If you want us to interview anyone in particular, please let us know!

GRDDL, bridging the interwebs?

Marcos catches up with Harry Halpin, W3C’s GRDDL Working Group Chair and evil genius, at the Oxford Internet Institute in the UK. Harry talks about the use cases for GRDDL (Gleaning Resource Descriptions from Dialects of Languages – yep, great name! 😛 ), an alternative way to view the Web, and gives some excellent suggestions as to how we can bridge the HTML Web and Semantic Web divide.


GRDDL, bridging the interwebs? from Marcos Caceres on Vimeo.

ARIA in HTML5

Welcome to our two part discussion on ARIA (Accessible Rich Internet Applications) and HTML5.

During XTech2008, Anne and I had a chance to sit down and talk about the current state of the “ARIA in HTML5” debate. Anne gives an overview of ARIA and the controversy over naming of ARIA attributes and makes some suggestions as to how the community can move forward.

Part 1:

Part 2:

Next week, Anne sits down with Lachlan Hunt, editor of the W3C’s Selectors API specification, to chat about implementations, open issues, and where that spec is headed.

(We will try to make the original video files available in due course. Flash sucks too, but it’s our best bet currently.)