Joshfire has officially become a W3C Member to support open Web standards and contribute to linked data standardization efforts.

“I am very pleased to welcome Joshfire, first startup to join W3C as part of our Startup Membership program” says Bernard Gidon, EMEA Business Development Leader. “We are looking forward for them to work hand in hand with other W3C Members and shape the future of the Web.”

Joshfire develops cross-device applications. We use the term “cross-device” in its broadest acceptance. It encompasses usual suspects (mobile devices, tablets, desktops), recently connected devices (TV, set-top boxes), as well as connected objects of all kinds such as Le Miroir. These devices have heterogeneous form factors and purposes but share two important properties: they are connected to the Internet and run Web technologies.

Not surprisingly, Joshfire uses Web standards throughout its products to deliver great user experiences across platforms. The Joshfire Factory is no different. Factory templates are HTML5 applications, wrapped into native shims when necessary for deployment. Datasources that serve as template inputs are normalized according to schema.org and other vocabularies from the Semantic Web.

We believe that open Web standards are key to innovation in the Internet of things and we are proud to be  the first startup to join W3C under the Startup Membership program. Joining W3C is a first step. We will, of course, monitor progress towards standardization of HTML5, CSS, device APIs and related specifications but, as a startup, we cannot possibly contribute to all on-going efforts in W3C. Our short- to mid-term priorities are:

• Data normalization: in the Joshfire Factory, datasources serve as entry points for application templates. To ease data processing, feeds need to be normalized so that templates may integrate data whether the items originate from a content provider or from another one. We will contribute to discussions of the Web Schemas Task Force of the Semantic Web Interest Group for possible extensions to schema.org as it provides a useful core vocabulary to represent data.
• Linked data format: once normalized, data feeds are returned to templates in a JSON structure that is particularly easy to parse and process in JavaScript. We are keeping an eye on JSON-LD and will follow the corresponding JSON for Linking Data Community Group with a view to standardizing JSON-LD.
• Adoption of the Web platform: developing Web applications in heterogeneous environments is never easy. Fragmentation means that a lot of time is lost hacking a way around incomplete or not yet available implementations of a given standard. We will contribute to the Core Mobile Web Platform Community Group and follow the discussions of the Web Media Profile Task Force of the Web and TV Interest Group.

The web is our home. Prototyping is our second nature. We are looking forward to contributing to Web standards.