Netscape MCF announcement

[Tony Barry]

Apologies for cross posting but this would seem to be an important
announcements for Libraries.  Having used the Hot Sauce implementation of
MCF the 3D paridgm for information navigation is very powerful.

Tony

>Date: Fri, 13 Jun 1997 14:13:37 -0700
>To: search at mccmedia.com, robots at mccmedia.com
>From: Nick Arnett <narnett at verity.com>
>Subject: Netscape MCF announcement
>Sender: search-request at mail.mccmedia.com
>
>Netscape Proposes New Standard Allowing Developers to Organize Information
>on The Web and Corporate Intranets
>
>MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. -- Netscape Communications Corporation (Nasdaq: NSCP)
>today announced it has submitted a new proposal, entitled "Meta Content
>Framework using XML," to the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C).
>"Meta-content" is information about how online content is organized, in
>order to make it easier to manage information on Internet and Intranet
>sites. The Meta Content Framework (MCF) provides a common way for Web sites
>and corporate Intranets to describe all of their content in a summarized
>form, which can then be used for various purposes such as site mapping,
>indexing, content monitoring, and personalizing third party content.
>
>First introduced by Apple Computer in September 1996, MCF quickly gained
>support from a number of key industry partners including Netscape, and today
>is being used by more than 350 Web sites.  As one of the earliest supporters
>of MCF, Netscape has now extended leadership in helping to establish MCF as
>an open standard by formally submitting the proposal to the W3C.
>
>"Rather than having independent formats for site mapping, Web crawling,
>indexing, parental controls, and a range of other applications, Netscape has
>recognized a need in the developer community for a standard way to represent
>meta-content," said Rick Schell, senior vice president and general manager
>of the client product division at Netscape.  "This proposed standard is a
>significant milestone because it provides both information publishers and
>application developers with a single, unified method for organizing
>information everywhere."
>
>"As the amount of information on the Web continues to increase at a
>phenomenal rate, a common meta-content standard will become as important
>tomorrow as HTML, the common content standard, has become today," said Larry
>Tesler, chief scientist at Apple Computer.  "We commend Netscape for their
>leadership in ensuring that new Internet standards are truly platform
>neutral and interoperate well with existing standards.  We support their
>submission of MCF to the W3C for consideration as the open standard for
>meta-content."
>
>By structuring content using MCF, information can then be used for various
>purposes, including site mapping for easier navigation, indexing for use by
>a search engine, content monitoring, parental control, scheduling proactive
>downloading of content, personalizing third party content, and a wide
>variety of other applications which ultimately offer greater efficiencies in
>information management.  The proposed MCF standard is very broad in scope,
>and can be used to describe the organization, structure and other
>meta-content about a diverse set of things ranging from Web sites to file
>systems to email threads and legacy databases.  In doing so, MCF provides
>applications a new framework for viewing, manipulating and associating
>networked collections of information.
>
>"Meta Content Framework is an often-cited piece of work within the community
>of developers who work on knowledge representations," said Ralph Swick,
>Technical Staff member of W3C's Technology & Society Domain.
>"Several working groups within the W3C have clearly defined a need for a
>standard way to define meta-content, so the 'MCF Using XML' proposal comes
>at a very opportune time."
>
>In keeping with Netscape's "Open Standards Guarantee," an open letter
>published on the Netscape Internet site earlier this week, Netscape has
>submitted the proposal on MCF to the W3C well before any specific feature
>that takes advantage of the functionality has been included in Netscape
>products. The "Open Standards Guarantee" can be found at
>http://home.netscape.com/focus3/comprod/colums/intranet/ open_standards.html.
>
>Netscape Communications Corporation is a leading provider of open software
>for linking people and information over enterprise networks and the
>Internet. The company offers a full line of clients, servers, development
>tools and commercial applications to create a complete platform for
>next-generation, live online applications.  Traded on Nasdaq under the
>symbol "NSCP," Netscape Communications Corporation is based in Mountain
>View, California.
>
>NOTE:  Netscape is a trademark of Netscape Communications Corporation, which
>is registered in the United States and other jurisdictions.  Netscape
>Communications, Netscape Communicator and the Netscape Communications logo
>are trademarks of Netscape Communications Corporation.  Other product and
>brand names are trademarks of their respective owners.
>
>Product Manager, Categorization and Visualization
>Verity Inc. -- Connecting People with Information
>
>Phone: 408-542-2164     Fax: 408-541-1600
>Home office: 408-733-7613         narnett at verity.com
>http://www.verity.com
>

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