ANU to take world wide web lead for Australia
The Australian National University (ANU) has been chosen to host the Australian office of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C).
On Wednesday morning it was announced that post graduate lecturer at ANU's College of Business and Economics Dr. Armin Haller would manage the relocated W3C Australian office.
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Haller said that it was an honour for the university to be chosen as the Australian host office and it is an exciting time for ANU and the world wide web.
"Currently the W3C is looking at broadening the web, and this is where the ANU will really come into play.
"Where change is happening is in the vertical domains, and that's really interesting to us -- things like web payments, digital publishing, linked open data, web of things, and web security -- these are areas our researchers are already involved in."
Haller told ZDNet that he believes the future of the world wide web lies with Internet of Things, which the consortium is heavily concerned with.
"We had long running visions about the fridge in your house connected to the internet, and therefore to the world wide web -- that is happening, but it is not giving you any business benefits. I think the web is really moving towards the devices -- the web of things.
"We are not only talking about the communication protocols between the different devices -- for example, Bluetooth -- what we at W3C are concerned about is the data exchange, and how does this data exchange between the devices work.
"We have changed the infrastructure of the internet so it can accommodate these devices. You need to interpret the data from all of these 'things' to talk to other 'things' -- that is the biggest leap forward in the next 5-10 years."
As manager of the Australian office, Haller will be responsible for drumming up Australian membership, and help develop relationships with Australian technology and policy leaders to promote the implementation of W3C standards in Australia.
Global business development lead for W3C J. Alan Bird told ZDNet that ANU's understanding of technology, and the way in which it is embraced, fits in well with the mission of the W3C.
"We chose ANU based on the fact that they've got a collaborative effort between the school of computer science and engineering and the school of business and economics, and they focus on our industry," he said.
Bird, who is based out of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) said that the year-long comprehensive review of other universities and non-profit organisations in Australia determined that ANU was the right partner to supersede the CSIRO in Australia.