Google Sets was a the result of a early Google research project that ended in 2011. The idea was to be able to recognize the similarity of a set of terms (e.g., python, lisp and fortran) and automatically identify other similar terms (e.g., c, java, php). Suprisingly (to me) the results of the project live on as an undocumented feature in Google Doc spreadsheets. Try putting a few of the seven deadly sins into a Google spreadsheet and use the feature to see what else you should not do (e.g., creating fire with alchemy, I guess).

Google, of course, continues to work on expanding their use of semantic information, currently through efforts like the Google Knowledge Graph, Freebase, Microdata and Fusion Tables. Other companies, including Mcrosoft, IBM and a host of startups, are also hard at work on similar projects.

This year’s Spring Undergraduate Commencement ceremony is approaching, and we wanted to share some important information with the parents of undergraduate students who will be participating in Commencement. 

Please note that there has been some confusion about the start time of the Undergraduate Commencement Ceremony. It is at 1:00 p.m., with the processional beginning at 12:30 p.m., on Thursday, May 23^rd at 1^st Mariner Arena in downtown Baltimore.  The doors to the Arena will open for students and guests at 11:30 a.m.   Please keep in mind that traffic and parking will be very congested near the Arena, so be sure to allow sufficient time to locate parking and to walk to the Arena. 

If your student plans to participate in the ceremony regalia must be ordered by March 18. The cost of regalia is $47.99; starting March 7 your student will be charged a $25 late fee for ordering regalia.

Attached is a Commencement newsletter that has been e-mailed to students.  Additional information can be found online at www.umbc.edu/commencement.   

Please note that the above information pertains to Undergraduate Commencement.  Graduate School Commencement is scheduled for Wednesday, May 22^nd in UMBC’s Retriever Activities Center at 10:00 a.m.

Thank you,

UMBC’s Commencement Committee

This edition of the Parents Connection Newsletter features information on Spring Break Closing, Residential Life Room Selection Process, Career/Major Choice information, Greek Life and much more.

The Protocols and Formats Working Group (PFWG) has published an updated Working Draft of WAI-ARIA 1.0 Authoring Practices: An author's guide to understanding and implementing Accessible Rich Internet Applications. It provides detailed advice and examples to make widgets, navigation, and behaviors accessible using WAI-ARIA roles, states, and properties. It is primarily for web application developers, and is also useful for user agent and assistive technology developers. Please send comments by 5 April 2013. Learn more from the call for review e-mail and read about the Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI).

The MultilingualWeb-LT Working Group has published the First Public Working Draft of Metadata for the Multilingual Web - Usage Scenarios and Implementations. This document introduces a variety of usage scenarios and applications for the Internationalization Tag Set (ITS) 2.0, ranging from simple machine translation or human translation quality check to training for machine translation systems or automatic text analysis. Many of the underlying implementations will be showcased in the upcoming W3C MultilingualWeb Workshop 12-13 March in Rome. Learn more about the Internationalization Activity.

The Linked Data Platform (LDP) Working Group has published a Working Draft of Linked Data Platform 1.0. This document specifies a set of best practices and simple approach for a read-write Linked Data architecture, based on HTTP access to web resources that describe their state using the RDF data model. Learn more about the Semantic Web Activity.