is possible to transcode to and from the OpenAjax format, and therefore it is not necessary that everyone in the industry support the metadata formats. Task Forces The OpenAjax Alliance establishes task forces to investigate areas of new activity. The task forces are informal groups of members who perform research and then produce recommendations for future alliance activities. There are four task forces: The Security Task Force identifies Ajax security issues and investigating what activities should be pursued by the alliance, The Mobile Ajax Task Force investigates what OpenAjax Alliance can do to accelerate adoption and developer success in delivering Ajax applications to mobile devices The Gadgets Task Force collaborates with the IDE Working Group to ensure that OpenAjax Metadata Specification addresses the needs of the mashup community for an industry standard for mashup widgets. The Runtime Advocacy Task Force creates via an open wiki that plans to produce a prioritized feature request list from the Ajax community for what is most important to the Ajax industry from future Web browsers. Specifications and open source Although the OpenAjax Alliance does not intend to become a formal standards body, the alliance does engage in standards-related activities when such activities appear necessary in order to achieve objectives for greater interoperability, vendor choice and promoting innovation. As a result, the OpenAjax Alliance will sometimes develop its own formal specifications and/or open source to fill what it sees as critical industry gaps. In these cases, the expected outcome in the long term is to turn over such work at an appropriate point to a formal standards organization or open-source project. Members of the OpenAjax Alliance may participate in standards activities within other standards bodies and open source projects to help accelerate the coordinated advancement of OpenAjax technologies and products. OpenAjax Conformance A cornerstone of OpenAjax Alliance activities is the definition of OpenAjax Conformance. OpenAjax Conformance is shorthand for the set of conformance requirements that the OpenAjax Alliance places on Ajax technologies, products and applications. By using Ajax products that support OpenAjax Conformance, OpenAjax claims that IT managers and Web developers would notice the following benefits: Seamless integration of multiple Ajax products and technologies within the same Web application, particularly with applications that use mashup techniques Greater certainty about product choices, where OpenAjax Conformance plays a similar role in the Ajax community as the Good Housekeeping Seal does with consumer products Lower training costs, lower