Micro-formats

Overview of microformats

Designed for humans first and machines second, microformats are a set of simple, open data formats built upon existing and widely adopted standards. Instead of throwing away what works today, microformats intend to solve simpler problems first by adapting to current behaviors and usage patterns (e.g. XHTML, blogging).

microformats are:

a way of thinking about data
design principles for formats
adapted to current behaviors and usage patterns ("Pave the cow paths.")
highly correlated with semantic XHTML, AKA the real world semantics, AKA lowercase semantic web, AKA lossless XHTML
a set of simple open data format standards that many are actively developing and implementing for more/better structured blogging and web microcontent publishing in general.
"An evolutionary revolution"
all the above.

microformats are not:

a new language
infinitely extensible and open-ended
an attempt to get everyone to change their behavior and rewrite their tools
a whole new approach that throws away what already works today
a panacea for all taxonomies, ontologies, and other such abstractions
defining the whole world, or even just boiling the ocean
any of the above

the microformats principles

solve a specific problem
start as simple as possible
design for humans first, machines second
reuse building blocks from widely adopted standards
modularity / embeddability
enable and encourage decentralized development, content, services

We Interested in : hCard

hCard is a simple, open, distributed format for representing people, companies, organizations, and places, using a 1:1 representation of the properties and values of the vCard standard (RFC2426 (_http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2426.txt*[]*)) in semantic XHTML. hCard is one of several open microformat standards suitable for embedding in (X)HTML, Atom, RSS, and arbitrary XML.
hCard is a microformat for describing contact information (or really address book information) from within your HTML. It's based on the vCard format, which is the format the contacts/address book program on your computer uses. All the usual fields are available - name, address, town, website, email, you name it.
Bloggers can both embed hCards directly in their web pages, and style them with CSS to make them appear as desired. In addition, hCard enables applications to retrieve information directly from web pages without having to reference a separate file.

Links of interest :

Sample hCard :

Here is a sample vCard:

    BEGIN:VCARD
    VERSION:3.0
    N:Celik;Tantek
    FN:Tantek Celik
    URL:http://tantek.com
    ORG:Technorati
    END:VCARD

Equivalent hCard:

<div class="vcard">
      <a class="url" href="http://tantek.com/" >
      <span class="n" style="display:none"> <!-- hide this from display with CSS -->
              <span class="family-name">Celik</span>
          <span class="given-name">Tantek</span>
      </span>
          <span class="fn">Tantek Celik</span>
      </a>
    <div class="org"><span class="organization-name">Technorati</span></div>
    </div>

Lots Of Examples: : http://microformats.org/wiki/hcard-examples

How to go about implementing ?

If a form is filled as given below :

given name     : Celik
middle name : Kumar
family name    : Tantek
organization    : Web Access
street      : saki vihar
city       : mumbai
state/province : maharashtra
postal code : 400007
country name : india
phone             : 022 12345678
email               : Celic@web.com
url                    : http://web.com/Celik
photo url         : http://web.com/Celik/pic.jpg
AIMscreenname : CelikAIM
YIMscreenname : CelikYIM

The Code :

<div class="vcard">
<img style="float:left; margin-right:4px" src="http://web.com/Celik/pic.jpg" alt="photo" class="photo"/>
<a class="url fn n" href="http://web.com/Celik" > <span class="given-name">Celik</span>
<span class="additional-name">Kumar</span>
<span class="family-name">Tantek</span>
</a>
<div class="org">Web Access</div>
<a class="email" href="mailto:Celik@web.com" >Celik@web.com</a>
<div class="adr">
<div class="street-address">saki vihar</div>
<span class="locality">mumbai</span>
,
<span class="region">maharashtra</span>
,
<span class="postal-code">400007</span>

<span class="country-name">india</span>

</div>
<div class="tel">022 12345678</div>
<a class="url" href="aim:goim?screenname=CelikAIM" >AIM</a>
<a class="url" href="ymsgr:sendIM?CelikYIM" >YIM</a>
<p style="font-size:smaller;">This <a href="http://microformats.org/wiki/hcard" >hCard</a> created with the <a href="http://microformats.org/code/hcard/creator" >hCard creator</a>.</p>
</div>

Preview :

Celik Kumar Tantek
Web Access
Celik@web.com
saki vihar
mumbai , maharashtra , 400007 india
022 12345678
AIM YIM

where AIM -> "aim:goim?screenname=CelikAIM"
and YIM -> "ymsgr:sendIM?CelikYIM"

hCard Creator => http://microformats.org/code/hcard/creator