It seems to be one of those obscure standards by geeks for geeks which will never reach any form of ubiquity outside the geek community, vcard has become more common due to the transparency of the standard

discuss

Nice. You are baiting aren't you?

baaaaaad

you are not building a convincing case for microformats missrogue

I think that's a reflection of microformats current state. It's not something that is to be used by end-users, it's really a machine-readable format intended for developers to take advantage of (from both publisher and tool sides).

Firefox's intended support for microformats in FF3 is a big win in this regard, and I would say represents one of the most significant steps forward for browser technology/potential for years.

And I bet Microsoft has no idea what's going to happen if it really catches on (Which is really could in the next few years).

Peter I think it's a matter of timing. Microformats are useful, but if they want to grow (and I'm not sure that they need to go nuts) then they will slowly evolve over many years. Depends if the principles apply to a broader array of situations then programming.

I don't know...here are some good 'me as human end user benefits' cases where I can already use Microformats:

1. Upcoming.org - adding the events to iCal automatically (hCal is totally compatible without any mega odd conversions)

2. LinkedIN - I can now export my work history as an hResume ... synching it with eMurse. hCards for all of my contacts (synch it with my address book instantly)

3. Technorati -  rel="tag", hReview, hCal & hCard detection so I can search for specific stuff (tags, reviews, events and people)

4. Yahoo!Local - all marked up with hCards and hReviews. I can add the hCards to my address book instantly and synch it with my Blackberry address book. Search the reviews.

 5. Wordpress - uses XFN (xFriends Network) values on all of the blogroll links. There are already tonnes of tools and plugins out there that can piece together people's relationships, much like the 'reciprocal 'how do you know this person?' on Facebook.

That's just a few I use everyday. There are tonnes of microformats on the web, it's the consumption tools that need to be created and promoted. I think that will be the next step. Yes, Firefox 3 is a big one...Flock already detects many Microformats...and there are a bunch of Microformat plug ins and bookmarklets that Chris can point out that do the detection and piecing together of networks and relationships, etc. 

(p.s. Peter, I thought you were joking as I haven't heard that question in about 1 year now...but then again, I live in the Valley, where it is a foregone conclusion that Microformats are the future) 

So these are going to be things that developers use to make life more seamless for users.  I think Peter's point is that if they are not integrated into existing apps in a really really easy way, then it might stay a tool of geeks.

One challenge to it is proprietary behaviour. I know that is anti-PInko , but big business is still going to be around for the next 20 years and they are still going to get defensive.  

I'm pretty sure Peter lives in the valley too. When he's not sleeping in my attic..... 

Guy here tries to answer this question;

Personally, I think Microformats have developed because XML has not
lived up to expectations. XML promised to completely describe the
information on a Web page, thereby making it a breeze to maintain Web
sites, and to find information faster than a Britney Spears marriage.

Looks like PR are already getting into Microformats ;

"As a bonus, the page is optimized for search and will, eventually, feature microformats to make it even easier for journalists/bloggers find exactly what you need."

I'm impressed with missrogue's list!  But the department of off-topic confusion would like to know HOW you export your Linkedin work history as something else?

I've always found structured resumes quite painful.  I like putting start and end dates in years, partly because I can't remember more exactly, and partly because it helps to smooth out the rough spots, but most structured resumes won't let you do that.

Linkedin seemed quite a bit better than most, which is why I managed to get to the end of the process without tearing the screen off the laptop, but that means the data format has to be more flexible -- so 1999 is a date just like 9/9/99.

Linkedin basically punts when it comes to the job description -- it's unstructured text.  That makes it easier to cut and paste from a Word resume, but no structure means no microformat.

I can imagine something like XML being useful for a job description -- I have mine broken into responsibilities and achievements -- but if I can pick the tags it's harder to mine the data, and if I can't, it becomes a pain to use.  How many people want to list the operating system(s) they used at each job.

The best address book (aka Contacts list) I've used is Google's, because it's easy to add and remove sections (home, work, anything) and subsections (email, phone, fax, other), but even here you're stuck with Google's choices for subsections.  Of course, part of the reason it's convenient is Google's attention to the interface.

Something like Google's flexible two-level structure *might* be a useful improvement to Linkedin's work history.

Aren't microformats just XML with some vocabulary and a user interface? 

download https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/4106/ (operator) to get a bit of an idea about how useful micrformats can be. Operator is also great because it can take a "tagspace" word (rel-tag) and search upcoming for events. So, I can detect "barcamp" as a technorati tag on someone's blog, for instance, with Operator, and then quickly search upcoming.org for related events, and then quickly add the event to my google calendar or 30 boxes account.

i believe microformats will steadily become more and more used, and popular.

they are a good step in the direction of the semantic web, and an intelligent tool for recording, sharing and searching data.

information is just becoming too much, too fast. semantic representation is one of the answers. for sure.

and i agree microformats are the best path to a semantic web

it's lightweight enough to become a standard part of a dev process.

I thought that Microformats were the bets path to semantic web, and I still am 100% in support of microformats. Although, after experimenting with large "S" Semantic Web (RDF, OWL, SPARQL, etc) technology, Evan's got some good analysis here:

http://evan.prodromou.name/RDFa_vs_microformats

Also, from a general perspective of one of the original goals of the "semantic web" (teaching machines how to understand human sense making), the semantic web seems to be side-tracked on understanding text, when in fact humans create meaing in ways that are other-than-text based. So, i am proposing that we might want to think about a Semiotic Web

http://socialsynergyweb.com/semanticwiki/index.php?title=Semiotic_web

Here's a thought that has been eating away at me for a while now about Microformats.

If Microformats can be used to form up data ie (contact cards, reviews, friends, events, and so on) how come no one has figured out how to connect it to each other.

I mean say on my website I have all my info (profile) with contact name, address, friends list, sites I vote for, reviews I made, and resume in microformat and I want that information to span across networks I come across. Sort of like OpenID but with profile information vice password.

Is that possible?