Microformats

Kragen recently said to me that

XHTML tables are the new CSV, and they're better than CSV because they have escaping. Also there's nicer viewers for them but that's besides the point.

It occurred to me that the use of modular XHTML for semantics is not a fad; rather, it points to a trend that Tantek Çelik calls microformats.

In my post on The Web Way, I mentioned having dinner with Tantek, which led me to rule 6,

Where it's useful, they should embrace microformats, a/k/a lowercase semantic web.

Tantek talks about a Microformat Manifesto:

1. Markup should be as simple as possible.
2. Markup should be droppable into as many formats as possible.
3. Development should be decentralized.

The manifesto would also make a compelling case for how The Awesome Power Of XML is best harnessed through tiny X(HT)ML dialects usable for specific purposes. I agree; I've noted in the catablog post (and the accompanying comments) that RSS is the single-biggest-real-world-useful example of TAPOX, and RSS is useful because it is tiny (and therefore easy to embed in applications as an input/output format).

Tantek talks with enthusiasm about the philosophy of microformats:

1. Keep the formats simple. It's worth repeating because this is the whole point of microformats: they must be easy to learn and use. As Kragen noted, using an XHTML dialect offers escaping and presentation control, making it easy to embed such formats in web pages with minimal effort.
2. Pave the cowpaths. Only create a new format to serve an existing application.
3. Get rough consensus and running code. Implementation in scripting languages such as PHP, Python, and Perl is paramount to adoption.
4. Get adoption by "real people". Only then will semantic X(HT)ML move beyond theoretical discussions.

Tantek also talks with enthusiasm about a collection of microformats that represent the philosophy of microformats well:

1. RSS for simple syndication (though the jury is still out on its progeny, especially Atom, which seems to get more complicated as it goes through committee despite fine leadership).
2. xfn for human relationships (using the  rel  attribute; note that using  rel  is also an easy way to extend Creative Commons metadata).
3. GeoURL for location (using simple <meta> tags).
4. hCalendar for calendar events (mapping the commonly used iCalendar format to XHTML).
5. hCard for address books (mapping the commonly used vCard format to XHTML).
6. XOXO for outlines and blogroll-like subscriptions.
7. Attention.XML for keeping track of what you've read, what you're spending time on, and what you should be paying attention to.

The Chairman and Founder of CommerceNet, Marty Tenenbaum, asserted his belief in a recent brainstorming session that

There are maybe twenty simple schemas that cover 80% of the potential uses of data in collaborative commerce.

Marty often conveys his enthusiasm for the ongoing social software trend to increasingly facilitate improved E-Commerce. When thinking of Tantek's and Marty's visions, I'm excited that thoughts on catablog suggest that there are opportunities to create microformats for products -- perhaps the music, movies, and books that fill up peoples' typelists represent a good place to start.

Update, January 2005. Technorati has set up a MicroFormats page on its wiki to summarize these issues going forward...

Comments

[Adam]

Scott McMullan writes in Google/Internet Archive, Meet Mr. Event:

In the spirit of "tags are the new black," here's a vision for how event and calendar management should be handled by 2006: Wouldn't it be grand if all events in the world, from a garage sale in Lexington to a tech conference in SF, could be automatically discovered (Google), stored in one central, public domain, web services accessible database (Internet Archive), where the events could then be categorized (Topix), community rated and recommended (Amazon/Netflix/Last.FM), personally tagged (Flickr/del.icio.us), and ultimately custom-fed (PubSub) directly to your calendar device of choice (Calconnect)?

Cool, where do I sign up? I Could have used this to promote our now defunct SF Web Services SIG, which was done "by hand," one site/email list at a time. Not to mention the relative difficulty when you go searching for a good event in your area...(not to knock workit.com or craigslist.org -- thanks guys!) But I want this uber event service now!

So past and current pains combined with threads followed, dots connected, and small wheels turned since last week's Berkeley Calendar Project post create this mashup event service vision. Actually, people are talking about this vision in so many words. Dr. Bob Glushko and Allison Bloodworth et al are leading part of the effort by trying to bring sanity and sharing to the 80+ event calendars of UC Berkeley. Tantek Çelik and other folks working on hCalendar talk about using your web site as your API,

"...bloggers can discuss events in their blog(s) in such a way that spiders and other aggregators can retrieve such events, automatically convert them to iCalendar, and use them in any iCalendar application or service.",

Kevin Hughes at zLab writes,

"The potential for applications that make use of networked, time-driven information is huge. Today's portals have no concept of event personalization or collaboration. Today's applications have only the most basic concept of integrating with or subscribing to time-driven data. And there are no providers of horizontal event-based services. ... Software and the Internet has freed online music from its proprietary data and application jails, why not do the same with events? The traditional calendar interface deserves a overhaul.",

Marc Canter chimes in,

"I wonder if they wanna help put up shared XML servers of Events - scraped from throughout the web?",

the Calconnect.org folks proclaim,

"Our members’ intent is to enable calendaring and scheduling tools and applications to enter the mainstream of computing," said Dave Thewlis. "After email, the World Wide Web, and instant messaging, calendaring and scheduling capabilities are what business people and consumers will really care about.",

and many many others I have yet to discover [add more in comments]. Yes, A few people are already doing similar stuff, like upcoming.org, rsscalendar.com, openeventscom, whizspark.com, evdb.com(?), and most likely Google Labs (?) [any more?]. But for starters, from what I can glean these efforts rely on people coming and manually submitting events, rather than auto-discovery and aggregation via spidering --> problem of db critical mass.

So let's make one! Let's combine something practical and "standards-based" (ie., iCalendar/XHTML) like hCalendar, but extend it with the rich UBL-inspired semantics of a Berkeley Event Model. Now that everyone agrees, let's move one. We need open source tools so event producers (even for my yard sale) can list their events on their blogs/web sites, like they already do, but also be sure to use valid markup. (Note: people are motiviated to promote their events -- no prodding necessary) Then we need an open source spider, a bunch of disks and some linux boxes, a REST API, open source recommendation and reputation/rating/tagging engines (eg., tweaked openscrobbler + ??/??/??), and some pub-sub and feed generators. And to top it off, let's make the database and service usable by all (eg., some kind of creative commons), so we can unleash the creativity of the world to build custom interfaces via our web services API. Easy stuff in these days of inspiration from Amazon/Google/PayPal/eBay/SForce, open source, wikis, bugzilla, and PayPal donate buttons. Right?

The law of ideas says that at least 6 (or is it 8?) people are either building or have already built this exact event service -- and I haven't found it yet. Any pointers? If not, anyone want to build this monster?

This is going to take me a few weeks to digest...

[Adam]

On Wednesday, January 19, 2005, 7-9pm, we will be meeting at Crepes on Cole in San Francisco to talk about Microformats with Tantek Çelik.

[Account Deleted]

Each person clickity click clicking away at a little machine that they are sucked into like a fly to light. Sorry, but that's just entirely too open for me. This is a Brave New World turning out as prophecy of our immediate future. There are at least three things about Kevin's comment that made Rohit smile: the invocation of physics, the notion that 30 is relative, and the thought of seeing you next week.

porno video sikiş sikiş porno izle porno porno izle sikiş dizi izle
sikiş

[Dfx27]

Thank you.

[John C. Edwards]

I have a use for hCard, however since it does not include a salutation name field the standard is of no use to me.

An example:
My father is named Joseph Beach Edwards which is the standard manner in which his name appears in postal mailings, however, everyone calls him Joe. therefore, a letter, postcard or email would begin with, "Dear Joe,".

Salutation has been removed from Outlook Address books, too. It is as iff we are not learning from our past. Will the salutaion name field be included at some point I wonder?

--johne

[Account Deleted]

I want to trackback it, but i can't. I have posted it to 5lyrics.com

Thank you for the post!