Microformats

• Rohit Khare and Tantek \cCelik. Microformats: a pragmatic path to the semantic web [1]. In Proceedings of the 15th international conference on World Wide Web, p. 865--866, ACM. 2006.
• Khare, R.. Microformats: the next (small) thing on the semantic Web? [2]. IEEE Internet Computing, 10(1):68--75, Jan.-Feb. 2006.
• Microformats.org [3]

Designed for humans first and machines second, microformats are a set of simple, open data formats built upon existing and widely adopted standards.

Microformats.org [4]

• The hCard [5] format represents people, companies, organizations, and places.
• Builds on vCard [6].

<div class="vcard">
  <a class="fn org url" href="http://www.commerce.net/">CommerceNet</a>
  <div class="adr">
    <span class="type">Work</span>:
    <div class="street-address">169 University Avenue</div>
    <span class="locality">Palo Alto</span>,  
    <abbr class="region" title="California">CA</abbr>  
    <span class="postal-code">94301</span>
    <div class="country-name">USA</div>
  </div>
  <div class="tel">
   <span class="type">Work</span> +1-650-289-4040
  </div>
  <div class="tel">
    <span class="type">Fax</span> +1-650-289-4041
  </div>
  <div>Email: 
   <span class="email">info@commerce.net</span>
  </div>
</div>

• The hCalendar [7] format is based on iCalendar [8] and lets us publish events.

<div class="vevent">
 <a class="url" href="http://www.web2con.com/">http://www.web2con.com/</a>
  <span class="summary">Web 2.0 Conference</span>: 
  <abbr class="dtstart" title="2007-10-05">October 5</abbr>-
  <abbr class="dtend" title="2007-10-20">19</abbr>,
 at the <span class="location">Argent Hotel, San Francisco, CA</span>
 </div>

• The hReview [9] lets you embed product reviews.

<div class="hreview">
 <span><span class="rating">5</span> out of 5 stars</span>
 <h4 class="summary">Crepes on Cole is awesome</h4>
 <span class="reviewer vcard">Reviewer: <span class="fn">Tantek</span> - 
 <abbr class="dtreviewed" title="20050418T2300-0700">April 18, 2005</abbr></span>
 <div class="description item vcard"><p>
  <span class="fn org">Crepes on Cole</span> is one of the best little 
  creperies in <span class="adr"><span class="locality">San Francisco</span></span>.
  Excellent food and service. Plenty of tables in a variety of sizes 
  for parties large and small.  Window seating makes for excellent 
  people watching to/from the N-Judah which stops right outside.  
  I've had many fun social gatherings here, as well as gotten 
  plenty of work done thanks to neighborhood WiFi.
 </p></div>
 <p>Visit date: <span>April 2005</span></p>
 <p>Food eaten: <span>Florentine crepe</span></p>
</div>


<div class="hreview"><span class="item">
 <a class="url fn" href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B000089CJI/">
  <img src="http://images.amazon.com/images/P/B000089CJI.01._SCTHUMBZZZ_.jpg" 
       alt="Album cover photo: The Postal Service: Give Up. " 
       class="photo" />
  The Postal Service: Give Up</a></span>
 <div class="description"><p>
    "The people thought they were just being rewarded for treating others 
     as they like to be treated, for obeying stop signs and curing diseases, 
     for mailing letters with the address of the sender... Don't wake me, 
     I plan on sleeping in..."
   </p><p>
   "Nothing Better" is a great track on this album, too... 
 </p></div>
 (<abbr class="rating" title="5">*****</abbr>)
 <p class="reviewer vcard">Review by 
  <a class="url fn" href="http://ifindkarma.com/blog/">Adam Rifkin</a>, 
  <abbr class="dtreviewed" title="200502">February 2005</abbr>
 </p>
</div>

• The XHTML Friends Network [10] lets you classify and link friends.

<a href="http://jane-blog.example.org/" rel="sweetheart date met">Jane</a> 
<a href="http://dave-blog.example.org/" rel="friend met">Dave</a> 
<a href="http://darryl-blog.example.org/" rel="friend met">Darryl</a> 
<a href="http://www.metafilter.com/">MetaFilter</a> 
<a href="http://james-blog.example.com/" rel="met">James Expert</a>

• The XOXO [11] format lets one embed outlines.

<ol class='xoxo'>
  <li>Subject 1
    <ol>
        <li>subpoint a</li>
        <li>subpoint b</li>
    </ol>
  </li>
  <li>Subject 2
    <ol compact="compact">
        <li>subpoint c</li>
        <li>subpoint d</li>
    </ol>
  </li>
  <li>Subject 3
    <ol>
        <li>subpoint e</li>
    </ol>
  </li>
</ol>

• Microformats extend XHTML with agreed-upon classes, tags, and sub-schemas.
• Semantic web uses RDF and OWL.
• Microformats have very loose semantics.

• Simple to learn and use.
• Information appears only once on page.
• Cannot do inference.
• Hard to validate.

• Operator [12] is a firefox plugin that recognizes microformats:
  • Right-click on microformat and get list of actions.
• Might come supported in firefox 3 [13]