Tohir Solomons

No more business cards, but here’s my hCard

Posted on the February 17th, 2009 under Reflections/Thoughts by Tohir

Time and time again, it’s great to see how existing technology can be used in innovative ways, which is what makes the web an exciting place.

Microformats are simple sets of data formats that allows information in an article to be extracted and interpreted semantically. A blog entry may have information about an upcoming event, but is it shareable without the user having to retype or copy/paste the information? Is it automatically linkable to a map showing where the venue is? Can your organiser warn you that it clashes with an existing appointment.

These are the powers that the semantic web and microformats seek to bring.

Up till now, people who’ve implemented microformats have somewhat focussed on the way search engines especially Yahoo can present their website.

This morning, I’ve found another great way to use them: Populating forms with YQL, jQuery and Microformats. Every once in a while, we are required to complete a registration form. What this article presents, is an approach to autocomplete a form, by simply asking users to point to their hCard, a website page that contains the hCard, even if it has other content on the page as well.

There are exciting possibilities with this:

• If many websites implement it, imagine the time savings that would occur
• Popularity breeds familiarity, which means that microformats will finally start getting the attention it deserves
• Business opportunity – which I’ll keep to myself for the time being
• Will we start saving trees and ink by using an electronic version which allows much better use and purpose in case.

Even though there are things like business cards scanners, I think the day will come when someone will say: “Sorry I ran out of business cards, but here’s my hCard”.