microformat

Microformats

Now the web 2.0 buzz is settling down into business reality, further moves towards semantic web are crawling out of web 2.0 quagmire. It is easy to forget that web 2.0 was about a set of enabling technologies, and it is only now the hype has passed that these technologies are coming to the fore. Microformats - a term I had heard before, and is based on the sound principles of decentralising data control.

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

Relax, Everything Is Intertwingled

Part of the (many) problems with centralisation of data, is the short life of the technologies used in that approach. Microformats remove data from design and code dependencies, which free microformats to be truly flexible. They are based on semantic web standards, which means they can be easily manipulated and are compatible with a wide range of applications.