microformat

Microformats Explained

Do microformats matter?  To the casual surfer, how data is formatted and processed is of little interest, and rightly so.   Having web standards is not about control, it is about increasingly the flexibility and effciency of data, and the web services that process that data (an RSS newsfeed aggregator, for example).

Creating data in a flexible and generic format extends the portability of your data, as well as enabling webservices to find and process your data easily. The most common form that most are familiar with is RSS, a flexible data format that is easy to syndicate and aggregate - both human and machine friendly. Although some sites go mad, and wear all their feed exports as a kind of badge, there should be purpose. One of the main uses I have for feeds this days, is to agrregate data for my growing apml profile. APML is a microformat designed to be used for attention prolifing (storing user web browsing history. This file can then be read easily by websites, and processed in many ways - more relevant results in web searches, website ranking,etc..

Microformats Examples

Included in this list are common microfomat, and examples from this site.

RSS

RSS is an acronym for Really Simple Syndication. RSS is the single-biggest-real-world-useful example of microformats, and RSS is useful because it is tiny (and therefore easy to embed in applications as an input/output format).

Our site blog RSS feed

Our del.icio.us RSS feed

Our Twitter RSS feed

APML

APML allows you to share your own personal Attention Profile in much the same way that OPML allows the exchange of reading lists between News Readers. The idea is to compress all forms of Attention Data into a portable file format containing a description of your ranked interests. This format allows users to export and use their own personal Attention Profile in much the same way that OPML allows them to export their reading lists from Feed Readers. An Attention Profile is a list of the topics and sources you are interested in, and a value representing your level of interest in them.

Site Taxonomy APML

jaffamonkey Attention-Profile APML

Taxonomy APML Tagcloud

OPML

Outlines can be used for specifications, legal briefs, product plans, presentations, screenplays, directories, diaries, discussion groups, chat systems and stories.

magnolia OPML feed

magnolia mixedd mciroformats feed

hCalendar - for events

Example event (PR And The Media 2008)

hCard - for personal data

hCard (Paul Littlebury - Director, jaffamonkey)

hCard - for personal data

Example Review (Outputthis! web service)