Not long after my last post, I noticed a couple of things. Firstly, I think I may have gone a bit mushy on you, for which I apologise (unless you like mushy, of course). Secondly, I managed to slip the words 'vEvent Microformat' into there somewhere without explaining what that's supposed to mean.
Let's start with Microformats. A Microformat is something that, using nothing more than standard, clean HTML, can tell your computer as much about a web page as the text itself tells you. For example, if the creator of a page has put their contact details at the bottom of it, then any human of modest intelligence can say to themselves: 'Hey, those are contact details!' Fair enough. But if the creator has added a Microformat to the address, then any program that understands how the Microformats system works can also say 'Hey, those could be used in an address book/email/map program! I'll tell my user.' How nice.
There are lots of different Microformat specifications for everything you could possibly need, and a few programs that can deal with them. I, for instance, use the very nifty Operator, a Firefox extension that picks them up and puts them in a menu bar for my delectation. The whole thing works on the mutual understanding that users of the specification will use their HTML elements in a certain way and that a suitable program will recognise them as Microformats. A little like language, perhaps. I could write down whatever letters, numbers and punctuation I liked in this blog, but as it happens I choose to arrange them in such a way that they make English. Similarly, you could choose not to recognise English, but - thank goodness - you decide against it. It's the same for a lot of things, including Microformats.
But I digress. The point is that technologies such as this are the next big step in intelligent automation. It may not be long before your browser can send notifications of an event to those listed as attendees, or can find people - not just on one site but around the internet - who share interests, hobbies, affiliations and anything else besides. Scary, but amazing.
P.S: My mother doesn't think I was particularly mushy in my last post, so I apologise to those who think likewise. I would also like to take this moment to apologise for the extortionate number of apologies I've made. On second thoughts, I apologise for that...
P.P.S: I just realised that, when you're enthusing about something on the Internet, it's always nice to have a link to that something. So...
- Here's the Microformats website.
- And here's what an hEvent is.
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