Microformats community:
Happy New Year! 2005 was an incredible year for the growth of microformats, in terms of specification, implementation, and overall awareness. The microformats.org community has produced some incredible results in just over six months of existence. 2006 looks like it will be even bigger. In addition to tidying up details on well established microformats like hCard and hCalendar for contacts and events, and minor iterative tweaks on drafts like hReview for distributed reviews, I see the following new microformats coming to fruition in the next few months (things happen too fast around here for me to make predictions for the whole year ;) 1. hAtom will become relatively stable by the end of January. Given how much energy and discussion is going into hAtom on the microformats-discuss list, the level of interest it has *already* developed across blogs, and the incredible potential uptake, the time for getting this right is real soon now. See here for the latest: http://microformats.org/wiki/hatom 2. hResume will be drafted. There has already been a lot of research and in the wild experimentation with an hResume format. There has also been significant brainstorming led by the good folks at SimplyHired. At this point it is only a matter of a few folks taking their notes to the wiki. Stay tuned: http://microformats.org/wiki/hresume 3. A listings/classifieds microformat will be drafted. In addition to significant research into listings (for sale / wanted) examples, formats, and brainstorming, there has been a wider awareness of the potential of fully distributed listings/classifieds on the Web. For now, take a look at the research and please add anything you think is missing: http://microformats.org/wiki/listing-examples http://microformats.org/wiki/listing-formats http://microformats.org/wiki/listing-brainstorming 4. Recipes? Several different folks have now raised the possibility of a publication/interchange format for recipes on the Web. While certainly this is of interest to any person who likes to cook and try different things (yours truly included), it's not clear yet if this has the broad applicability which we like to see for new microformats. Nonetheless, it is worth at least documenting the existing examples on the Web and formats to see if there is something simple that can be proposed. Thus we start with: http://microformats.org/wiki/recipe-examples 5. Media Info. Formerly known as media-metadata. Side-note rant: One thing we should all resolve to do in the new year is to strike the word "metadata" from our discussions as much as possible. It is a theory/abstraction-focused word and thus frames discussions and designs very poorly. Instead, let's base our discussions and designs on what users are actually used to, and a focus on and user centered design. You don't see menu items that say "Get Metadata", you see menu items that say "Info" or "Get Info" or "Properties...". Data is data. What matters is whether the user cares about the information, not whether the data is meta or not. Back to media info. It seems that nearly every smart person (and especially domain expert) that attempts to solve problems in the space of media info ends up falling into the traps of complexity and over-design. Just look at the current background research. Media info on web pages is sorely in need of a SIMPLE microformat which describes the 80/20 of information about a particular piece of media and nothing more in v1. This is perhaps the most challenging of the above 5 new microformat efforts, and truly requires a serious breakthrough in how we think about media from the *user* perspective, rather than a programmer's perspective. One hypothesis: we need actual users of media who are somewhat technically savvy, rather than media info domain experts (who seem to have a 100% track record of falling into the aforementioned complexity and over-design traps), to help brainstorm and model what people *really* publish about media on the Web. Will that be possible? I want to see this happen. I'm not a media info domain expert. If I have to, I'll jump in myself and be draconian about the simplification. I'm hoping that at least a few of the experts out there are tired of the complexity and over-design of previous/existing attempts (including perhaps the attempts by their own companies), and would at least entertain and try simpler approaches. In the interest of a fresh look focused first on simplicity and minimalism, here is a start: http://microformats.org/wiki/media-info-examples Interested in helping make these new microformats a reality? Join the microformats-discuss list, check out the #microformats IRC channel and contribute your thoughts, ideas, research, and brainstorms: http://microformats.org/discuss I'm very much looking forward to what you have to say. Here's to a great 2006! Tantek ========================= References: hAtom http://microformats.org/wiki/hatom hCalendar http://microformats.org/wiki/hcalendar hCard http://microformats.org/wiki/hcard hResume http://microformats.org/wiki/hresume hReview http://microformats.org/wiki/hreview Listings/Classifieds http://microformats.org/wiki/listing-examples http://microformats.org/wiki/listing-formats http://microformats.org/wiki/listing-brainstorming Media http://microformats.org/wiki/media-info-examples Recipes http://microformats.org/wiki/recipe-examples _______________________________________________ microformats-discuss mailing list [email protected] http://microformats.org/mailman/listinfo/microformats-discuss
