[uf-discuss] hCards and Companies

[Ryan King]

On Sep 21, 2007, at 1:31 PM, Duncan Cragg wrote:
> Hello uF list!
>
> I've got some questions on hCards used to represent a company...
>
>
> <disclaimer mood="friendly">
>      Nothing here should be constituted as a request for a new uF;
>      I've read the hCard and vCard specs;
>      I know about paving the cowpath, 80:20 and POSH;
>      I've Googled as much as I can..
>      =0)
> </disclaimer>
>
>
> Right:
>
> - I would like a person hCard to have a pointer to the hCard of the  
> company they work for in the 'org' bit: can I include or link to  
> the company hCard? I can imagine separate company hCards for the  
> main company and the specific 'organisation-unit' within it.

First, I assume the use case is: "given an hcard for the person, how  
can I find more contact info for that company?"

Unfortunately, there isn't any structure for company urls in vcard/ 
hcard. Creative solutions within the bounds of vcard compatibility  
would be nice. :)

> - I would like my company hCards, conversely, to contain a list of  
> [role->hCard] links - e.g. CEO: [link to CEO's hCard]; CIO: [link  
> to CIO's hCard] - I know 'agent' exists, but this is different, and  
> not in the hCard spec itself.

I assume the use case here would be a staff page like http:// 
technorati.com/about/staff.html ? A concrete example like that would  
be easier to talk about.

> - I would like to have a full, official registered company name in  
> a company hCard that differs from the public, friendly name - the  
> spec says 'n' should be blank for company/organisation hCards, so  
> where can the official name go?  (the spec forces 'org' to be the  
> same as the friendly name, of course) should I use fn/nickname  
> resp? or abbr?

abbr might be appropriate here. My own hcards say "Technorati", when  
the company name is actually something like "Technorati,  
Incorporated" or something like that. Of course if you use abbr, only  
the full name would be extracted, then. Nickname might be an  
appropriate semantic. A quick look at Address Book.app shows that at  
least that application supports nicknames for companies.

> - I would like to drop in a field for the ticker code: NASDAQ:MSFT,  
> etc; also the SEDOL and ISIN codes. Similarly a field for sector,  
> UK Companies House classification, etc. Shall I just go POSH, here?  
> Use rel-tag? Any suggestions or precedents?

I'd say go POSH, but make sure that you put it inside the hcard's  
note so that you have useful fallback behavior.

-ryan