[uf-discuss] FYI: Jeff Jarvis on microformats and Google Base

[Eric A. Meyer]

At 4:14 PM +0000 11/22/05, Jon Tan wrote:

>>Google wants data to attract  searchers.  Real data.  No amount of 
>>hypothetical data will attract a  search engine, regardless of how 
>>well that hypothetical data is  publicized.
>
>Exactly. So how do you keep the momentum to encourage more real data 
>to be described using MFs?

    A good start would be to convince blogging tool vendors to build 
µF support into their products.  I sometimes see people posting 
reviews of movies, books, music, whatever.  So what if MT and LJ and 
WP (oh my!) all offered a "post a review" function that let users 
enter the needed information in a variety of fields, and then 
published it in hReview format?  Content would start springing up all 
over.  Creating a review-summary engine would suddenly be about six 
orders of magnitude simpler.  Add in the ping-notification bit, and 
add a few more orders of magnitude to that figure.
    And that's just one format.  Getting blogging tools to publish 
user information in hCard format would be another huge step, as would 
the addition of XFN (where it doesn't already exist).

-- 
Eric A. Meyer  (eric at meyerweb.com)
Principal, Complex Spiral Consulting   http://complexspiral.com/
"CSS: The Definitive Guide," "CSS2.0 Programmer's Reference,"
"Eric Meyer on CSS," and more    http://meyerweb.com/eric/books/