Microformats Wiki - User contributions [en]

microformats

2006-01-04T22:56:06Z

ChrisHibbert: /* the microformats principles */

= microformats =

== What are microformats? ==

=== microformats are ===

* a way of thinking about data
* design principles for formats
* adapted to current behaviors and usage patterns ([http://ifindkarma.typepad.com/relax/2004/12/microformats.html "Pave the cow paths." - Adam Rifkin])
* highly correlated with semantic XHTML, AKA the [http://www.tantek.com/presentations/2004etech/realworldsemanticspres.html real world semantics, AKA lowercase semantic web], AKA [http://www.whump.com/moreLikeThis/link/04069 lossless XHTML]
* described by [http://tantek.com/log/2005/03.html#d13t1722 Tantek's recent presentation at SXSW: The Elements of Meaningful XHTML]
* a set of simple open data format standards that many (including Technorati) are actively developing and implementing for more/better structured blogging and web microcontent publishing in general.
* [http://theryanking.com/blog/archives/2005/04/07/an-evolutionary-revolution/ "An evolutionary revolution" - Ryan King]
* all the above.

=== microformats are not ===

* a new language
* infinitely extensible and open-ended
* an attempt to get everyone to change their behavior and rewrite their tools
* a whole new approach that throws away what already works today
* a panacea for all taxonomies, ontologies, and other such abstractions
* defining the whole world, or even just boiling the ocean
* any of the above

== the microformats principles ==
* solve a specific problem
* start as simple as possible
** solve simpler problems first
** make evolutionary improvements
* design for humans first, machines second
** be presentable ''and'' parsable
** ''visible data'' is much better for humans than ''invisible metadata''
** adapt to current behaviors and usage patterns, e.g. (X)HTML, blogging
** [http://tantek.com/log/2003/0813t1158.html#handauthoring ease of authoring is important]
* reuse building blocks from widely adopted standards
** [http://tantek.com/presentations/20040928sdforumws/semantic-xhtml.html semantic], [http://tantek.com/presentations/2005/03/elementsofxhtml meaningful (X)HTML]. See [[SemanticXHTMLDesignPrinciples]] for more details.
** existing microformats
** well established schemas from interoperable RFCs
* modularity / embeddability
** design to be reused and embedded inside existing formats and microformats
* enable and encourage decentralized and distributed development, content, services
** explicitly encourage the original "spirit of the Web"
* Principals we re-use from other design paradigms
** [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don%C2%B4t_repeat_yourself DRY] (Don't Repeat Yourself)
** [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_least_surprise Least Surprise]

== current microformats ==

See the [[Main_Page|main page]] for a list of current microformats specifications, drafts, and discussions.

== more thoughts on how microformats are different ==

There are plenty of existing formats that are ''nearly'' totally useless/ignored.

They're not ''totally'' useless though. They're useful in that they illustrate what at least someone thought might be useful, which unfortunately is typically a lone-inventor working a-priori without any domain expertise.

Or there is the other extreme. Lots of corporate inventors working with plenty of experience, over-designing a format for what ''might'' be needed some day. In particularly bad cases, the corporate vendors collude to prevent openness and/or adoptability by the open source community. Media standards [http://dannyayers.com/archives/2005/09/24/qotd-23/ often suffer from this kind of deliberate "strategic" positioning].

We seek to combat all of those problems with the microformat approach.

* We're not lone-inventors; we're a [http://microformats.org/discuss/ community].
* We don't work [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_priori a-priori] ("from reason alone"); we require documentation of existing examples, previous attempts at formats. See [[process]].
* When lacking domain expertise, we seek out the domain experts to provide it, and we immerse ourselves in examples and prior art from the domain (see previous point).
* We do our work in the [[Main_Page|open]] with [http://microformats.org/discuss/ open discussion forums].
* We're a diverse mix of corporate, independent, hobbyist, enthusiast.
* We don't over-design. We under-design, deliberately, and then only add things when they are absolutely necessary.
* We adopt very liberal copyright/licensing (CC,GMPG,IETF,W3C) and patent positions (RF,IETF,W3C).
* We ruthlessly self-criticize based on our [http://microformats.org/wiki/microformats#the_microformats_principles principles] in order to keep to the above.

Some ask what the purpose of the (intended) standards is.

Why do you need purpose? More often than not, premature focus on purpose tends to distort data formats towards a particular application which may not be all that relevant. Hence rather than focus on a-priori purpose, we focus on modeling existing behavior, with the knowledge that additional structure will yield plenty of interesting uses, most of which we will not be able to a-priori predict.

This is obviously a very different approach than traditional data format efforts.

last-modified-brainstorming

2005-12-30T18:29:28Z

ChrisHibbert: /* Purpose */

= "Last-modified" Brainstorming =

== Purpose ==
To specify the date of publication and the date of modification of a web page (or a part thereof) in a way that is both readable for humans and machines.

== Authors ==
* [[User:RobertBachmann|Robert Bachmann]]

== Possible class names ==

=== Class name considerations ===
==== Class names for the date of publication ====
* “date”: Dublin Core
* “published”: Atom
* “dtpublished”: As suggested by Paul Bryson for [[hatom|hAtom]]. See http://microformats.org/discuss/mail/microformats-discuss/2005-December/002520.html

==== Class names for the date of the last modification ====
* “last-modified”: “Last-Modified” used by HTTP 1.0 and 1.1
* “modified”: Dublin Core
* “updated”: Atom 1.0 syndication specification

=== Different class name for page specific and item specific dates? ===

For example “page-last-modified” is used to indicate the last modification date of a page and “last-modified” for the last modification date of a specific item*.
However, this seems to be not a good idea. Other microformats leave it to the parser to pick the scope of the element, e.g. [[rel-tag]].

See http://microformats.org/discuss/mail/microformats-discuss/2005-August/000726.html for a related discussion.

<nowiki>*</nowiki> This specific item is marked-up with a microformat, e.g: a microformat to describe blog posts may use “last-modified” to indicate when a blog post was last modified.

== Possible date formats ==

See [[datetime-design-pattern]].


 

= Proposal (2nd, strawman) =
== Purpose ==

Many web pages (and parts thereof) state their publication and/or modification date in a human readable way. This proposed microformat specifies how this can be done in a fashion that is both human- and machine-readable.

=== Specifying the date of publication ===

The date of publication is enclosed by <code><abbr class="date-published[[#footnote1|1]]" title="''Date in ISO format''">''Date in arbitrary format''</abbr></code>, e.g:

<code>Published on <abbr class="date-published[[#footnote1|1]]" title="2005-12-29T14:39:12+0100">Thursday, December 29, 2005 02:39:12 a.m.</abbr>.</code>.

=== Specifying the date of modification ===

The date of modification is enclosed by <code><abbr class="date-modified[[#footnote1|1]]" title="''Date in ISO format''">''Date in arbitary format''</abbr></code>, e.g:

<code>Last modified on <abbr class="date-modified[[#footnote1|1]]" title="2005-12-29T14:39:12+0100">Thursday, December 29, 2005 02:39:12 a.m.</abbr>.</code>.

If no date of modification is present the parsers MAY use the date of publication as the date of the last modification.

==== <del> and <ins> ====
Authors MAY also use <code><del></code> and <code><ins></code> to denote the date of
modification, e.g:
<code><del class="date-modified[[#footnote1|1]]" datetime="2005-12-29T14:39:12+0100">wrong words</del></code>.
The class value "date-modified[[#footnote1|1]]" is implied for every <code><del></code> and <code><ins></code>
element which has a <code>datetime</code> attribute.

=== Multiple dates in a page (or a part thereof) ===

If multiple dates of publication are present on a page (or a part thereof)
the ''youngest'' date SHOULD be interpreted as the date of publication.

If multiple dates of modification are present on a page (or a part thereof)
the ''oldest'' date SHOULD be interpreted as the date of modification.

1 This class name is just a placeholder which will be replaced once we know a suitable name.

== Related ==
* ←[[last-modified-formats]]
* [[datetime-design-pattern]]

reviews-formats

2005-10-06T22:19:44Z

ChrisHibbert: /* delicious 3rd party */

= Current Reviews Formats =
There have been several efforts to define data formats for posting "reviews" of products, services etc. on the Web.

This page serves to document the current list of review schemas, formats, and efforts as background for the design of a simple reviews [[microformat]]. -[http://tantek.com/log/ Tantek]

Notice that '''author''' appears several times in the list below, and that it sometimes refers to the author of the review, and other times to the author of the book being reviewed. A parenthetical will be used to distinguish them now.

== Centralized Implementations ==
=== Insider Pages ===
Customer reviews of local businesses
* http://www.insiderpages.com

** author ''(review author)''
** rating (0 - 5 stars)
** business name
** review title
** review
** pros
** cons
** business category
** business address
** business phone number
** business e-mail address
** business website

=== Amazon.com ===
* http://www.amazon.com/

** author ''(book author)''
** publication date
** title
** description
** rating (0 to 5 stars)
*** overall and by category
**** declared value and a maximum possible value
* vote for or against component

==== Mini-review ====
Mini reviews are limited to products on some areas of the site.

* rating (0 to 5 stars)
* ownership status ([x] I own this)
* negative interest ([x] Not interested)

=== Blogcritics ===
* http://blogcritics.org/

* author ''(review author)''
* title
* publication date
* description
* reviewed work identifier
* reviewed work title
* reviewed work version
** release date
** Volume, issue
** edition
** translation
* reviewed work author(s)
* reviewed work publisher

=== Consumer Reviews ===
* reviewed item
* reviewed item version
* rating
** overall 1-100
** by category 1-5
* definition list of specifications

=== Epinions ===
* http://epinions.com/

* author ''(review author)''
* publication date
* title
* summary ("the bottom line")
* description
* rating overall and by category
* positive summary
* negative summary
* cost
* vote for or against product
* vote for or against review

=== Web site or page reviews ===
* http://en-us.sitereviews.org/
* http://www.stumbleupon.com/

=== Yahoo! Local ===
* http://local.yahoo.com/

* author ''(review author)''
* publication date
* title
* description
* rating
** overall and by category
* positive summary
* negative summary

==== Restaurant ====
* usage datetime
* specific use

=== Nearlocal ===
* http://www.nearlocal.com/

=== Yelp ===
* http://www.yelp.com/

=== SF Survey ===
* http://sfsurvey.com/

=== Zagat ===
* rating by category
* cost
* description

=== delicious 3rd party ===
* http://alf.hubmed.org/rvw.htm

* rating (0-100%)
* tags (keywords, year, user-specified others)
* artist/author ''(work author)''
* title
* URL
* comments
* unique identifier

=== iTunes XML ===
* rating (0-100%)

=== review world ===
* http://www.revieworld.com/

=== Dinner Buzz ===
* http://www.dinnerbuzz.com/

== Previous Schemas and Formats ==
=== Generic to any kind of review ===
==== RVW ====
* http://www.pmbrowser.info/rvw/0.2/
** http://hublog.hubmed.org/archives/000307.html <- this is a really old and out-of-date version
** http://www.pmbrowser.info/wiki.pl?RVW
* variants for embedding in Atom, RSS2, RSS1, RDF
* apparent schema
** author of review
** content of review
** creator of work
*** example: book author, movie director
** percentage score rating
** multiple identifiers
*** example: ISBN, ASIN, UPC, LOC
** link to purchase
* appears to be loosely connected with the term "!OpenReviews" (has also referred to other efforts) which itself appears to be yet another OpenBlahBlah buzzword with no substance behind it (AKA placeholder term).
==== REV ====
* RDF Review Vocabulary: http://www.purl.org/stuff/rev
** Supposedly deployed in [http://trust.mindswap.org/FilmTrust/ FilmTrust]. Unable to verify by going to site.

==== Simple-Review XML ====
* Embeds XML in <script type="application/x-subnode">
* [http://structuredblogging.org/xmlns/simple-review.xsd XSD]
* apparent schema
** review-title
** item
*** name/title
*** type
*** URL
*** image URL
** rating (user visible, max, normalized to 0..1 value)
** comments/description

=== For specific domains ===
==== Movies ====
* [http://www.millikin.edu/mr/Entertainment/howto2.html How to Write a Movie Review]
==== Books ====
* RDF schema for book reviews: http://www.amk.ca/xml/reviews.html

* see also [[book-info-examples]]

== Thoughts on a Microformat ==
Thoughts towards a simple MicroFormat subset of earlier efforts, sufficient to express 80/20.

=== Common review fields ===
* item
** optional:type of item (business, Web page/site, product, event, person, place, file, text)
** name/title of item being reviewed (string | ["hCard"] if business or person)
*** optional:URL (all additional information should be somewhere else, not in the review itself)
*** optional:image (URL)
* reviewer (["hCard"]|name|email|URL)
* review publication/authoring date (ISO8601 datetime)
* rating 1 to 5 (default max = 5, default min = 1)
* optional:tags (keyword,rating)*
* optional:comments (string)

See [[hreview|hReview]] for the result and evolution of these thoughts on a microformat.

reviews-formats

2005-10-06T22:03:45Z

ChrisHibbert: /* Current Reviews Formats */

= Current Reviews Formats =
There have been several efforts to define data formats for posting "reviews" of products, services etc. on the Web.

This page serves to document the current list of review schemas, formats, and efforts as background for the design of a simple reviews [[microformat]]. -[http://tantek.com/log/ Tantek]

Notice that '''author''' appears several times in the list below, and that it sometimes refers to the author of the review, and other times to the author of the book being reviewed. A parenthetical will be used to distinguish them now.

== Centralized Implementations ==
=== Insider Pages ===
Customer reviews of local businesses
* http://www.insiderpages.com

** author ''(review author)''
** rating (0 - 5 stars)
** business name
** review title
** review
** pros
** cons
** business category
** business address
** business phone number
** business e-mail address
** business website

=== Amazon.com ===
* http://www.amazon.com/

** author ''(book author)''
** publication date
** title
** description
** rating (0 to 5 stars)
*** overall and by category
**** declared value and a maximum possible value
* vote for or against component

==== Mini-review ====
Mini reviews are limited to products on some areas of the site.

* rating (0 to 5 stars)
* ownership status ([x] I own this)
* negative interest ([x] Not interested)

=== Blogcritics ===
* http://blogcritics.org/

* author ''(review author)''
* title
* publication date
* description
* reviewed work identifier
* reviewed work title
* reviewed work version
** release date
** Volume, issue
** edition
** translation
* reviewed work author(s)
* reviewed work publisher

=== Consumer Reviews ===
* reviewed item
* reviewed item version
* rating
** overall 1-100
** by category 1-5
* definition list of specifications

=== Epinions ===
* http://epinions.com/

* author ''(review author)''
* publication date
* title
* summary ("the bottom line")
* description
* rating overall and by category
* positive summary
* negative summary
* cost
* vote for or against product
* vote for or against review

=== Web site or page reviews ===
* http://en-us.sitereviews.org/
* http://www.stumbleupon.com/

=== Yahoo! Local ===
* http://local.yahoo.com/

* author ''(review author)''
* publication date
* title
* description
* rating
** overall and by category
* positive summary
* negative summary

==== Restaurant ====
* usage datetime
* specific use

=== Nearlocal ===
* http://www.nearlocal.com/

=== Yelp ===
* http://www.yelp.com/

=== SF Survey ===
* http://sfsurvey.com/

=== Zagat ===
* rating by category
* cost
* description

=== delicious 3rd party ===
* http://alf.hubmed.org/rvw.htm

* rating (0-100%)
* tags (keywords, year, user-specified others)
* artist/author ''(page author)''
* title
* URL
* comments
* unique identifier

=== iTunes XML ===
* rating (0-100%)

=== review world ===
* http://www.revieworld.com/

=== Dinner Buzz ===
* http://www.dinnerbuzz.com/

== Previous Schemas and Formats ==
=== Generic to any kind of review ===
==== RVW ====
* http://www.pmbrowser.info/rvw/0.2/
** http://hublog.hubmed.org/archives/000307.html <- this is a really old and out-of-date version
** http://www.pmbrowser.info/wiki.pl?RVW
* variants for embedding in Atom, RSS2, RSS1, RDF
* apparent schema
** author of review
** content of review
** creator of work
*** example: book author, movie director
** percentage score rating
** multiple identifiers
*** example: ISBN, ASIN, UPC, LOC
** link to purchase
* appears to be loosely connected with the term "!OpenReviews" (has also referred to other efforts) which itself appears to be yet another OpenBlahBlah buzzword with no substance behind it (AKA placeholder term).
==== REV ====
* RDF Review Vocabulary: http://www.purl.org/stuff/rev
** Supposedly deployed in [http://trust.mindswap.org/FilmTrust/ FilmTrust]. Unable to verify by going to site.

==== Simple-Review XML ====
* Embeds XML in <script type="application/x-subnode">
* [http://structuredblogging.org/xmlns/simple-review.xsd XSD]
* apparent schema
** review-title
** item
*** name/title
*** type
*** URL
*** image URL
** rating (user visible, max, normalized to 0..1 value)
** comments/description

=== For specific domains ===
==== Movies ====
* [http://www.millikin.edu/mr/Entertainment/howto2.html How to Write a Movie Review]
==== Books ====
* RDF schema for book reviews: http://www.amk.ca/xml/reviews.html

* see also [[book-info-examples]]

== Thoughts on a Microformat ==
Thoughts towards a simple MicroFormat subset of earlier efforts, sufficient to express 80/20.

=== Common review fields ===
* item
** optional:type of item (business, Web page/site, product, event, person, place, file, text)
** name/title of item being reviewed (string | ["hCard"] if business or person)
*** optional:URL (all additional information should be somewhere else, not in the review itself)
*** optional:image (URL)
* reviewer (["hCard"]|name|email|URL)
* review publication/authoring date (ISO8601 datetime)
* rating 1 to 5 (default max = 5, default min = 1)
* optional:tags (keyword,rating)*
* optional:comments (string)

See [[hreview|hReview]] for the result and evolution of these thoughts on a microformat.

book-info-examples

2005-10-06T22:00:18Z

ChrisHibbert: /* Information Commonly Given About Books */

== Information Commonly Given About Books ==

[[hreview|hReview]] prominently doesn't include a way to markup the author of a book. This makes sense for other kinds of reviews, but it seems glaringly deficient for books. This collection of information is intended as a starting point for a discussion about how hBookReview should differ. I'm expecting to find that most book review sites list the authors' names prominently. I'm googling around for book review blogs and other book review sites. Here are some from the first two pages of Googling.

[[reviews-formats]] has some discussion of formats for reviews, including book reviews. Some of the formats use ''creator'' as an equivalent for a work's author. Others use ''author'', and sometimes they mean ''review-author'', and other times ''work-author''.

===Book Reviews===

* [http://www.metacritic.com/books/ Metacritic]'s front page is a list of reviewed books, all are accompanied by the author's name. On the review page, the author's name appears in span class="subhead".

* [http://www.bookclan.com/blog/ BookClan] has reviews and discussion. No special markup of the authors, but they always accompany the title.

* [http://francesdinkelspiel.blogspot.com/ Ghost Word] uses '''Strong''' to mark authors.

* [http://www.book-blog.blogspot.com/ Book Blog] makes a span called "PostTitle" that includes the title (in a subspan) and the author.

* [http://bookreviewblog.blogspot.com/ Book Review Blog] puts title and (parenthesized) author in a link to Amazon.com.

* [http://ray.camdenfamily.com/index.cfm?mode=cat&catid=0B6C189E-FB1A-A968-50BC6904B10D8649 Jedi Master] has two book reviews, and includes the author in the title once, and in the text in the other.

* [http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/entertainment/books/ Mercury News Reviews] has book reviews every week. No one should be surprised to hear that the authors are always listed in the subheading.

===Other discussions of Books===

* [http://amazon.com amazon] displays books with title, author, price, rating, and cover thumbnail. Of these, the author and cover picture are always links. The author link takes you to other works by the author, and the cover thumbnail takes you to a blowup.

* [http://library.ci.mtnview.ca.us Libraries] have a few standard search categories: Author, Title, Subject, and catalogue number (ISBN, LoC, etc.).

== CounterExamples ==

* [http://www.800ceoread.com/blog/ 800 CEO Read] usually includes the author's name, but doesn't highlight it in any distinctive way.

* [http://www.digital-web.com/types/book_reviews/ Digital Web Magazine] reviews technical books, and is inconsistent about mentioning authors. Sometimes the title and author are included in a [http://www.digital-web.com/articles/four_best_web_design_books/ pull quote], while at other times, the author is [http://www.digital-web.com/articles/web_redesign_2_workflow_that_works/ lost] completely. They seem to think readers aren't interested in the authors when the books are ''merely'' technical manuals.

reviews-formats

2005-10-06T18:02:17Z

ChrisHibbert: cross-ref to book-info-examples

= Current Reviews Formats =
There have been several efforts to define data formats for posting "reviews" of products, services etc. on the Web.

This page serves to document the current list of review schemas, formats, and efforts as background for the design of a simple reviews [[microformat]]. -[http://tantek.com/log/ Tantek]

== Centralized Implementations ==
=== Insider Pages ===
Customer reviews of local businesses
* http://www.insiderpages.com

** author
** rating (0 - 5 stars)
** business name
** review title
** review
** pros
** cons
** business category
** business address
** business phone number
** business e-mail address
** business website

=== Amazon.com ===
* http://www.amazon.com/

** author
** publication date
** title
** description
** rating (0 to 5 stars)
*** overall and by category
**** declared value and a maximum possible value
* vote for or against component

==== Mini-review ====
Mini reviews are limited to products on some areas of the site.

* rating (0 to 5 stars)
* ownership status ([x] I own this)
* negative interest ([x] Not interested)

=== Blogcritics ===
* http://blogcritics.org/

* author
* title
* publication date
* description
* reviewed work identifier
* reviewed work title
* reviewed work version
** release date
** Volume, issue
** edition
** translation
* reviewed work author(s)
* reviewed work publisher

=== Consumer Reviews ===
* reviewed item
* reviewed item version
* rating
** overall 1-100
** by category 1-5
* definition list of specifications

=== Epinions ===
* http://epinions.com/

* author
* publication date
* title
* summary ("the bottom line")
* description
* rating overall and by category
* positive summary
* negative summary
* cost
* vote for or against product
* vote for or against review

=== Web site or page reviews ===
* http://en-us.sitereviews.org/
* http://www.stumbleupon.com/

=== Yahoo! Local ===
* http://local.yahoo.com/

* author
* publication date
* title
* description
* rating
** overall and by category
* positive summary
* negative summary

==== Restaurant ====
* usage datetime
* specific use

=== Nearlocal ===
* http://www.nearlocal.com/

=== Yelp ===
* http://www.yelp.com/

=== SF Survey ===
* http://sfsurvey.com/

=== Zagat ===
* rating by category
* cost
* description

=== delicious 3rd party ===
* http://alf.hubmed.org/rvw.htm

* rating (0-100%)
* tags (keywords, year, user-specified others)
* artist/author
* title
* URL
* comments
* unique identifier

=== iTunes XML ===
* rating (0-100%)

=== review world ===
* http://www.revieworld.com/

=== Dinner Buzz ===
* http://www.dinnerbuzz.com/

== Previous Schemas and Formats ==
=== Generic to any kind of review ===
==== RVW ====
* http://www.pmbrowser.info/rvw/0.2/
** http://hublog.hubmed.org/archives/000307.html <- this is a really old and out-of-date version
** http://www.pmbrowser.info/wiki.pl?RVW
* variants for embedding in Atom, RSS2, RSS1, RDF
* apparent schema
** author of review
** content of review
** creator of work
*** example: book author, movie director
** percentage score rating
** multiple identifiers
*** example: ISBN, ASIN, UPC, LOC
** link to purchase
* appears to be loosely connected with the term "!OpenReviews" (has also referred to other efforts) which itself appears to be yet another OpenBlahBlah buzzword with no substance behind it (AKA placeholder term).
==== REV ====
* RDF Review Vocabulary: http://www.purl.org/stuff/rev
** Supposedly deployed in [http://trust.mindswap.org/FilmTrust/ FilmTrust]. Unable to verify by going to site.

==== Simple-Review XML ====
* Embeds XML in <script type="application/x-subnode">
* [http://structuredblogging.org/xmlns/simple-review.xsd XSD]
* apparent schema
** review-title
** item
*** name/title
*** type
*** URL
*** image URL
** rating (user visible, max, normalized to 0..1 value)
** comments/description

=== For specific domains ===
==== Movies ====
* [http://www.millikin.edu/mr/Entertainment/howto2.html How to Write a Movie Review]
==== Books ====
* RDF schema for book reviews: http://www.amk.ca/xml/reviews.html

* see also [[book-info-examples]]

== Thoughts on a Microformat ==
Thoughts towards a simple MicroFormat subset of earlier efforts, sufficient to express 80/20.

=== Common review fields ===
* item
** optional:type of item (business, Web page/site, product, event, person, place, file, text)
** name/title of item being reviewed (string | ["hCard"] if business or person)
*** optional:URL (all additional information should be somewhere else, not in the review itself)
*** optional:image (URL)
* reviewer (["hCard"]|name|email|URL)
* review publication/authoring date (ISO8601 datetime)
* rating 1 to 5 (default max = 5, default min = 1)
* optional:tags (keyword,rating)*
* optional:comments (string)

See [[hreview|hReview]] for the result and evolution of these thoughts on a microformat.

location-formats

2005-09-29T20:10:48Z

ChrisHibbert: Gaze: name based lookup.

= Location Research =
This is a list of previous efforts at location / geographic ("Geo") data formats and protocols, as background research for developing a location format.
__TOC__

== Authors ==

* Tantek Çelik
* Bud Gibson
* Ryan King
* ...
* please add yourself if you help(ed) with this document.

= Location Examples =

== What People are Publishing ==

* links to mapping services, canonical URLs to 3rd party services like:
** Google Maps
** Map Quest
** Yahoo Maps

* human / named / legislated formats
** named places, e.g. Westin St. Francis
** addresses, including zip codes

* global/mathematical/geometrical
** Lat & Lon
*** MAKE has a GeoURL button
*** Geo in RSS. Means a particular blog post is associated with a specific lat/long. Not specific about whether it means the location that the post was made from or the location was the post was about.

= Location Formats =

== vCard & hCard ==
vCard (RFC2426) and [[hcard]] include 'adr', a way to markup addresses. They also have a field called 'geo' for lat/long.

== UPU S42 & OASIS xNAL ==
UPU S42 is a standard for representing postal addresses. UPU, the Universal Postal Union, is the consortium of all national posts. See [http://xml.coverpages.org/ni2003-06-17-a.html UPU S42 Announcement]. xNAL, the XML Name
and Address Language, is an earlier attempt to standardize on the components of addresses developed by OASIS,
a consortium of business-process weenies. The distinction between vCard/hCard and S42/xAL/xNAL comes down to
whether the address line elements themselves are decomposed. For example, in xNAL you can specify components like
street number, street prefix directional, street name, street type, street postfix directional, subaddress type (Suite), subaddress number.

It is not always possible to conclusively determine these components from an address line, even in the US where addresses are more canonical than others. "A 4TH ST W STE 10" is a legal address line in the US. The street number and name are required (in the US) so this could be canonically decomposed as streetnumber="A", streetname="4TH", streettype="ST", postdirectional="W", subtype="STE", subtypenumber="10".

UPU S42 and OASIS xNAL standards are likely overkill for tagging general web content. However, they are important standards that should be considered in web-services involving both geocoding and reverse-geocoding. Perhaps standards
related to decomposed addresses is something that should be placed on another page.

In addition, there should be pointers to national address standards.

USPS publishes a complete list of canonical abbreviations for both streettypes and subtypes. Their publications are self-inconsistent, but it is easy to infer the correct mappings. See [http://www.usps.com/ncsc/lookups/usps_abbreviations.htm USPS Acronyms & Abbreviations]

New Zealand apparently adopted a variant of xNAL [http://www.e-government.govt.nz/docs/xnal-guidelines-1-0/index.html NZ xNAL Guidelines Release 1.0].

== ICBM ==
One comma seperated pair of lat/long <code><meta name="ICBM" content="XXX.XXXXX, XXX.XXXXX"></code>
[http://www.catb.org/~esr/jargon/html/I/ICBM-address.html]

== GeoUrl ==
* [http://geourl.org/ GeoURL]
** This seems to have a decent amount of geeky adoption, though there are lots of typical invisible metadata problems, coordinates reversed, postive instead of negative etc.
* [http://www.multimap.com/ Multimap.com] provides similar functionality to GeoUrl, searching for websites and weblogs which are geotagged or ICBM tagged, and adding them to local information databases.

== Flickr Geotags ==
* [http://steeev.f2o.org/mt/2005/05/geotagging_flickr_with_google_maps_and_greasemonkey_part_2.html Flickr GeoTagging] A Greasemonkey script for adding lat and long tags to flick pictures. He uses Google Maps to get the lat and long. Users have to enter search terms (address, etc) and then select a point on the google map. Photos are tagged with "geo:lat=xx.xxxx", "geo:lon=xx.xxxx" and "geotagged" and aggregated at [http://geobloggers.com/]
* [http://flickr.com/groups/geotagging/ A Flickr Group related to the topic]
* [http://txfx.net/2005/05/17/flickr-google-maps-geobloggers/ A visual walkthrough of the technique.]
* As of today (2005-06-01), 14k photos have been geotagged on Flickr.
* [http://mappr.com mappr], [http://brainoff.com/worldkit/flick mapping flickr] also support these geotags.
* flickr also supports [http://www.flickr.com/services/api/flickr.photos.getExif.html EXIF headers], which can be used for storing location.
* [http://beta.plazes.com plazes] also allows flickr photos to be tagged with geotags

This is somewhat of a problem though, as mechanically generated "tags" are not really tags. Including/setting Flickr "Geotags" could be considered pollution of truly user entered text, since the text of geotags is merely an encoding for a point on a map.

== Geotagging ==
* Geotagging has been employed in other hosted services: [http://brainoff.com/worldkit/delicious/ delicious], [http://worldkit.typepad.com/ Typepad], [http://blog.360.yahoo.com/blog-yRZQpvY8cq2kWXBO5ZrxEmrwsg--?p=9 Yahoo 360], [http://www.zoto.com/users/geotags/ Zoto]

But what do these references to "geotagging" mean?

== RSS ==
Several people have tried putting geographic information into RSS.
* [http://postneo.com/icbm/ This site] uses icbm coordinates and has plugins for several blogging packages.
* [http://www.blogmapper.com/ BlogMapper] - appears to be adding a namespace to RSS.
* [http://www.feedmap.net/BlogMap/ BlogMap] - picks up RSS extension and meta tag values
* [http://brainoff.com/worldkit/doc/rss.php worldKit RSS docs] - worldKit advocates and understands various flavors of geocoded RSS; particularly the "geo" namespace.
* [http://earthquake.usgs.gov/recenteqsww/rss.html USGS earthquake feed] - most widely used geocoded RSS feed
* [http://brainoff.com/worldkit/doc/polygon.php Polygons and lines in polygons] - A simple format for expressing polygons and lines is defined for worldKit
* [http://developer.yahoo.net/maps/ Yahoo Maps API] - uses "geo" ( http://www.w3.org/2003/01/geo/wgs84_pos# ) and "ymaps" ( http://api.maps.yahoo.com/Maps/V1/AnnotatedMaps.xsd ) namespaces to spatially-reference RSS as part of its API, specifically geo:lat, geo:long, ymaps:Address, ymaps:CityState, ymaps:Zip

== RDF ==
* [http://www.geosemantics.org/ Geosemantics Interest Group]
* [http://esw.w3.org/topic/GeoOnion GeoOnion] - a SW vocuabulary for relating items by distance from each other.
* [http://www.mapbureau.com/rdfmap1.0/index.html RDFMap]
* [http://esw.w3.org/topic/GeoRDF GeoRDF] similar effort to collect prior art, for an effort in interoperability between OGC standards and various lightweight geo formats.

== GML ==
[http://www.opengeospatial.org/docs/02-023r4.pdf Geographic Markup Language] provides the most complete XML descriptiono of geographic information available. Fortunately, it is also in wide-spread use, so a commonly-used subset of the 600-page specification has emerged. GML is used in the OGC WFS payload described below.

<blockquote style="background: white; border: 1px solid black; padding: 1em;">
== Open Geospatical Consortium - OGC ==
Since 1994, [http://www.opengeospatial.org/ Open Geospatial Consortium] has been developing open specifications to enable the exchange of geographic information between applications. While some GIS vendors opposed OGC initially, essentially all commercial GIS software companies have broken down their proprietary "stovepipes" by embracing OGC specifications. The recent groundswell of ajax mapping applications can benefit tremendously from using OGC specs.

=== WMS ===
The [http://portal.opengeospatial.org/files/?artifact_id=5316 OGC Web Map Service (WMS) specification] makes it easy to request map images from a map rendering engine, such as the [http://mapserver.gis.umn.edu/ UMN Map Server]. It is straightforward to build dynamic tiling ("slippy map") ajax applications that pull in OGC map tiles. At Where 2.0, [http://www.metacarta.com MetaCarta] demonstrated such an OGC-capable ajax GIS client. The portal map providers (yahoo/gmaps/msn/map quest) do not yet offer WMS interfaces, so someone should wrap their proprietary interfaces in a WMS wrapper to encourage them :-)

=== WCS ===

Web Coverage Service extends WMS to enable attribute information about large area overview maps.

=== WFS ===
The [https://portal.opengeospatial.org/files/?artifact_id=8339 OGC Web Feature Service (WFS) specification] is the best way to express geographic information about Web content. It is more complex than the ad hoc geoURL syntax, and for good reason: it can be loaded directly into any OGC-capable GIS even if the coordinate information is in a different projection/datum or is more complex than just a point.

WFS provides a robust means of querying for geographic entities, such as points, polygons, and more complex feature types. One can define new feature types simply by describing them. One can even specify the visual appearance of the geographic features using the [https://portal.opengeospatial.org/files/?artifact_id=1188 OGC Styled Layer Description (SLD) specification].

WFS is to vector map data, as WMS is to raster map data.

Geographic search results, such as the yellow page information from the portals, could be presented in WFS. John Battelle commented that RSS forces publishers to attach their business model to their content, instead of to the web site holding the content, so that they can make money no matter where their content flows. The search portals will probably be forced to do the same, e.g. putting click-through ads in the RSS search results or WFS yellow page results, so that even when you display them in your customized ajax mapping application, the portal publishing the search results can still make money.

</blockquote>

== Google ==
=== Google Earth XML ===
20050629 at Where 2.0 conference:
"Google Earth has an XML schema for describing a place on the earth. Will be releasing today or tomorrow."
- John Hanke of Google/Keyhole.
Official KML [http://www.keyhole.com/kml/kml_doc.html Docs] and [http://www.keyhole.com/kml/kml_tut.html Tutorial]

[http://bbs.keyhole.com/boards/showflat/Board-features-Number-16076-Forum-All_Forums-Words-schema-Match-Entire%20Phrase-Searchpage-0-Limit-100-Old-allposts-Main-16076-Search-true KML Reverse Engineered Schema] (deprecated now that KML 2.0 is officially released)

== NMEA ==

[http://www.gpsinformation.org/dale/nmea.htmhttp://www.gpsinformation.org/dale/nmea.htm Standard and Proprietary NMEA Sentances]

== Wikipedia ==

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Geographical_coordinates Geo:Coordinates in Wikipedia Project]

== Other Formats ==

* GPX = GPS XML format
* [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Geographical_coordinates Wikipedia markup styles]
* [http://openguides.org/ OpenGuides] and [http://b.evnt.org evnt] are both looking into real-world/folksonomic location name mappings

= Location APIs =

== Google Maps API ==
* [http://www.google.com/apis/maps/ Google Maps API documentation]

== Yahoo Maps API ==
* [http://developer.yahoo.net/maps/ Yahoo Maps API documentation]

= Location Data, Tools and Sites =

== Address2Coordinates ==
These systems are freely available sources of address to lat/long mappings (US only). The first few are based on US Census data, so they might be up to date.
* [http://www.census.gov/geo/www/tiger/ TIGER]
* [http://www.itl.nist.gov/fipspubs/55new/nav-top-fr.htm FIPS]
* [http://geocoder.us/ geocoder]
* You can get coordinates from UK post-codes from [http://www.streetmap.co.uk streetmap]
* Worldwide city level location data (over 4 million entries) is available from the [http://earth-info.nga.mil/gns/html/ GNS]. This is accessible as a REST service from the [http://brainoff.com/geocoder/ worldkit geocoder]
* [http://www.mysociety.org/?p=83 mysociety.org] is providing an interesting name-based location look-up services. The results are returned as a CSV file!   For instance, the query [http://gaze.mysociety.org/gaze-rest?f=find_places&country=US&state=CA&query=sunnyvale http://gaze.mysociety.org/gaze-rest?f=find_places&country=US&state=CA&query=sunnyvale] returns

<pre>
"Name","In","Near","Latitude","Longitude","State","Score"
"Sunnyvale","Santa Clara County","","37.36889","-122.03528","CA","100"
</pre>
but with a mime-type (text/csv) that browsers don't understand.

== A2B ==
[http://www.a2b.cc/ A2B] is a location based search engine. Lat and long only. Seems to pick stuff up from geo meta tags. Pages can either be manually entered or [http://www.a2b.cc/help-searching-addurl-blogping.a2b pinged]. They support lat/long and ICBM meta tags.

== Plazes ==
[http://plazes.com Plazes] is a system that does geo-info based on the network access point that the user's computer is connected to. They use tagging to identify locations.

== Mapping Sites ==
* [http://www.multimap.com Multimap]
* [http://maps.google.com Google Maps]
* [http://www.mapquest.com MapQuest]
* [http://maps.yahoo.com Yahoo Maps]
* [http://www.mapblast.com MapBlast]
* [http://mapufacture.com mapufacture]

= Location Brainstorming =

A lot of was discussed and figured out at the Geo Microformat BOF at O'Reilly's Where 2.0 conference.

See the [[geo-bof-2005-06-30]] minutes/notes.

One of the thoughts that came out of BOF was the idea of [[location-tagging]].

== Conclusions on new microformats ==

The consensus conclusions from the Geo Microformat BOF at Where 2.0 was to define two new microformats to reflect the two kinds of most commonly published geo data.

* [[adr]] - for representing / marking-up / publishing address location information. "adr" is simply the [[hcard|hCard]] "adr" property and all its sub-properties.
* [[geo]] - for representing / marking-up / publishing latitude longitude location information. "geo" is simply the [[hcard|hCard]] "geo" property and all its sub-properties, with the explicitly specified datum of WGS84.

book-info-examples

2005-09-20T17:28:01Z

ChrisHibbert: Other places that talk about books: libraries and bookstores

== Information Commonly Given About Books ==

[[hreview|hReview]] prominently doesn't include a way to markup the author of a book. This makes sense for other kinds of reviews, but it seems glaringly deficient for books. This collection of information is intended as a starting point for a discussion about how hBookReview should differ. I'm expecting to find that most book review sites list the authors' names prominently. I'm googling around for book review blogs and other book review sites. Here are some from the first two pages of Googling.

===Book Reviews===

* [http://www.metacritic.com/books/ Metacritic]'s front page is a list of reviewed books, all are accompanied by the author's name. On the review page, the author's name appears in span class="subhead".

* [http://www.bookclan.com/blog/ BookClan] has reviews and discussion. No special markup of the authors, but they always accompany the title.

* [http://francesdinkelspiel.blogspot.com/ Ghost Word] uses '''Strong''' to mark authors.

* [http://www.book-blog.blogspot.com/ Book Blog] makes a span called "PostTitle" that includes the title (in a subspan) and the author.

* [http://bookreviewblog.blogspot.com/ Book Review Blog] puts title and (parenthesized) author in a link to Amazon.com.

* [http://ray.camdenfamily.com/index.cfm?mode=cat&catid=0B6C189E-FB1A-A968-50BC6904B10D8649 Jedi Master] has two book reviews, and includes the author in the title once, and in the text in the other.

* [http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/entertainment/books/ Mercury News Reviews] has book reviews every week. No one should be surprised to hear that the authors are always listed in the subheading.

===Other discussions of Books===

* [http://amazon.com amazon] displays books with title, author, price, rating, and cover thumbnail. Of these, the author and cover picture are always links. The author link takes you to other works by the author, and the cover thumbnail takes you to a blowup.

* [http://library.ci.mtnview.ca.us Libraries] have a few standard search categories: Author, Title, Subject, and catalogue number (ISBN, LoC, etc.).

== CounterExamples ==

* [http://www.800ceoread.com/blog/ 800 CEO Read] usually includes the author's name, but doesn't highlight it in any distinctive way.

* [http://www.digital-web.com/types/book_reviews/ Digital Web Magazine] reviews technical books, and is inconsistent about mentioning authors. Sometimes the title and author are included in a [http://www.digital-web.com/articles/four_best_web_design_books/ pull quote], while at other times, the author is [http://www.digital-web.com/articles/web_redesign_2_workflow_that_works/ lost] completely. They seem to think readers aren't interested in the authors when the books are ''merely'' technical manuals.

book-info-examples

2005-09-19T22:26:31Z

ChrisHibbert: Quick survey of book reviews

I'm expecting to find that most book review sites list the authors' names prominently. I'm googling around for book review blogs and other book review sites. Here are some from the first two pages of Googling.

* [http://www.metacritic.com/books/ Metacritic]'s front page is a list of reviewed books, all are accompanied by the author's name. On the review page, the author's name appears in span class="subhead".

* [http://www.bookclan.com/blog/ BookClan] has reviews and discussion. No special markup of the authors, but they always accompany the title.

* [http://francesdinkelspiel.blogspot.com/ Ghost Word] uses '''Strong''' to mark authors.

* [http://www.book-blog.blogspot.com/ Book Blog] makes a span called "PostTitle" that includes the title (in a subspan) and the author.

* [http://bookreviewblog.blogspot.com/ Book Review Blog] puts title and (parenthesized) author in a link to Amazon.com.

* [http://ray.camdenfamily.com/index.cfm?mode=cat&catid=0B6C189E-FB1A-A968-50BC6904B10D8649 Jedi Master] has two book reviews, and includes the author in the title once, and in the text in the other.

* [http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/entertainment/books/ Mercury News Reviews] has book reviews every week. No one should be surprised to hear that the authors are always listed in the subheading.

----

== CounterExamples ==

* [http://www.800ceoread.com/blog/ 800 CEO Read] usually includes the author's name, but doesn't highlight it in any distinctive way.

* [http://www.digital-web.com/types/book_reviews/ Digital Web Magazine] reviews technical books, and is inconsistent about mentioning authors. Sometimes the title and author are included in a [http://www.digital-web.com/articles/four_best_web_design_books/ pull quote], while at other times, the author is [http://www.digital-web.com/articles/web_redesign_2_workflow_that_works/ lost] completely. They seem to think readers aren't interested in the authors when the books are ''merely'' technical manuals.