Overdue measurement microformat: useful for radio station frequencies

This post has been moved to pigsonthewing.org.uk/measurement-microformat-for-radio-station-frequencies. Sorry, but WordPress.com won’t let me set an automatic redirect.

How microformat developments are blocked

The hCard microformat can distinguish between a person and an organisation, by the use of the org property:


<div class="vcard">
<span class="fn">Andy Mabbett</span>
</div>



<div class="vcard">
<span class="fn org">The Red Cross</span>
</div>


but it cannot distinguish between an organisation and a place:


<div class="vcard">
<span class="fn org">The Wembley Stadium fan club</span>
</div>



<div class="vcard">
<span class="fn org">Wembley Stadium</span>
</div>


treating them both as organisations.

On 31 December 2007, I described a way in which hCard microformat could be used to differentiate between hCards for places and organisations.

On 9 January 2008, having received favourable comment, I made a formal proposal to update the hCard specification.

Despite this ten-day gap, Brian Suda, one of the microformats “admins”, the cabal who control microformats, complained that he’d only had two days to consider the matter, and that “More time is needed to fully look over the implications of this change.”

No objections to the method, nor issues with it, have been raised.

Toby Inkster’s superb microformats parser Swignition (formerly called “Cognition”) has supported the method since version 0.1-alpha8, released in May 2008.

One year on from my formal proposal, what changes have been made to the hCard specification, in this regard? None.

Suggested method of publishing microformats in Twitter posts

Twitter posts like this one:

We’re still deep in the Sundarbans, near Tambulbunia, meeting experts on dolphins and tigers. l:Tambulbunia, Bangladesh=22.27722,89.71905

have a place- name and corresponding coordinates (indicated by the prefix “l:”). This has allowed them to be plotted on a map.

It should be possible for the poster to send, say:

We’re still deep in the Sundarbans, near Tambulbunia, meeting experts on dolphins and tigers. #hcard: fn+locality:Tambulbunia: country-name:Bangladesh: geo:22.27722,89.71905

using colons as delimiters and have Twitter render that comment marked up as an hCard.

In the short term, this could be achieved by a third-party site, like #hashtags .

UPDATE:  being more mindful of the 140 character limit than I have in the above example, perhaps class names might be abbreviated (“loc” for “locality”, “ctry” for “country-name”, and so on).

More Nokia N95 (and Opera Mini) wishes

Dear Nokia, and Opera,

When using your browsers on my N95, please can I:

• Copy text from a web page
• Disable CSS
• View the HTML source
• Parse microformats (not least hCard, to add contact details to the address book and dial phone numbers; hCalendar, to add events to the calendar; and Geo, to find places on maps).

Surely that’s not a lot to ask for? Thank you.

Who do you work for, again?

I can add a person to Microsoft Outlook as “Bloggs, Fred (Acme Ltd.)”, or “Acme Ltd. (Bloggs, Fred)”. These sync to my Nokia N95’s address book , or can be entered directly, as:

First name = Fred

Last name = Bloggs

Company = Acme Inc.

The vCard (i.e. industry standard for business-card type contact data) and hCard specifications both cater for company (or organisation) names.

So why, in the name of the Flying Spaghetti Monster (may his noodly appendages grace you), can I not find them, when I search my address book for “Acme Inc.”?!?

And why can I not search for people by nickname?

Nokia needs to fix this, and soon.