Both hCard and hCalendar are based off of already existing standards (vCard – RFC#2426 and iCalelndar – RFC#2445 respectively). With some XSLT transformations or Javascript parsing, we can export the microformatted data in a webpage to other pages or into other data formats. For example, sites like upcoming.org mark up events with the hCalendar microformat. If we plan on attending these events, we can add it our Google Calendar, Yahoo Calendar, or 30Boxes to remind us about the event at a later date.

One of, if not the most popular microformat user-agent is the Firefox extension Operator by Michael Kaply. Currently, Michael is working on adding microformat functionality and javascript functions for microformats to Firefox 3. This means we’ll be seeing a lot of these features in the next version of Firefox. Operator supports a wide range of microformats, but as previously mentioned we’re only going to stick to hCard, hCalendar and we’re going to talk a bit about rel-tag. The premise of operator is simple: if it detects any microformatted data, it allows you to take some sort of action. If you find a person or place marked up with hCard, you can export it as a vCard or add to yahoo contacts. Exporting an hCard as a vCard will allow you to save a contact to programs like Address Book, Outlook or any program that supports the vCard standard.

I’ve already mentioned what you can do with information marked up with hCalendar, so let’s look at rel-tag. Rel-tag is simply marking up up the “rel” property of a hyperlink with the value “tag.” Once Operator knows that the link is a tag, it can then look for that same tag at sites like flickr, technorati, and del.icio.us. A common use for tags is looking up additional information about something you’re reading. Blog posts for example are usually tagged, so people can find pictures on flickr, related blog posts on technorati, or related sites on del.icio.us.

Let’s take a moment to recap and see why we like microformats and operator. For one we don’t have to input data ourselves. Since the data is already online we’re simply copying it to our application of choice. With this comes the advantage of actions becoming point and click. If you want to add an event to your Google Calendar, you point and click on the add to Google Calendar option. Pretty simple.

One area that can benefit from microformats is the cell phone market. I’ve already written about the iPhone as a microformat killer-app, but I wanted to expand this idea to include both cellular phones and internet-enabled PDAs. Cell phones and PDAs both have notoriously horrible input interfaces. Don’t you dread typing out a long text message, let alone trying to search for something on a cell phone browser? What about trying to write something out in Graffiti? What if these devices had the point and click ease of use that operator has? With REAL browsers coming to next-gen cell phones such as the iPhone, I see no reason why microformats shouldn’t be a part of this market. Imagine adding a person’s contact information into your cell phone via their hCard. You have all of the information you need about them ready to and be entered into your cell phone at the tap of a stylus. The same can be said about events and adding it to your calendar application on your cell phone or PDA.

With these smaller devices, ease of input usually suffers. In this case microformats make a great alternative to user input and can help overcome these shortcomings. It really can be just as easy as point and click.

After absorbing all of this, I started to think about how microformats fit into the picture. Now that we are able to retrieve a full XHTML webpage with Safari on a mobile device, we are also able to retrieve microformatted data. What does this mean in terms of how we add contacts to our address book, add events to our calendar or find a location on a map? It sounds like the processes can be streamlined. With hCard we can add a new contact (including a photo for quick recognition!) or find out the location of a business with Google Calendar. With hCalendar we can add an event to our calendar (assuming the calendar supports adding new events). All of this can be possible without typing anything or syncing data from our Mac/PC. Of course all of this is theoretical, but imagine how easy organization will be. It will be exciting to see if microformats ever make it to consumer devices for purposes such as this.

It was already demonstrated that the iPhone already has the ability to dial numbers from locations found on Google Maps. It seems that Google uses their own closed standards/algorithms to parse the information from websites and somehow sends the extracted information to the iPhone. What about the rest of the sites out there that have just as good information to offer? If the move to an open standard like microformats is made, similar functionality can be had on any website that implements the appropriate microformat.

Oh also, I bought an Apple TV today as an impulse buy. It ships out on March 2nd!