Tag Archives: microformats

Microformats

I have been reading a lot about microformats recently to try and get a better understanding of them, their benefits and how they affect web standards. I’ve talked a little about them in the past but I wanted to delve more into detail.

The basic idea of microformats is to design a standard XHTML template for common items – for example a hcalendar for events. That template is then the standard for all items of that type. Since all of those items share common elements – in the hcalendar example a h3 with class = summary would be the event description – they are easily able to be encoded into XML and can be aggregated. So sites or programs could aggregate sites using microformats and parse them into easily understandable and standard (hence web standards) displays.

It opens the doors to easily sharing contact information, events, resumes and people relationships with friends, family or even across the web. There are even, already, some microformat plugins for WordPress and noted blogger and CSS expert Eric Meyer uses them for both his tags and his blog watch. I definitely need to track down a rel-tag plug-in to start getting indexed in Technorati – any suggestions?

I realized I’ve only scratched the surface here. With that in mind I’m going to forgo my usual random tidbit and list some links to sites I found filled with microformats information. Before I do, note that already there have been concerns about identity theft with things like hCards and hResumes so there are many bugs to yet be worked out. It’s a powerful tool though with lots of possibility.

For more microformats information check out the following or my microformats tag on del.icio.us:

Great Decks

Stumbled onto a great article called “10 Decks in 10 Weeks.”  It’s from the writer that does the building on a budget series.  Some really good deck ideas that can be done – online or off – relatively cheap.  Some very powerful decks and new ways to use cards that I’ve kept around but haven’t been able to work decks around.  Really good reading.  He goes through all the basic 2 color combinations and designs a wide variety of decks.

If nothing else it’s good to see another very experienced Magic player’s design strategy and sort of get into their mind as they build, test and modify a deck.  I had thought that I was getting pretty good at deck building but the card drawing and mana acceleration ideas really opened my eyes.  I might have to make another pass through my decks again.

Random Tidbit: I’ve been looking into and trying to better understand the purpose and power of microformats.  One thing I’ve found is that it’s good to be posh.