Microformats

I was interested to see some news items that on the surface don't seem related but to me have a lot to say about trends.

Mozilla has started talking about Firefox 3 (http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/mozilla_does_microformats_firefox3.php) and in particular has mentioned microformats and a broader role for the browser as broker of information and service on the net to other applications. As a long time UNIX person I believe in the vision of small dedicated programs that do what they are meant to do and do it well tied together via piping. So the idea of data described by microformats, discovered or retrieved by broker and routed (piped) to other more dedicated applications has appeal to me.

Also of note was Songbird talking about plans for an API for site developers. I hope this evolves into a microformat or RDFa that allows a music centric site developer to place data directly into their web page that allows browsers like Songbird or even machine searching and indexing of music by the likes of Google or Singing Fish to use structured data from within a page or site.

This could get very exciting with things like Apple TV and The Venice Project (which is also using Mozilla technology) coming up and extending this possibility into video. With browsers getting more extensible and smarter about how they can handle structured data site developers will actually be able to see a reason (ie benefit) to doing something (anything) with metadata. Which to this point has has little to no use or benefit (IMHO).