vCard |
and | vCalendar |
| vCard |
and | vCalendar |
Personal Data Interchange (PDI) occurs every time two or more individuals communicate, in either a business or personal context, face-to-face, or across space and time. Such interchanges frequently include the exchange of informal information, such as business cards, telephone numbers, addresses, dates, and times of appointments. Augmenting PDI with electronics and telecommunications can help ensure that information is quickly and reliably communicated, stored, organised and easily located when needed.
The versit consortium developed a comprehensive family of PDI technologies based on open specifications and interoperability agreements to help meet this technology need and that will allow you to communicate more easily, faster and more accurately. The two main technologies that came from the versit consortium were vCard, an electronic business card, and vCalendar, an electronic calendaring and scheduling exchange format.
Beginning in December, 1996, the Internet Mail Consortium took on responsibility for the development and promotion of these two important technologies. The press release from the two organisations explains IMC's new stewardship.
vCard automates the exchange of personal information typically found on a traditional business card. vCard is used in applications such as Internet mail, voice mail, Web browsers, telephony applications, call centres, video conferencing, PIMs (Personal Information Managers), PDAs (Personal Data Assistants), pagers, fax, office equipment, and smart cards. vCard information goes way beyond simple text, and includes elements like pictures, company logos, live Web addresses, and so on. New! The IETF has released the specification for vCard version 3. The two parts of the definition are: IMC hopes that all vCard developers take advantage of these new open standards and make their software compatible with both vCard v2.1 and vCard v3.0.
|
vCalendar defines a transport and platform-independent format for exchanging calendaring and scheduling information in an easy, automated, and consistent manner. It captures information about event and "to-do" items that are normally used by applications such as a personal information managers (PIMs) and group schedulers. Programs that use vCalendar can exchange important data about events so that you can schedule meetings with anyone who has a vCalendar-aware program. New! The IESG has approved the specification for iCalendar as proposed standards. The three RFCs are
|
 |
For more information on vCard and vCalendar, please contact the Internet Mail Consortium at Email. Information about the Internet Mail Consortium is available from the IMC Web site. |
vCard and vCalendar are registered trademarks of the Internet Mail Consortium.