VCard

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vCard

vCard is a file format standard for personal data interchange, specifically electronic business cards. vCards are often attached to e-mail messages, but can be exchanged in other ways, such as on the World Wide Web. They can contain name and address information, phone numbers, URLs, logos, photographs, and even audio clips.

The vCard or Versitcard was originally proposed in 1995 by the Versit consortium, which consisted of Apple Computer, AT&T (later Lucent), IBM and Siemens. In December 1996 ownership of the format was handed over to the Internet Mail Consortium, a trade association for companies with an interest in Internet e-mail.

vCard is accompanied by a proposed standard for exchanging data about forthcoming appointments called vCalendar since superseded by iCalendar; the Internet Mail Consortium has issued a statement that it "hopes that all vCalendar developers take advantage of these new open standards and make their software compatible with both vCalendar 1.0 and iCalendar."

Version 2.1 of the vCard standard is widely supported by e-mail clients. Version 3.0 of the vCard format is an IETF standards-track proposal contained in RFCs 2425 and 2426. The commonly-used filename extension for vCards is .vcf.

The hCard microformat, a 1:1 representation of vCard in semantic XHTML, has been defined by the Microformats.org community and is in use by web sites such as Flickr and Yahoo! Local. There are technologies such as X2V, hosted by web services such as the Technorati Contacts Feed Service, that automatically convert hCards to vCards, thus providing interoperability between hCards published on the web, and the aforementioned vCard clients.

An XML VCard format has been defined by the Jabber Software Foundation and is in use with technologies such as Jabber and Light-Weight Identity. W3C has another XML based vCard specification called Representing vCard Objects in RDF/XML.

Sending vCards by bluetooth is one of the most broadly compatible but inelegant forms of placecasting. Since sending vCards via bluetooth does not require device pairing, some use the standard to transmit anonymous messages, see bluejacking.

Example vCard content

Simple Example

Lastname_Firstname.vcf

BEGIN:VCARD VERSION:2.1 FN:Firstname Lastname N:Lastname;Firstname ADR;WORK;PREF;QUOTED-PRINTABLE:;Footown 12345=0AFooland;Bar Street 99 LABEL;QUOTED-PRINTABLE;WORK;PREF:Bar Street 99=0AFootown 12345=0AFooland TEL;CELL:+358-40-123456 EMAIL;INTERNET:nobody@example.invalid UID: END:VCARD

Apple's Address Book Example

Apple's Address Book imports and exports the vCard standard.

External links

Computer file formats | Internet standards

VCard | VCard | VCard | Vcard | VCard

Gourt Home::Gourt :: VCard

Example vCard content

Simple Example

Apple's Address Book Example

See also

External links