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picoformats
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See the latest work being done on this in the IndieWebCamp community:
Contents
Introduction
Problem Statement
Syntaxes
3.1
Generic
3.2
Service-Specific
References
concept
See Also
Introduction
Picoformats represent an effort being undertaken led by Chris Messina to codify various standards and openly pursue a nomenclature and syntax for communicating and executing commands with mobile devices over SMS or via command line interfaces (CLI).
An example application is
Dodgeball's
use of the at symbol (@) to express checking in to a place.
Using the Microformats process and principles of building block design, our goal is to openly develop a complete syntax for interacting with various mobile services using the characters available on most mobile devices.
Problem Statement
send messages to user mobiles - via SMS, or a small application, that contains information like appointment times, locations,
directions, and contact info. For example, when2where.com reminds users when they need to leave to get to their appointment, so the
message may be like:
leave @ 4:35PM ~Dentist Office -> Detroit, MI
where the text itself is simple and readable, but there *may* be an small utility that would parse the @ symbol to add the event to the calendar, the ~ to allow the person to quickly call that contact, or the -> to pull up a Map/directions to the location
allow users to write messages to query an application - this is similar to what Mozes has started with notes:
when2where: ?today --- what appointments to I have today
new @ 4PM ~Olive Garden -> Novi --- add an appointment
In addition to the obvious mobile device arena, picoformats may be usable in any context where "markup" is too heavy. For example, an IRC bot, whereisbot, that announces user locations as they sign into a channel, or allows people to do:
.whereami, or .whereis to geolocate other people in a channel.
The intention is to 'markup' the information, but putting actual XHTML or XML is annoying, since IRC doesn't parse the information at all. So right now the response is:
ajturner: .whereami
whereisbot: ajturner is in Northville, MI, US [42.4365 x -83.4884]
So then someone could write a Picoformat parser for X-Chat/Colloquy/other that would parse the [ #### x #### ] and provide a Map url link.
Using arrows to denote time and place, familiar from video recorders and other devices.
Some thoughts: future ^now (the hat is also mnemonic for Here + At) or >5 (in five days time) >>5 (in 5 weeks time) >>>5 (5 months)
Meeting london
Sorry, saw them <<2 wanna go see film >3?
Syntaxes
Generic
@-replies (at start), @-mentions (everywhere in content)
#-hashtags
MicroTurtle
Service-Specific
Actiontastic
BrightKite
Dodgeball
Dopplr
Facebook Mobile
GIFT
quizes
[1]
iGTD
Kiboze
Jaiku
Mixd
Plazes
POI66
[2]
QuickPack
Remember the Milk for Twitter
Stikkit
[3]
Swaggle
[4]
Textmarks
Transport for London
TripIt
References
Kiboze How it Works
Flagr:
Creating mobile flags
Dodgeball Glossary
twttr lingo
Twitter (or Jaiku)
twitter-nanoformats
brainstorm
A proposal for Twitter nanoformats
Skobee's email syntax
BillMonk syntax
concept
Thanks to
Chris Messina
for collecting a bunch of common work in this area, and exploring the area of short semi-structured text for potential "formats" of a sort that could be agreed upon, perhaps among multiple providers to make it easier for users to remember a common user interface.
See Also
- apps that operate purely via txt message commands and work with any phone that supports SMS.
- latest thoughts on a lot of text-based picoformats/microsyntax
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