vCard

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vCard
File name extension .vcf, .vcard
Internet media type text/x-vcard
text/directory;profile=vCard
text/directory
Type code vCrd
Uniform Type Identifier public.vcard
Developed by Internet Mail Consortium
Type of format electronic business card
Container for contact information

vCard is a file format standard for 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.

Contents

[edit] History

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vCard is accompanied by a proposed standard for exchanging data about forthcoming appointments called vCalendar since superseded by iCalendar; the Internet Mail Consortium has issued a statement that it "hopes that all vCalendar developers take advantage of these new open standards and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 RFC 2425 and RFC 2426. The commonly-used filename extension for vCards is .vcf.

The hCard microformat, a 1:1 representation of vCard in semantic (X)HTML, allows publishers to embed vCard data in web pages. There are browser extensions such as Operator for Firefox; and technologies such as X2V and BC2, that convert such hCards into vCards, thus providing interoperability between hCards published on the web, and the aforementioned vCard clients.

An XML vCard format has been defined by the XMPP Standards Foundation and is in use with technologies such as XMPP and Light-Weight Identity. W3C has published a note on RDF-based encoding for vCard (see 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).

Applications have different implementations of the vCard standard. The Address Book on Mac OS X allows export of all contacts in one vcf file while Microsoft Outlook only accepts one contact per file. The KDE Kontact application on Linux allows import & export of single or multiple contacts per file.

[edit] Example VCard File

The following is an example of a VCard file containing information for one person:

BEGIN:VCARD
VERSION:2.1
N:Gump;Forrest
FN:Forrest Gump
ORG:Gump Shrimp Co.
TITLE:Shrimp Man
TEL;WORK;VOICE:(111) 555-1212
TEL;HOME;VOICE:(404) 555-1212
ADR;WORK:;;100 Waters Edge;Baytown;LA;30314;United States of America
LABEL;WORK;ENCODING=QUOTED-PRINTABLE:100 Waters Edge=0D=0ABaytown, LA 30314=0D=0AUnited States of America
ADR;HOME:;;42 Plantation St.;Baytown;LA;30314;United States of America
LABEL;HOME;ENCODING=QUOTED-PRINTABLE:42 Plantation St.=0D=0ABaytown, LA 30314=0D=0AUnited States of America
EMAIL;PREF;INTERNET:forrestgump@walladalla.com
REV:20080424T195243Z
END:VCARD

[edit] VCard Extensions

vCard supports private extensions, with a "X-" prefix, a number of which are in common usage.

Some of these include:

Extension Used As Data Semantic
extensions supported by multiple different programs
X-ANNIVERSARY property YYYY-MM-DD arbitrary anniversary, in addition to BDAY = birthday
X-ASSISTANT property string assistant name (instead of Agent)
X-MANAGER property string manager name
X-SPOUSE property string spouse name
X-AIM property string Instant Messaging (IM) contact information; TYPE parameter as for TEL (f.i. WORK/HOME/OTHER)
X-ICQ property string "
X-JABBER property string "
X-MSN property string "
X-YAHOO property string "
X-GADUGADU property string "
X-GROUPWISE property string "
introduced and used by Mozilla, also used by Evolution (software)
X-MOZILLA-HTML property TRUE/FALSE mail recipient wants HTML email
introduced and used by Evolution (software)
X-EVOLUTION-ANNIVERSARY property YYYY-MM-DD arbitrary anniversary, in addition to BDAY = birthday
X-EVOLUTION-ASSISTANT property string assistant name (instead of Agent)
X-EVOLUTION-BLOG-URL property string/URL blog URL
X-EVOLUTION-FILE-AS property string file under different name (in addition to N = name components and FN = full name
X-EVOLUTION-MANAGER property string manager name
X-EVOLUTION-SPOUSE property string spouse name
X-EVOLUTION-VIDEO-URL property string/URL video chat address
X-EVOLUTION-CALLBACK TEL TYPE parameter value - callback phone number
X-EVOLUTION-RADIO TEL TYPE parameter value - radio contact information
X-EVOLUTION-TELEX TEL TYPE parameter value - Telegraphy#Telex contact information
X-EVOLUTION-TTYTDD TEL TYPE parameter value - TTY (?) contact information
introduced and used by Funambol
X-FUNAMBOL-ANNIVERSARY
X-FUNAMBOL-BILLINGINFO
X-FUNAMBOL-CALLBACK Phone number to call back
X-FUNAMBOL-CHILDREN
X-FUNAMBOL-COMPANIES
X-FUNAMBOL-CUSTOMERID
X-FUNAMBOL-FOLDER
X-FUNAMBOL-GENDER
X-FUNAMBOL-GOVERNMENTID
X-FUNAMBOL-HOBBIES
X-FUNAMBOL-INSTANTMESSENGER A single instant messenger address (such as with Microsoft Outlook)
X-FUNAMBOL-INITIALS
X-FUNAMBOL-LANGUAGES
X-FUNAMBOL-MANAGER
X-FUNAMBOL-MILEAGE
X-FUNAMBOL-ORGANIZATIONALID
X-FUNAMBOL-RADIO
X-FUNAMBOL-SPOUSE
X-FUNAMBOL-SUBJECT
X-FUNAMBOL-TELEX
X-FUNAMBOL-YOMICOMPANYNAME
X-FUNAMBOL-YOMIFIRSTNAME
X-FUNAMBOL-YOMILASTNAME

Note: The Internet media type text/vcard was used (incorrectly) in some SyncML Documentation to refer to vCard 3.0, and the example was followed in various implementations.

[edit] External links