I’ve started work on Microformats here at work in D&PE (@ Microsoft).  With the rest of my team, Karsten Januszewski and I are looking to build prototype examples of Microformats as well as develop plug-ins, software, and the like to help foster the adoption of Microformats.

I wasn’t familiar with Microformats until recently.  As a quick primer, check out http://microformats.org .  Here’s what they have to say:

Designed for humans first and machines second, microformats are a set of simple, open data formats built upon existing and widely adopted standards. Instead of throwing away what works today, microformats intend to solve simpler problems first by adapting to current behaviors and usage patterns (e.g. XHTML, blogging).

Simply put, it means that you can simply embed your css with a few standard classes, enabling a whole lot of cool possibilites.  For instance, if you have an address on your page, and use these standards, we can provide code to format it, add contextual data like calendars, maps, social-networking capabilites … all sorts of stuff.

I think that’s pretty cool.

So Karsten and I are tasked with coming up with cool ideas in this arena.  If you have any suggestions, email me: taidlin@microsoft.com