vCard

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vCard
Filename 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, AT&T Technologies (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vCard is accompanied by a proposed standard for exchanging data about forthcoming appointments called vCalendar since superseded by iCalendar; the Internet Mail Consortium has issued a statement that it "hopes that all vCalendar developers take advantage of these new open standards and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 vCardDAV working group of the IETF is updating the vCard format. The commonly-used filename extension for vCards is .vcf.

[edit] Derivatives and Applications

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:

vCard 2.1:

BEGIN:VCARD
VERSION:2.1
N:Gump;Forrest
FN:Forrest Gump
ORG:Bubba 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@example.com
REV:20080424T195243Z
END:VCARD

vCard 3.0:

BEGIN:VCARD
VERSION:3.0
N:Gump;Forrest
FN:Forrest Gump
ORG:Bubba Gump Shrimp Co.
TITLE:Shrimp Man
TEL;TYPE=WORK,VOICE:(111) 555-1212
TEL;TYPE=HOME,VOICE:(404) 555-1212
ADR;TYPE=WORK:;;100 Waters Edge;Baytown;LA;30314;United States of America
LABEL;TYPE=WORK:100 Waters Edge\nBaytown, LA 30314\nUnited States of America
ADR;TYPE=HOME:;;42 Plantation St.;Baytown;LA;30314;United States of America
LABEL;TYPE=HOME:42 Plantation St.\nBaytown, LA 30314\nUnited States of America
EMAIL;TYPE=PREF,INTERNET:forrestgump@example.com
REV:20080424T195243Z
END:VCARD

[edit] Properties

vCard defines the following property types: *FN, *N, NICKNAME, *PHOTO, *BDAY, *ADR, *LABEL, *TEL, *EMAIL, *MAILER, *TZ, *GEO, *TITLE, *ROLE, *LOGO, *AGENT, *ORG, CATEGORIES, *NOTE, PRODID, *REV, SORT-STRING, *SOUND, *URL, *UID, *VERSION, CLASS, *KEY [1].

Name Description Semantic
N Name a structured representation of the name of the person, place or thing associated with the vCard object.
FN Formatted Name the formatted name string associated with the vCard object
PHOTO Photograph an image or photograph of the individual associated with the vCard
BDAY Birthday date of birth of the individual associated with the vCard
ADR Delivery Address a structured representation of the physical delivery address for the vCard object
LABEL Label Address addressing label for physical delivery to the person/object associated with the vCard
TEL Telephone the canonical number string for a telephone number for telephony communication with the vCard object
EMAIL Email the address for electronic mail communication with the vCard object
MAILER Email Program (Optional) Type of email program used
TZ Time Zone information related to the standard time zone of the vCard object
GEO Global Positioning The property specifies a longitude and latitude
TITLE Title specifies the job title, functional position or function of the individual associated with the vCard object within an organization (V. P. Research and Development)
ROLE Role or occupation the role, occupation, or business category of the vCard object within an organization (eg. Executive)
LOGO Logo an image or graphic of the logo of the organization that is associated with the individual to which the vCard belongs
AGENT Agent information about another person who will act on behalf of the vCard object. Typically this would be an area administrator, assistant, or secretary for the individual
ORG Organization Name or Organizational unit the name and optionally the unit(s) of the organization associated with the vCard object. This property is based on the X.520 Organization Name attribute and the X.520 Organization Unit attribute
NOTE Note specifies supplemental information or a comment that is associated with the vCard
REV Last Revision combination of the calendar date and time of day of the last update to the vCard object
SOUND Sound By default, if this property is not grouped with other properties it specifies the pronunciation of the Formatted Name property of the vCard object.
URL URL An URL is a representation of an Internet location that can be used to obtain real-time information about the vCard object
UID Unique Identifier specifies a value that represents a persistent, globally unique identifier associated with the object
VERSION Version Version of the vCard Specification
KEY Public Key the public encryption key associated with the vCard object

In addition, because vCard augments RFC-2425, a standard for directory information, the following property types are also supported: SOURCE, NAME, PROFILE, BEGIN, END.

[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-ABUID property string Apple Address Book UUID for that entry
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 (I.e. WORK/HOME/OTHER)
X-ICQ property string "
X-JABBER property string "
X-MSN property string "
X-YAHOO property string "
X-SKYPE-USERNAME property string "
X-GADUGADU property string "
X-GROUPWISE property string "
X-MS-IMADDRESS property string " (IM address in VCF attachment from Outlook (right click Contact, Send Full Contact, Internet Format.)
X-MS-CARDPICTURE property string Works as PHOTO or LOGO. Contains an image of the Card in Outlook.
X-PHONETIC-FIRST-NAME, X-PHONETIC-LAST-NAME property string alternative spelling of name, used for Japanese names by Android and iPhone
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 TDD contact information

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] Contributors

Roland Alden
Greg Ames, Ames & Associates
Masanari Arai, Puma Technologies
Stephen W. Bartlett
Donal Carroll
Liang-Jye Chang, Starfish Software
Frank Dawson, IBM Corporation
Ken Dobson, IntelliLink Inc.
Scott Feldstein, Nimble Software, Inc.
Anik Ganguly, OnTime/Division of FTP Software.
Beijing Goo, Microsoft
Arvind K. Goyal, Lotus Development Corporation
Gary Hand, IBM Corporation
Tim Howes, Netscape Communications Corporation
Mark Joseph, Attachmate Corporation
Kerry Kelly, Now Software, Inc.
Phac Letuan, Apple Computer, Inc.
Pat Megowan, Counterpoint Systems Foundry Inc.
Tohri Mori, IBM Japan/Salutation Consortium
Ravi Pandya, NetManage, Inc.
Geoff Ralston, Four11 Corporation
Steven Rummel, Lucent Technologies
Michael Santullo, Four11 Corporation
Vinod Seraphin, Lotus Development Corporation
Dexter Seely, Corex Technologies, Inc.
Vlad Shmunis, Ring Zero Systems Inc.
Dean Stevens, Now Software, Inc.
Michelle Watkins, Netscape Communications Corporation
Horst Widlewski, Siemens
Peter Waher, Manodo AB.

[edit] See also

[edit] External links

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VCard"
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