vCard - electronic business cards standard
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.
History
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vCard is accompanied by a proposed standard for exchanging data about forthcoming appointments called vCalendar since superseded by iCalendar; the Internet Mail Consortium has issued a statement that it "hopes that all vCalendar developers take advantage of these new open standards and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. In RFC 4770 (vCard Extensions for Instant Messaging), a new type of entry to hold IMPP URI is defined, which is "IMPP".
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: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 ADR;HOME:;;42 Plantation St.;Baytown;LA;30314;United States of America EMAIL;PREF;INTERNET:forrestgump@example.com REV:20080424T195243Z END:VCARD
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 |
| 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 latitude and longitude |
| 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 |
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