In the world of computer software, there is more than one kind of data.

Shocking, you say - right?

Well, it is true. Everyone is familiar with more than one kind of file format. We have all run into that.

Some programs cannot read documents written with other applicaotins at all. Others will recognize them, and make a fiar attempt at converting them.

How about a web page?

Can there be more than one kind of web page?

Sure, there are actually many types. HTML, XHTML, SVG, RSS, XML - just to name a few.

Us humans can read the content on this pages. Our computer formats it, to make it readable to us. Does our computer really understand what that page is "saying" though?

Generally, it does not.

It knows what text is in it. It recognizes instructions telling it how to style on the page in general, and in specific places - like when I say, "make this bold".

And, lo - so it is.

However, there are ways to tell a computer program what a document is about - and even how to find specific bits of data - or information - inside.

We programmers refer to these ways, collectively, as "metadata".

Metadata is data about data. The prefix "meta-" means "like". Not in the sense of "having affection for" but in the sense of "being sort of the same as".

Anyway, there is a new kind of metadata being rolled out onto the web. This new data provides a way of tagging specific bits of information in a web page.

This new technique uses something called "Microformats". What Microformats try to do is take existing standards, say like the vCard file standard or the iCal file standard, and shoehorn the same information into a web page.

One particular Microformat of interest here, in the TV.com community, I think - is called the hReview microformat.

What hReview allows you to do is create a book, article, movie, or TV show review. The review is physically generated with a dual purpose.

1. be readable by humans, because that is the point
2. be readable by software, so search engines and social web data aggregators can find it and lump it together with other data & documents they know about

Here is a sample blog post containing an hReview of a TV show.

The author of the post created it with a program he created himself and put on a website called hReview Creator. The name is pretty self-explanatory.

Here is a blog post about hReview, if you are interested in learning more about it.

So far, you know what hReview is for, and you know how to create a review in that format that can be stuck in a web page.

What you do not know, are specific services or applications that can use that format.

There are a couple already. There will be more to come.

1. Firefox 2.0 (currently in alpha) web browser has a feature called Microsummaries which can be taught how to read individual Microformats, and extaract the information from them - and generate little summaries of them. This could easily be used to create a Table Of Contents for a web page that was packed with a whole bunch of hReview-formatted reviews.
2. Technorati, the web 2.0 blog reading/monitoring service just announced that their service is now able to read/understand information in Microformats, such as hReview.
   

Now, at the moment, this is not too germane to TV.com.

One way it could become very germane, is if TV.com started creating RSS feeds of TV show/series reviews, and automatically supplied the metadata it has on file in the hReview Microformat. That would be, in a word, incredible.

Another way Microformats could be useful is if TV.com started generating an RSS feed for each person's blog. Then people could embed Microformat-based information into their blog posts.

There are Microformats for events, contacts, addressses - you name it. And the number of Microformats out there will probably steadily grow throughout 2006-2007.

I have introduced you to Microformats, in particular - hReview. I have provided one example of a review that was written adhering to the hReview standard. I have supplied you with an address of a web page that can generate hReview formatted information for reviews you write. I have given an example of one website and one web browser that can already read/parse/understand/aggregate this information.

I hope you found this interesting. If you have any other ideas for how it can be useful, please post a comment and let me hear your thoughts.