The microformat hResume can be used (in the future) to host your own marked-up resume that all the job hunting sites will dynamically link to. So, you don't have to enter your resume on 30 sites (and be a slave to their defined categories) and don't have to edit it in 30 places when you make a change. Guess it's kinda like RSS for your resume.

Speaking of RSS, the hAtom microformat allows you to mark up your HTML page so that it is readable by feedreaders (no need for a separate XML feed).

You’re getting into some areas that I don’t have too much knowledge about. I saw Tantek speak a two days ago at the Future of Web Apps, and I took some notes about what he had to say about Microformats.

http://www.web-strategist.com/blog/2006/09/13/future-of-web-apps-conference-notes-day-1/

I don’t really see the point of polluting your HTML with extra stuff while you could just use the tag to refer to an alternate version of the information in the proper format.

What “proper format”?

Is there an ISO spec. for resumes I’m unaware of? Some WTO standard for reviews? Did a universal mechanism for exchanging event information get adopted while I was distracted?

I’m pretty sure the answer is “no” to all of those.

Microformats are the way to embed relevant information inside a web object so it can be trivially exchanged & extracted.

Metatags are used on blogs, EXIF information in photos, MP3 tags in, er, MP3s, and µformats inside (x)html & variations. They’re intrinsic, not extrinsic, and so travel with their subject.

Easily created, seamlessly integrated, marvelously fungable, µformats allow web content to be automagically indexable, digestable, remixable, and therefore more valuable. All with a few simple tags deliniating the various types of information.

Ever find yourself manually copying and pasting event information into your calendar? Onerously typing in start & stop dates, then times, invariably getting day, month, or year wrong the first time, then a few similar go-rounds with street, city, phone number, etc.? What about adding a friend’s information to your address book, a line at a time?
Sure there are specially formatted files that can exchange this information, the same file formats µformats are based on. But isn’t it nicer to have them easily extractable from the orignal web object instead of off in some random semi-associated, easily lost .vcf/.ics/.m-o-u-s-e file? How often do you get an email with a signature on it vs. one with an attached vcard, wouldn’t it be great if that signature was the equivalent of the vcard?

Sure µformats are a bit more overhead. But are they more overhead then attaching the equivalent file? Do they increase the value of the material a commensurate amount by making it more useful? I expect in many cases the answer is “yes”.

Furthermore there seems to be a healthy adoption of µformats in all sorts of leading web services, and the minute one of the big search engines starts making use of µformats then the content in place, already µformatted, will suddenly become star performers.

Obviously it is your call if you start using µformats. However if you’re creating material you expect to “have legs”, you want it to have maximum usability, and down-the-road, functionality, then µformats are something to consider. They’ve some bang-for-the-buck now, and potentially an explosive amount Real-Soon-Now.