Microformats: the next (small) thing on the semantic Web?

Clever application of existing XHTML elements and class attributes can make it easier to describe people, places, events, and other semistructured information in human-readable form. In this paper, the author takes a more detailed look at some examples of microformats, the general principles by which they can be constructed, and how a community of users is forming around these seemingly ad hoc specifications to advance the cause of what some call an alternative to the semantic Web, the "lowercase semantic Web".