vCard
A vCard is an electronic business card. It is a file that contains the information of a person or a company. Comparable to a business card, the vCard can contain text elements for the identification data as well as graphic and multimedia elements. The vCard format was defined by the Internet Mail Consortium( IMC).
vCard files have a fixed structure in which the identification data and the graphic elements are stored and which is defined in the vCard standard. The known personal identification data of a vCard includes the name and address of the person and/or the company, the telephone numbers as well as the e-mail address and the domain name. In terms of multimedia objects, a vCard can contain the company logo, the person's photo and audio clips. vCards can be multilingual and, unlike normal business cards, can be forwarded electronically. The specifications are independent of the transmission protocol and operating system. They are also supported by various application programs such as Apple's Address Book, Microsoft Outlook, Novell Groupwise and Lotus Notes. The extension of vCard files is *.vcf.
The electronic business card can be attached to e-mails, embedded in HTML pages or used in mobile communication to store contacts. The exchange of vCard files can be done between two computers, notebooks or PDAs via Bluetooth or Infrared Data Association( IrDA).