vCard is an established Internet standard (cf. RFC 2425 and RFC 2426), which facilitates the generation, exchange and maintenance of contact information. The standard defines the format for a directory resource, which could be briefly described as an electronic business card.
vCards may be generated by many of the available mail clients, such as MS Outlook and Outlook Express. There are also web sites - such as the free vCard generation service provided by MrhPC Consulting - where you may produce your own vCard, if you don't own a suitable tool. Note, however, that storing and distributing personal data may also produce a security risk.
There are also a couple of freeware applications, such as the demo application at the Personal Data Interchange section of the Internet Mail Consortium. You may download the Personal Data Interchange material free of charge. The test application is not a fully featured commercial product, but it opens interesting angles to what the vCard standard has to offer and how the resource may be innovatevely used.
Redundant postings of vCard information may irritate some recipients. vCards are communicated under the so called mime standard, which may be out of the scope of certain mail clients. Any information that isn't simple text may disturb the readers, especially members of news group forums where redundancy is unnecessarily multiplied if the problem is not given special attention.
Many web browsers such as NetScape and Internet Explorer have built-in support for vCard. It is easy to present your vCard on a web page. Just insert a reference to your vCard file e.g. pdonner.vcf into a text or image anchor, like this:
<p>Please, download
<a href="pdonner.vcf">
my contact information</a>.</p>
<a href="pdonner.vcf">
<img src="vCard.gif" alt="vCard logo"></a>
The downloaded resource usually contains rich documentation on the contact information of the relevant person.
Please, download my contact information. If you are using Outlook or any other personal information manager capable of importing information conforming to the standard, you may even be able to append the info directly into your address book.