"The vision for Portable Contacts has been around for a long time. Sites large and small share the goal of providing users a secure way to access their address books and friends lists without having to take their credentials or scrape their data. But only in recent weeks has it begun to feel that now is the right time to rally the community and the industry to work together to make this vision real by developing an open spec for exchange of contact info that everyone can embrace."
More info at: http://portablecontacts.net/ [4]
Check out the draft spec [5], wiki [6], and sign up for the mailing list [7].
Check out Joseph Smarr's (Plaxo chief platform architect) blog for even more info: http://josephsmarr.com/ [8]
Links:
[1] http://pulse.veltsos.com/category/it/contacts
[2] http://pulse.veltsos.com/category/it/software/development
[3] http://pulse.veltsos.com/category/it/open-source-foss
[4] http://portablecontacts.net/
[5] http://portablecontacts.net/draft-spec.html
[6] http://wiki.portablecontacts.net
[7] http://groups.google.com/group/portablecontacts
[8] http://josephsmarr.com/