Great news for the standardization of the “geo:” URI scheme: After three years of hard work, the Internet Draft describing the URI scheme was approved by the IESG on April 16th 2010. This means that the most important hurdle for “geo:” to become a (Proposed Standard) RFC has been taken.

It will take another 3 – 4 months for the document to be edited and a final RFC number to be assigned. But with the approval of the document, the current specification is stable, and can be used as a draft reference for implementations

There are currently two implementations of the “geo:” URI scheme out:

• Andy Armstrong has written a “geo:” Perl Module available through CPAN.
• The mobile Operating System “Android” contains support for the “geo:” URI out of the box (API Documentation) – unfortunately it’s not fully compliant to the latest specs. However, this is particularly exciting because it’s out there in millions of devices.

The specification is also already being used in other IETF work: For example, the updated vCard Specification recommends to use “geo:” URIs for the GEO property of vCards, and i’m sure we’ll be seeing “geo” URIs pop up in other specifications as well!