notice the date? but maybe timing wasn’t right.

Of course, the manifested form of Dentrassi is a clear demo of what can be done, but a possible, if more intricate scenario is a multi-transaction process such as that used by multi agent systems, for example the Contract Net Protocol (see diagram and note interesting “deadline” part on the first pass) to arrive at a negotiated best fit. Finding a way to cater for exchanged transactions, statefully is the key to the interaction possibilities reaching a point when they can really work for human actions and processes via a feedreader.

By moving from a subscribe/notify model for content to actions, snap has introduced an inherent responsibility to cater for events and processes, under the constraints posed by the orthodox aims of newsreaders. If a model for how actions feed to other actions existed, there’s a basis for an awesome way to handle everyday processes despite their twists and turns, although I think this is a solid example of the pattern already. Other uses:

- use the inbox feed to pipe action requests as SMS requests via twitter (similar to facebook’s “you have a friend request from Joe Bloggs”)

- a firefox plugin to initiate an action from a page with a given set of verbs which then asks the target recipient to subscribe to a feed, in which this action and multiple actions exist. Simple example – if I wanted to email this page to a friend, I can right click, and instead of filling out email addresses, send my friend a one-time only “feed subscription request” – which then sends actions to that new friend as an established contact, without emails for each action request. Eliminates future email once subscribed, and allows my friend to receive my action requests implicitly rather than by bombarding their inbox.

- the ability to comment within feedreading applications is already the subject for various startups (can’t remember them at this time of day!) but extending that would open an entirely new business model where commerce transaction requests don’t appear as feed advertising – they appear as actions – for example to fill a survey

- If you could figure out a foreign subscribers’ identity beyond their newsreader user agent, for example capture information from a stranger before they subscribe to their inbox feed, it presents the possibility of contextual actions targeted towards them. I don’t mean in an advertising sense, I mean aggregating their action requests from their various services across the web. This would be a proactive and explicit action request mechanism, in contrast to a facebook mini-feed, which lies in the dimension of reporting on your trust network historically and implicitly.