Yes! Check out billmonk: they store your db of owed stuff (money, books, anything you want) and they send you emails based on changes. This program can parse the emails and submit new transactions via new emails to their system. (I believe they have blogged they want to add an API for doing this directly via the web, once they get a bit bigger). I would love to see this program transact via trusted email addresses. So, for non-mac users, they could get emailed transactions directly, or via billmonk (who will track the totals for you).
I had a 4am thought: this program itself could handle non-money items just as well. Make it transparently easy to add new "denominations" and shazam, if your "friends" category includes a transaction with the denomination "beer"... you can mark that you owe Dave a beer.
[The problem with email transactions is authentication; I expect billmonk will run into this as well, people forging the "from" and inserting bad URLs. This program can possibly get around that with SPF to validate the domain, in case your spam-filters don't do so automatically.]
[you probably don't care about that, but I wanted to write it down to be sure I remember myself. ;) ]
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Date: Thursday, 24 August 2006 10:28 am (UTC)I had a 4am thought: this program itself could handle non-money items just as well. Make it transparently easy to add new "denominations" and shazam, if your "friends" category includes a transaction with the denomination "beer"... you can mark that you owe Dave a beer.
[The problem with email transactions is authentication; I expect billmonk will run into this as well, people forging the "from" and inserting bad URLs. This program can possibly get around that with SPF to validate the domain, in case your spam-filters don't do so automatically.]
[you probably don't care about that, but I wanted to write it down to be sure I remember myself. ;) ]