[imissmyjuno]

>Because its machine parseable, it makes a lot of presentation options available that aren't available when you rely on a standard hyperlink without a data format with a standardized identification of the requested action.

You're right: this addition turns email into a data or event queue of sorts with standardized actions that can be performed on it. I like it. Given that email is one of the few non vendor-locked communication technologies we have and we already have a lot of infrastructure to deliver it reliably, this seems a promising evolution path.

I'd like to see something similar for IM: currently SMS is the only open standard for instant messaging, and any other option locks you into either a platform or a specific client, which the other person will probably not use.

[dragonwriter]

> currently SMS is the only open standard for instant messaging

XMPP is an open standard (through IETF RFCs and related standards) for messaging and presence whose motivating use case was instant messaging: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XMPP

[imissmyjuno]

Right. My comment is more on the adoption rather than availability of open standards.

[pjscott]

XMPP is also used, behind the scenes, with Google Chat and Facebook Chat. It has a fair amount of adoption; you just don't really hear about it much.