Prowl is a short-hand term for Publisher-Reporter Oriented Web Ledgers. For end-users, the simplest view is a requirement to publish currency activity records on the web. For web CMS developers, Prowl is a requirement to publish records in a standard syntax and structure to ensure inter-operability across different platforms and reporter applications. For web service providers, Prowl is a platform for creating reporter applications that verify, post, audit and evaluate published records and reports.

One way to think of Prowl is to compare it with the web: A web browser interprets the tags and attributes in an HTML page to render it according to a Document Type Definition, while a Prowl reporter interprets the records in a currency activity report to audit and evaluate it according to an Accounting Model. Just as a web browser does not control what is published or accessed by a user, a Prowl reporter also does not control the information that a user publishes or accesses.

Prowl Scope

(inside Dashed-Line Box)

Main Features:

• Since currency activity is not hidden inside a members-only site, the published records act as natural advertisements that might attract casual web surfers to participate.
• The individual or organizational entities in a transaction are identified using their respective internet domain names. There is no overhead for a separate namespace mapping/resolution layer.
• Prowl minimizes the need for developing web forms and securing access to individual sites. End users will be expected to take advantage of external blogs or web pages for publishing currency activity records in a user-friendly format.
• Prowl does not require additional functionalities to be installed on existing blog platforms. Prowl could be tied to existing blog features such as mail-to-blog or automatic email notification for real-time balance verification. Prowl could also be tied to SMS-to-email or SMS-to-HTTP gateways to facilitate mobile-enabled transactions.
• Reporters will provide on-demand balance calculations, generate itemized reports, audit records for reconcilability and validity, and evaluate performance metrics. The end-user simply uses the publishing platform to expose accurate and timely data, while an off-site Reporter will be relied upon to provide more sophisticated data processing services.
• A Reporter may recognize but does not enforce currency boundaries or limits. For example, if two entities publish a record that use the units of Ithaca-hours even though they are not registered members of that community, a Reporter will simply verify that matching copies have been published and update any related ledger copies that it keeps. Another way of putting this Prowl feature in perspective: a Reporter does not maintain overall system balance consistency at the time of transaction, but simply attempts to verify published record consistency and to detect inconsistency, if there are any.

Important Considerations:

• Published records are not expected to be "clean", i.e., it may be buried in HTML. Prowl Reporters are expected to locate and interpret a record within different publishing contexts.
• Prowl encourages a highly transparent approach at the entity or domain level. If there are only a few members belonging to a blog or web site, then the members of that entity might be readily associated to certain transactions.
• When performing audits and evaluations, it will be important to verify the authenticity of account owners or currrency brand entities in published records.