Android 4.3's New Notification Service: Read, Dismiss, And Press Action Buttons From Other Apps; Imagine The Wearable Computing Possibilities!

I totally missed this in my Android 4.3 teardown, but luckily there are some fellow tinkerers out there, namely Kevin of TeslaCoil Software (maker of fine products such as Nova Launcher and WidgetLocker), picking up my slack. It looks like Google is planning some cool notification services for 4.3, possibly something that gets third party apps into the mix!
Contained in the leaked S4 Android 4.3 build are all sorts of notification-related changes. After being pointed in the right direction, I spotted this:
Notification access
Apps cannot read notifications
No notification listeners are installed.
Enable %1$s?
%1$s will be able to read all notifications posted by the system or any installed app, which may include personal information such as contact names and the text of messages sent to you. It will also be able to dismiss these notifications or touch action buttons within them.
The last string is the most important one, spelling out a new notification service where apps ("Notification Listeners") can read notifications, dismiss them, and activate action buttons in a notification. That sounds like just about everything the notification panel currently does, so, short of launching it from the status bar, it sounds like a 3rd party app would be able to replicate the entire notification panel.

http://www.androidpolice.com/2013/07/01/android-4-3s-new-notification-service-read-dismiss-and-press-action-buttons-from-other-apps-imagine-the-wearable-computing-possibilities/