Jangl marries email to the phone

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Jangl rolled out a pretty intriguing new service today.  The pitch?  They claim to have assigned a phone number to every email address on the internet.  Go to Jangl's home page, and enter the email address of someone you know, and it connects you… on the phone of your choice.  Publish your unique jangl URL (mine is http://callme.jangl.com/alecs@exmsft.com), and anyone will be able to call you… all without you revealing your true phone number. You can even embed the whole thing in a graphical widget if you like…. as below.  

So am I excited?  Well, it works based on not just who you are, but also who the people are trying to reach you.  It's a New Presence application… discerning your communications intents based on the identity of the person trying to reach you and your preferences.  The really cool thing? It's not a new identity scheme… it's just leveraging the identity you already have in your email address.

Jangl announced masses of other new features today too, but by far the most interesting was the marriage of email address and phone number.

Alec Saunders is the Vice President of Developer Relations for BlackBerry maker Research in Motion. This is his personal blog, with his personal viewpoints. Prior to this Alec was the CEO and co-founder of Calliflower — the easiest way to hold a meeting, online, on a conference call, or on the go. A double-decade veteran of product management and marketing, he spent nine years at Microsoft where he helped launch Windows 95, the first two versions of Internet Explorer, the Universal Plug and Play initiative, the push into home markets, opt-in email marketing and what might well go down in history as the very first direct email list ever.