Jangl’s new angle on phone calling
Published May 30th, 2006
Jangl’s new angle on phone calling
Jangl is a new phone service that, initially anyway, will allow people to anonymize their phone numbers the same way they can their email addresses when posting on places such as craigslist. When you sign up with Jangl, you get access to disposable phone numbers that you can share with friends or strangers with whom you transact business. The phone numbers forward to your real number and anonymize in both directions.
The first time someone calls a Jangl user, they go through an approval process. It’s similar to the challenge-response systems used by some email services. When we tried it with Cerda, it took nearly a minute of back-and-forth key commands before we could connect. Once you’re on the white list, though, all subsequent calls go through more quickly.
Where would you use something like this? When you’re buying and selling online. We see people publicize their cell phone numbers all the time on craigslist. With Jangl they could add a layer of anonymity.
When you’re dating. Give your date your Jangl number, and then dump the number when you dump him.
On your blog or web site, as a another way to let people contact you.
There’s more, though. Because Jangl is IP-based on the backend, the service can also be used to deliver a wide variety of content to mobile phone users. Set up your account so that callers can press 1 to hear a song by your band (Cerda, a musician, is doing this on his Jangl number), press 2 to see your photos, and so on. Hosting a party? You could serve up directions from a special Jangl phone number that only your friends have access to. In theory, any IP-based content that can work on phones could be served through Jangl. We can envision lots of opportunities for businesses big and small to offer content to mobile users in this way.
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