Going into open beta very soon, OrganIP (organip.digitrad.com) is an app that replaces phone numbers with names or, more precisely, matches names to phone numbers. Whether you know the number or not.
Without going into speculation about the unusual name of this app, let’s look at its function instead. It’s safer territory.
It’s intended use is to connect phone numbers with your social network. Specifically, it takes your Facebook, Gmail/Gtalk, and the new .tel domains and matches them to phone numbers. Near-future additions include LinkedIn, Windows Live, and Twitter.
It’s a Web-based app, meant to be accessed from a mobile device, that works in an amazingly intuitive way. After putting in the name (assuming you’re logged in), the app searches your social networks for matches. If, say, “Robo” is your friend on both Facebook and Gmail, it will retrieve both as matches and present them to you. You can then choose one or the other. Many Facebook accounts, you may have noticed, have phone numbers attached in the user’s profile. Using that, it will call them. Some Gtalk accounts have similar numbers listed. If you’d rather, or a number isn’t found, OrganIP also lets you send a voice-to-text message or just a straight voicemail.
Some privacy concerns immediately arise, obviously. The good news is that OrganIP has thought of these and taken steps to work with them. It should be obvious that if your social profiles on your sites don’t have public phone numbers, you won’t receive calls through OrganIP as it won’t access those numbers. Even if it does find the number, if your profile is set to keep that private, it will not present it to the caller. Instead, it goes straight to voice mail.
OrganIP is currently accepting applications for open-beta launch later this year. Their initial presentation of the app at DEMOfall09 last month did not go very smoothly, but the app will be free while in beta, moving to a monthly fee structure once it goes public.
