Yes the headline here is actually this startup’s trademarked tagline, but I couldn’t resist the opportunity to feature a Yakov Smirnoff reference on TechCrunch (yes, I know, I’m old).
In the same conference calling space as Zipdx and Lippt, the idea for Bridg.me was pitched at last week’s NYC Startup Weekend by Justin Isaf and created by Justin Heilman and Jagdish Repaswal that day. Basically the gist is that current conference call platforms, with their dial in systems and unwieldy PIN access codes, are way too complicated to be productive. Being able to arrange such a call should be as simple as posting an event in your Google calendar.
Users who want to initiate a call with Bridg can visit Bridg.me to schedule a call, enter phone numbers and book a time. Aside from its web booking capabilities, Bridg does indeed sync up with Google Calendar if you enter the hashtag #bridg in your Event description, along with the participants’ phone numbers in the 1+ # format. Bridg will then call all people involved during the time you’ve indicated on the event, using your Google calendar’s time zone. Woot.
Right now Bridgs are 5 cents a minute per person after the trial period, but eventually the Twilio-powered company plans to offer its basic services for free and then unlimited plans with unlimited numbers of participants at a premium. “We want to make it an even more seemless experience,” Isaf tells me, “We hate conference calling as it stands. We want to make it as easy to conference call as it is to tweet.”
Are you listening AOL large corporations?