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Xerpi's launching a new feature! It's a hybrid technology that combines web browsing with email! I was so excited that I cornered one of Xerpi's new-hires, and he spilled the beans about the new button that Xerpi's built for web browsers...even though it hasn't been officially announced!

"Xerpi has traditionally been a place to store bookmarks," explained Andy Wall, one of Xerpi's newest developers. "What we've just finished putting together is button you can install in your browser allowing you to share links! Instead of just storing them on Xerpi, it lets you to send an email to a friend -- it pulls up an email interface where it's stored your addresses. So it's a really convenient, one-click way to share a link."

And best of all, they're releasing a sneak preview for readers of this blog! Just click this link. It's a bookmarklet! It's an email! It's really cool, and I love it!

I was curious about the philosophy behind the button, but Andy said he'd been working on building something that's as easy-to-use as Xerpi itself. "You type in the first couple of letters of the person that you want to send it to. You can give it an extra note if you want -- or not. You click 'send'...and it's gone!" He's pretty excited about the concept -- and with easy forwarding, it adds the potential of "exponential" popularity for the links being sent. And the email tells friends about Xerpi, too, since the email indicates how the link was forwarded. "What I was trying to think of is how do we make Xerpi more viral," Andy confided, "and I wanted to have it in a way that was non-intrusive, so people were doing it naturally in the course of using a service that we provided that they were enjoying!"

Andy also told me another secret: that working for Xerpi is like working for a promising startup company. (Though when I asked if that meant everyone runs around in a coffee-induced frenzy, he laughed and said it's a little more chilled out than that.) "In general, we just have fun. It's like a small group of friends." But I had to laugh when Andy told me how he got the idea. Apparently one of the great things about being a developer is that when you've got a pet peeve, you can fix it for everybody!

"One of the things that actually annoys me when I'm online is it's hard to share links. You've got to open your email account, cut and paste the link into an email, address it, and send it. It should be easier than that.

"So I was thinking: why doesn't Xerpi build that...?"