Phonedeck turns your phone into a cloud app – 500 invites

Phonedeck appeared last year at Le Web. At the time it seemed very much like a beta project to manage calls from a computer. But we've long had the position that real social graph is in your phone – the people you text and call – and Phonedeck has now come on leaps and bounds. Today it's releasing 500 invites for TechCrunch readers (use the code "TechCrunch" on the site) and revealing more about its upcoming service.

This web/cloud platform lets you manage your mobile phone activity, including your contacts from your computer, sending and receiving SMS, initiating and answering calls. You don't need to unlock your handset and you can even activate a chime sound when you lose the phone, say in the house. But most importantly you get a tonne of stats and data on the people you call, entire conversation histories and automatic updating of your contacts list via LinkedIn and/or Facebook, in a Plaxo-like fashion.

Although it launches next year you can try it out now. It's only on Android right now but an HTML5 version will work and an iOS and Blackberry app is in the works.

After downloading the app, users' phones are connected to the web platform via a cloud database from where calls and SMS texts can be made and received. It also displays incoming callers, showing their previous calls, SMS history, company and LinkedIn activity to complement their name and picture.

Think of it as Rapportive for your phone.

Forgot what you called that person about? Entire interaction histories by contact are logged so you can remind yourself.

Founder/CEO Dr. Frank Fitzek says Phonedeck makes use of the fact that we can do more with a call when it's on a PC than on a mobile.

Security is built in – all connections made by the platform and associated apps make use of SSL encryption.

Personally I've often hoped that one day the phone will just be another cloud app and this is very close to the ideal.

Phonedeck is headquartered in Berlin, Germany, and was founded in 2010 by CEO Dr. Frank Fitzek, COO Gerrit Schulte, Head of Business Development Jens-Philipp Klein and the chairman Christophe Maire (recent winner of The Europas, who is also an investor in the company.

Phonedeck – Make the most out of your mobile phone activities from phonedeck on Vimeo.