[api_or_ipa]

Your biggest challenge will be with users. Just imagine if you tell someone "Just email me using shortwhale.com/danariely". My mom and most non-hn friends would enter that in the "To:" section of their email client.

Users are stupid, and email is unfortunately an overdeveloped idea from an age long past. Attempts to replace it invariably face resistance from the multitudes of users who wouldn't react well with change.

I like the idea and recognize the need for a service like this, however.

[dominikgro]

Thanks for the feedback. Agree, if you say it in a conversation, but it works well for Dan because he links to it from his website: http://danariely.com/about-dan/

[politician]

You could easily extend this to support email forwarding.

e.g. [e-mail] -> [e-mail]

Messages sent to the inbound email address receive automatic replies with a link to the site, or for bonus points, an HTML form (for email clients that aren't ancient and terrible).

[papaf]

Could it be setup to work like email whitelisting? When an unknown sender sends an email they get an autoreply back with a link to shortwhale.