An Internet startup originating from both Israel’s Herzelia and America’s Silicon Valley is promising to bridge the gap between Internet calls and e-mails.

The slogan chosen by the founders is “Now you’re talking…” and it aims to show the ease brought by the new application in communicating with friends.

Yoomba is a Web-based application that resembles to Skype, and has many features that are “borrowed” from eBay’s proprietary peer-to-peer client, including the interface.

Computer-to-computer calling works by sharing network bandwidth among users, similar to how existing services like Skype work, said Yoomba Chief Executive Elad Hemar.

"Up until now, various instant messaging services have been closed systems," said Hemar, who co-founded Yoomba. "We allow you to communicate with all your e-mail contacts by bringing them into one place," he said.

Yoomba software lets users call anyone with an e-mail address that works in Outlook, Outlook Express, Microsoft Hotmail, Yahoo Mail or Google Gmail. It soon plans to add other e-mail services and social network mailing lists.

"This is the new Internet. It's not the separate, walled-off Internet of the portals anymore," Hemar said. "We've taken the only universal online network — e-mail — and built our service on top of it."

Yoomba started its revolution in Israel, in the offices situated in Herzelia, Tel Aviv and is now located in Menlo Park, California. It is backed by U.S. Venture Partners and Global Catalyst Partners and has received a few million dollars for development.