These days, it&'s a given that the latest web service you sign up for is going to be using email for something. The better services make these messages interactive �a4���a4� when someone leaves a message on your Facebook Wall, you don&'t have to head back to Facebook.com to respond' you can just reply to that email message. Unfortunately, from a development standpoint, this is a bit easier said than done.

Mailgun is a new service launching today that wants to make this kind of functionality easy to implement: it offers a &8216'Mailbox API&' that lets you bake Email functionality into your application. The service is now open to the public, and the first 50 people to sign up for a paid account and use the signup code &8216'TCRUNCH&' will be entered into a drawing for a new Macbook Air.

So what exactly is Mailgun for Well, it&'s certainly possible to use Mailgun to send notifications, newsletters, or whatever other content you want to distribute on a broad scale �a4���a4� but there are already other services that can perform these tasks. Mailgun differentiates itself with features that extend beyond just sending messages.

The most obvious usecases are fora4s��the interactive Email notifications described above. Beyond thesea4s��notifications,a4s��CEO Ev Kontsevoy gave me a few examples illustrating how a developer might put Mailgun to work.

As with other API-based services, Mailgun&'s success will really come down to demand �a4���a4� how many developers are looking to outsource these tasks, and how many are willing to pay for it Given how ubiquitous email is, I think Mailgun has a fighting chance, provided their service proves to be reliable (and saves developers as much time as they say it will).