HulloMail & Google Contacts Integration

I am pleased to announce a rather significant release of HulloMail.

Google Contacts Integration
After much anticipation HulloMail Sync with GMail now supports Google Contacts. When HulloMail receives a message for you it will look up the number in your Google Contacts and get his/her mug shot, name and email address for you! The 'from' address will be their email address - turning a Voicemail into a fully blown email from the sender that you can reply to! How cool is that! We will also be adding some new interesting contacts related functions in the near future.

WEB view of HulloMail messages
Especially useful if you do not use HulloMail Sync or prefer to have a focused view of your voicemails, you can now download and visually manage your voicemails through the HulloMail subscriber portal - login to www.hullomail.com and go to the Messages tab.

G1 Android client
You can now delete voicemails from within the client via a new extra operations screen.

An interesting side note, for GoogleMail accounts this is not as straight forward as you might imagine. Voicemails are deposited into two labels, 'Inbox' and 'HulloMail', so there's a bit more to do. Delete isn't what it used to be!

Video showing how these new features work in www.HulloMail.com & Android:


Video showing how these features work on our Android client


The Dungworth Feature
Several (and one in particular - Mr Dungworth) power users, pointed out that the service was not marking voicemails as read until they had been completely listened to. We've changed this so a message is marked as read once the message content begins playing. This feature is completely configurable and we will be exposing such things in self care at a later date.

'Please enter your user ID...'
We apologise if you've been confused by this when calling into the service. The prompt has now been changed to "Please enter your telephone number...".


Tips:
Speeding up when calling to listen to messages
If you are a "HulloMail Sync" user you can speed up the response time of HulloMail when it connects to your email account by archiving older voicemails in your HulloMail folder to another folder or your desktop. This can be done through your email client of choice.

We are working on an auto-manage feature to do this automatically in the future.

Updating Google Contacts via iTunes for iPhone users
If you regularly synchronise your iPhone with your PC via iTunes then check the Sync Google Contacts box under Info/Contacts Tab to synchronise your desktop (Mac & PC) contacts with Google. See http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1245

Missed call alert
If you are out of coverage or your mobile is switched off, HulloMail can also let you know about callers that did not leave you a voicemail. Don't miss any call! To set this up notification login to www.hullomail.com and under the notification tab and set-up missed call alerts.

SMS notification
Sending SMS notifications is the most expensive part of delivering the HulloMail service. Disabling SMS notification where ever possible will help us keep the service free. The G1 client has in-built notification so SMS is not necessary. Please use email notification instead - its more cost effective for us ;)


Keeping up to date:
For those of you who have stepped into the Twitter world we have created @HulloMail for general tweets about all things HulloMail. We have been a little bit slack post Christmas but we are endeavoring to be more active.

Finally, a big thanks for your continued support and feedback! keep sending it in.