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.
Tuesday, 20 January 2009
Saturday, 6 December 2008
The Foundations of HulloMail
The HulloMail journey began in 99, when I thought it would be really cool if anyone (I am too embarrassed to say mum) could send an email by using a telephone.
I thought the idea was so cool that I told my mate Marco Santully (we were both working, sorry slaving at Accenture) he liked it too and so we decided to start VoxSurf.
As it turns out we went on to design an internet and telco mash up solution which became the template and text book next generation voicemail architecture. Our architecture in simplistic terms, was based on connecting a telco network to a media server which is connected to a web server (our app on the internet) which is connected to an email store (message store). Yes I know, it's not rocket science, but in 99 combining a VoiceXML (back then VoxML) media server and java servlets and come to that using Java for scalable realtime apps, was very optimistic! We made it work and work very well.
The idea included the notion that your email could answer your phone too - i.e. your voicemails would be in your email. We therefore believed taking and selling our idea to the telco would be the most sensible thing to do. As a result we found ourselves at the forefront of several battles during the early "web based services" days. The most time consuming was overcoming the general telco apprehension towards Internet Protocol (IP) based services - "It won't scale. It's not reliable!". Look now, its all IP ;)
By January 2008, despite having about 10 million end users through telco customers, the job became harder, more expensive to execute and with decreasing value being placed on next generation way of doing things, thanks to the incumbents slashing their old technology voicemail box pricing with promises of next gen down the road. The final disappointment came and continues to come from the telco’s approach of replacing old voicemail systems with new ones that do the same as the old one with a like for like end user experience - what's that about? However the telco grade credentials of the product and experience is a differentiator in this marketplace - one of our deployments runs on 10 web servers, answers 5 million calls a day and at peak time 127 calls per second...
Our vision from the start was to fundamentally change voicemail. For us voicemail and email are the same and so should exist together. Earlier this year with VC funding I bought the VoxSurf assets and along with Chris Webb (VoxSurf Chief Architect) and some of the guys we started HulloMail. We believe our way of doing voicemail makes life easier and hopefully you will too. Voicemails should be part of your main communications stream. You should own them, be able to save them as long as you want and do with them as you want.
We've now launched HulloMail in the UK and its available to any contract mobile. The basic service is free and we hope to charge for premium features. We will also offer the service directly to mobile operators wishing to offer a modern voicemail service to their customers. The good news for us is that their existing voicemail services are not in keeping with the new handsets being launched or reflective of technology use of today, so you never know, they may get interested in voicemail again. Although, it's really up to you ;)
Will this be a personal or HulloMail specific blog? The answer - HulloMail is personal! I'm doing this to communicate and inform you about our company and service as it develops. I also want to ensure our service meets your expectations and from time to time share views on what’s going on in the marketplace.
cheers
andy
I thought the idea was so cool that I told my mate Marco Santully (we were both working, sorry slaving at Accenture) he liked it too and so we decided to start VoxSurf.
As it turns out we went on to design an internet and telco mash up solution which became the template and text book next generation voicemail architecture. Our architecture in simplistic terms, was based on connecting a telco network to a media server which is connected to a web server (our app on the internet) which is connected to an email store (message store). Yes I know, it's not rocket science, but in 99 combining a VoiceXML (back then VoxML) media server and java servlets and come to that using Java for scalable realtime apps, was very optimistic! We made it work and work very well.
The idea included the notion that your email could answer your phone too - i.e. your voicemails would be in your email. We therefore believed taking and selling our idea to the telco would be the most sensible thing to do. As a result we found ourselves at the forefront of several battles during the early "web based services" days. The most time consuming was overcoming the general telco apprehension towards Internet Protocol (IP) based services - "It won't scale. It's not reliable!". Look now, its all IP ;)
By January 2008, despite having about 10 million end users through telco customers, the job became harder, more expensive to execute and with decreasing value being placed on next generation way of doing things, thanks to the incumbents slashing their old technology voicemail box pricing with promises of next gen down the road. The final disappointment came and continues to come from the telco’s approach of replacing old voicemail systems with new ones that do the same as the old one with a like for like end user experience - what's that about? However the telco grade credentials of the product and experience is a differentiator in this marketplace - one of our deployments runs on 10 web servers, answers 5 million calls a day and at peak time 127 calls per second...
Our vision from the start was to fundamentally change voicemail. For us voicemail and email are the same and so should exist together. Earlier this year with VC funding I bought the VoxSurf assets and along with Chris Webb (VoxSurf Chief Architect) and some of the guys we started HulloMail. We believe our way of doing voicemail makes life easier and hopefully you will too. Voicemails should be part of your main communications stream. You should own them, be able to save them as long as you want and do with them as you want.
We've now launched HulloMail in the UK and its available to any contract mobile. The basic service is free and we hope to charge for premium features. We will also offer the service directly to mobile operators wishing to offer a modern voicemail service to their customers. The good news for us is that their existing voicemail services are not in keeping with the new handsets being launched or reflective of technology use of today, so you never know, they may get interested in voicemail again. Although, it's really up to you ;)
Will this be a personal or HulloMail specific blog? The answer - HulloMail is personal! I'm doing this to communicate and inform you about our company and service as it develops. I also want to ensure our service meets your expectations and from time to time share views on what’s going on in the marketplace.
cheers
andy
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