Presenting the Hullo Family

We would like to introduce you to the Hullo Family and friends...

This family is very special to us at HulloMail as they have been created by us to help us communicate the great benefits of our service and highlight the new Hullo feature, which allows you to send short, voice messages to your friends for FREE. You can find out some more details about each character, find links to their Facebook page so you can become a fan, watch their videos and view their pictures.
Hugo Hullo
Hugo lives in NY city with his wife Hillary and his son Harry. He works as an accountant in a small company in Astoria. Originally from London, Hugo moved to the US in the 80s to be with Hilary. Hugo loves gadgets, and is always checking out technology blogs online for something new to add to his collection, He wouldn’t be without his BlackBerry Bold.
Hilary Hullo
Originally from Wisconsin, Hillary works as a maths teacher at a college in Brooklyn. She is married to Hugo and they have one son Harry. Hillary is crazy about fashion, and loves to shop in Manhattan, making Hugo crazy with all the shoes she buys. Hilary has an iPhone which Hugo bought for her last year.
Hilda Hullo
Hilda is Hugo’s mother. She lives in a nice residential area in the north of London with her cat Hef. She loves watching EastEnders, and never misses an episode. Hugo brought her a laptop for Christmas and she is never off the internet.
Harry Hullo 
Harry is 16 years old and is a rather rebellious teenager, and just wants to party all the time. His favourite band is The Hulligans, and he doesn’t miss a concert. He also loves hanging out with his friends, Hitch and Herbert playing videogames. Harry’s mobile is a Hero, he likes the cool features.
Hero Hullo
Hero is a rather crazy dog, who is always looking forward to his next walk. He constantly plays with his pink ball and loves to bark at Holly, the parrot.
Hef Hullo
You can't get a more chilled out customer than Hef. His main highlight of the day is being fed and he loves to take a lovely long nap on the couch until he continues his sleeping on Grandma’s bed. Hef is a cat of peace (secretly he’s a fan of U2's Bono).
Holly Hullo
Holly the parrot is never silent and is always getting Harry into trouble by mimicking Hilary, Hugo and even Hero. She just won't stop talking and trying to be part of conversations.
Herbert and Hitch
Harry's best friends, they are completely obsessed with video games, and usually like to spend Saturday nights playing Call of Duty round at Harry's.
Heather 
Heather is Hugo's PA. She is really lazy and takes every opportunity to slack off at work and read cheesy romantic novels. She is desperately looking for her ‘prince charming’.
The Hulligans
They are the coolest band in NY and have finally made it in Europe and Japan. Their latest song, Send a Hullo to my Heart, is a worldwide number one hit. They love to get closer to their fans and have a million+ fans on Facebook.
Become a fan on facebook
Watch episode one:  the Parrot
Watch episode two: the Hulligans
Check out the family album

Google Contacts for everyone and HulloMail web portal for US subscribers

Today sees the release of both Google Contacts integration for all HulloMail subscribers and the HulloMail web portal for US subscribers.

Google Contacts

Up until now only HulloMail users that had a GMail/GoogleMail account with 'HulloMail Sync' enabled were able to benefit from having contact information from Google Contacts associated with their HulloMail messages.

Now we have added further integration with Google that allows any HulloMail user, no matter what type of email account they have configured to store their HulloMail messages in, to enable Google Contacts support and enjoy the same experience.

This feature is simply enabled through the 'Contacts' settings screen in the Android mobile app. There the user is redirected to Google for authentication and then authorisation of HulloMail to access their contacts. Enabling this feature will soon also be possible through the HulloMail web portal.

HulloMail web portal

Like their UK counterparts, existing US subscribers can now access and manage both their HulloMail messages and account settings through the HulloMail user web portal while away from their phone.


The HulloMail team.

"Green me up, Scotty"

Voicemail isn't just good for shaming freaky guys. Voicemail can save the planet too.

The original Captain Kirk, William Shatner, is helping Greenpeace with their campaign to stop Hewlett-Packard using toxic chemicals in their computer products.

Hear his voicemail to HP below or read more about his campaign on The Guardian site.

Avoid roaming charges

Hear your voicemails for free when you're overseas. HulloMail user, Jon Bradford, tells you how.

"My voicemail's mine to keep!"

Meet Travis, from Cincinnati, OH - our first US subscriber. We asked him a few questions about Android and HulloMail.

Why are you an Android user?
I love that it’s an open source project. It attracts a giving community.

Android's powered by Google. Most of my apps are neatly integrated and safely backed up by them.

What are the best apps?
Locale, Shazam, TuneWiki, Twidroid and, of course, HulloMail.

Why did you switch to HulloMail?
My previous voicemail solution, PhoneFusion, relied on SMS for voicemail alerts. I have a limited SMS plan. It sucked that I had to waste a SMS every time I got a voicemail. I am glad to see there are lots of other advantages to HulloMail too.

What are your favourite?
Voicemail goes immediately to my email inbox - it's awesome! With my previous solution, there was like a 50mb limit and the messages lived on their server. With HulloMail my voicemail's mine to keep!

I also like the flexibility of HulloMail. I don't have to use the app to access my messages because I can check my email for them.

Almost rumbled by a star by the stars and stripes

Thanks to TRavis, Lisa, Matt and Colin in the USA.

Our sign up process in our Android client automatically sets call forwarding to HulloMail. We tested our sign up process. Man we paid some good cash to do it on Device Anywhere. It worked.

We then asked some good friends in the USA to test they all had probs with the call forwarding. Hmmm, it works in the UK and T-Mobile USA is a GSM Network and Device Anywhere in the USA is telling us it works.

Let face it this has to be ironic? The USSD on GSM we use in the UK is **004*xxxx. Not in the USA. On T-Mobile USA is *004*xxxx.

4th of July. Boston Tea Party - did someone try to rumble us ;)

Phew... Thanks guys for all your help....

T-Mobile reduce divert charges

T-Mobile have listened to HulloMail's users and reduced their UK divert charges.

T-Mobile was the only major UK network not to include diverts to geographic numbers in their inclusive minutes.

The operator’s customers were charged five pence per minute more to use HulloMail than they were to use T-Mobile’s traditional voice prompt system. Thanks to our customers' lobbying, T-Mobile reduced their price - HulloMail's service can now be included in bundled 'free' minutes.

Existing T-Mobile subscribers to our service without an 03 divert number should have already received an email with a new number - the rest of you don't need to do a thing.

Coming soon on your iPhone

Take a sneak peek at this early dev release.

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