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Get The Gist™
HulloMail promotes convenience. What with the sending, receiving and sharing of your voicemails being an instant process, would it be possible to make our app even better? After hearing the feedback from our loyal consumers, we came up with a solution to make the receiving and checking of voicemails an even simpler process. This is an exciting moment for us all, as we can now proudly introduce our new and long-anticipated transcription feature, Scribe™ !
Scribe™ is HulloMail’s new transcription service, which has a fun and interesting product under its name - Get The Gist™, which transcribes the first 10 seconds of your voicemails, using only machines (yes no humans), to give you the gist of what the message is about, before you’ve even listened to it. Ten seconds may not sound like a lot, however it only takes a few words to express a message, so Get The Gist™ has you perfectly covered. Picture how useful this will be where it’s inconvenient to pick up the phone, have a glance at your received message and … get the gist of it! Simple.
Available only to subscribers, Scribe – Get The Gist™ can be purchased via the in-app store for £1.49 for up to 50 messages, over 30 days. That’s $1.99 in the US and €1.59 in Ireland. As with other transcription services, Scribe™ aims for the most accurate transcriptions possible, however external factors have an influence and may affect the transcription of messages – a bad phone line for example.
Enjoy the new feature! It’s going to completely change how you experience your voicemail service, in a totally awesome way.
Natalie Bell
Celebrate St Patrick’s With HulloMail!
In tribute to St Patrick’s Day this weekend, we’re offering you Twitter go-ers a chance to win 6 months’ FREE subscription to HulloMail SmartVoicemail, with a twist!
Only 7 lucky people will win (7′s a lucky number, right?) – one for each day of the week. To be in with a chance, simply log on to Twitter, ensure you’re following us (@HulloMail), and tweet or re-tweet our special St Patrick’s Day message, which will be posted on Twitter today! Make sure you do not change the tweet in any way, simply re-tweet, or it won’t count:
Celebrate St Patrick’s! Retweet for a chance to win 6months’ FREE subscription to HulloMail! #HulloMail #StPatricks
The competition will last from today’s date, 15th March 2012, until midnight on the 21st March 2012. Make sure you’re re-tweeting our special message during and between these days!
It only takes 5 minutes to participate, and ultimately, what have you got to lose?
Happy St Patrick’s everyone!
St Patrick’s Day Offer Terms & Conditions:
- Only 7 winners will be chosen, for each day of the week commencing 15/03/2012 until midnight (UK time) on the 21/03/2012
- Open for all UK, US and Ireland residents
- Any re-tweets after the closing date will not be counted
- The tweet must remain exactly as HulloMail provides, without any changes or removal of text
- The 7 winners will be announced shortly after the competition’s closure
- Acceptance of these terms and conditions is a condition of entry and the entry instructions form part of these terms and conditions
- The promoters reserve the right, at their discretion, to exclude entrants and/or the winner(s) if she/he does not comply with any of these terms and conditions
- There are no cash alternatives to prize
- There is no purchase necessary
- The promoter’s decision will be final and binding on the entrants and no correspondence will be entered into regarding the selection of the winners and/or the prizes
- The promoter’s accept no responsibility for any disappointment incurred of suffered by you as a result of you entering the competition or accepting the prize
- This promotion is in no way sponsored, endorsed or administered by, or associated with, Twitter. You are providing your information to HulloMail and not to Twitter
- Events may occur that render the competition itself of the awarding of the prizes impossible due to reasons beyond the control of the promoter and accordingly the promoter may at its absolute discretion vary or amend the promotion. The entrant agrees that no liability shall attach to the promoter as a result thereof
- Upon winning 6 months’ subscription to HulloMail SmartVoicemail, the subscription duration will be added onto the end of any current subscription the entrant may have
Welcome to The H-Factor!
My intentions regarding my recent excitable outbursts on various social media sites have been to create the element of anticipation, wonder, and perhaps even mild confusion. I do believe that I have succeeded – if not on the excitement front then at least on confusing a great deal of people. Either way, you are all interested.
The good news is that I have not lead you all astray, and there is actually something worth your time behind all this build-up.
I present to you the HulloMail H-Factor Christmas Singing Competition!
I know what you’re thinking. “What a long-winded title…” Well to be perfectly honest with you it is simply known as ‘The H-Factor’, but some room has to be made for description. I would like to stress that The H-Factor is nothing like The X-Factor – at least not in the sense of name, nor the sense of employing a rather [incredibly] intimidating [deluded] judging panel. This is merely for some festive fun! There will be no real ‘judgement’ beyond that of deciding which entrant wins the prize.
Oh, did I forget to mention what the prize is? It’s an iPad 2 WiFi, you know, no big deal …
This is, after all, a Christmas competition – therefore all you have to do is send us your best renditions of your favourite Christmas carols, sung by you, via Hullo message!
The competition begins today and will finish at midnight (GMT) on the 3rd of January 2012, so you’ll need to warm up those vocal cords and get singing sharpish! Your recording can be one of yourself, a friend or family member, your children, a hobo on the street – anyone you like! Whoever has the best entry will win an iPad 2 Wifi plus a free subscription to HulloMail SmartVoicemail for one year – two runners up will also win a years’ subscription each.
The winner and the runners up will have their entries posted on the HulloMail Facebook page, for everyone to hear! What are you waiting for? A bus? NO. So get singing!
UK & USA residents can send Hullos here: 7777888999
Ireland residents can send Hullos here: 777888999
Alternatively, everyone can send their Hullos to this email address: hfactor@hullomail.com
Just to make your lives that bit easier. You’re welcome, you don’t have to thank me *grins in a smug manner*
If you feel you need a reminder as to how Hullo messaging works, do not fear young squire, simply visit our website for help: http://hullomail.com/uk/sendhullos.html
Merry Christmas!
Here’s your chance to flex your creativity muscles!
A while back, I thought I’d give my friend Joe a call to arrange to do something, as I had not seen him in what only could have been a million years – I can’t remember what I suggested, probably to go to the pub [standard]. Or cow tipping?
Anyway, his phone rings. And rings.
He then suddenly picks up: ‘Hello?’
Elated I reply, ‘Hey Joe! How are you?’
‘I’m good and how are you?’, he inquires.
I begin to answer, preparing to discuss possible pub crawling [cow tipping?] scenarios, until I hear this obnoxiousness down the phone:
“HA! Just kidding, I’m not actually here, leave a message”, followed by the familiar ‘beep’.
Needless to say I was hurt. Well not entirely hurt but I was mildly disgruntled to say the least. Yet somewhere, Joe was undoubtedly laughing to himself, thrilled that he had managed to fool me – on top of just about everyone else [as it turned out]. He personalized his operator voicemail message deliberately just to mess with our heads, knowing the affect it would have on his sober and significantly cow-less friends.
It does go to express, however, how much fun one can get out of certain voicemail features, which leads me to my point – here at HulloMail we’re always thinking of new ways to make your voicemailing experience a pleasant one, and believe there should be fun ways in which you are able to bring your own personality to the app.
Thus, I place emphasis on our Individual Greetings feature in the paid-for app! Those of you who have subscriptions to HulloMail SmartVoicemail are able to record unique greeting messages for each of your contacts – which they will hear upon leaving you a voicemail. When you think about it, this is incredibly useful for conveying a simple message that doesn’t need a lengthy phone call to describe, such as ‘Hey Bob, I’ll be in meetings all day today, will call you back this evening.’
Perhaps you will record a fun or silly message for a sibling? Then have a separate more personal recording for your significant other. Or maybe you will follow Joe’s example and relentlessly annoy your friends to the point of them wanting no further contact? [Joe now resides in Mexico. Whether this is due to his personal commitments, or that we chased him out with pitchforks and torches, is irrelevant].
You may be thinking ‘How is this any better than standard voice-mail services, where you can record yourself in a similar way, as Joe did?’ Well my answer to you, reader, is this: firstly, it just is. Secondly, this feature’s uniqueness derives from your ability to have a different greeting per contact – it’s more personal and a lot more fun.
Make the most of the feature and be creative! And Joe, upon your return from Mexico, we’ll go on a pub-tipping-cow-crawl…[??]
Natalie Bell
Anti phone-hacking voicemail upgrade
After reading the high-profile reports regarding the various phone-hacking cases, we wanted to provide a service which would give you total confidence in the security of your voicemail account.
The reason phone-hacking is possible is that voicemail services make it really easy for you to call and retrieve messages with no security measures. Unfortunately it is straightforward for unscrupulous individuals to “spoof” caller phone numbers and therefore gain access to voicemail
Today we’ve launched a new version of our SmartVoicemail™ service designed to provide protection against unauthorised and undetected access to private voice messages.
For our iPhone and Android paid users, BB coming soon; we’ve launched new app versions including a new feature set called Access Control
Access Control allows you to block all ‘call-in access’ to your account so messages are only retrieved from within the HulloMail app and email. Additionally, you may opt to receive a notification each time your messages are accessed, providing a complete audit trail and peace of mind. You also have the option to switch-off online access to messages via your ‘My HulloMail’ portal.
As we offer call access as a back up mechanism, we will be enforcing PIN entry as a default setting for those of you wishing to dial-in to access voice messages
This is what it looks like on the iPhone 2.1.0 and Android 3.5.0:
If you do however regularly call in we appreciate that PIN entry can be annoying. As a HulloMail Paid user you can disable PIN using Access Control but we recommend you then enable access detection by setting Access Notification to ON.
Further FAQ’s can be found here.
I believe our Access Control feature set is simply unequalled by the mobile network operators and other third party voicemail providers.
Please take the time to set your call access PIN in the coming days…
Thanks
Andy Munarriz founder & CEO
The Only Way is Old Street!
Forget silicon implants we’re talking Silicon Roundabout.
The Only Way is Old Street (often abbreviated to TOWIOS), is a reality mini-series based in and around the ‘Silicon Roundabout ‘ area of East London, famous for it’s vast concentration of innovative start-up companies. It shows real people in modified situations using HulloMail’s, multi-award winning, Smartvoicemail applications.
Episode one - The Illness. Jane has a few too many drinks with the girls. Waking up the next morning, feeling terrible – Jane realises that work will be a miracle that day but can’t face calling her boss, in case he picks up. She decides to use her HulloMail app to send a Hullo, a voicemail without making a call, to avoid a long conversation with her boss!
Episode two – The Goodbye. Andy has been dating Ally for a few months but following a chat with Chris in the pub realises that he doesn’t want a relationship. He decides he just can’t face the emotions of a break-up so sends a “goodbye’ Hullo, a voicemail without having to make the call.
Episode three – The Cancellation. Mike offers Chris the opportunity of great seats at the forthcoming Arsenal game, only problem is Chris has a long-standing arrangement with some other friends. He can’t face calling them all individually just for them to make him feel bad so decides to send a Hullo; a voicemail without having to make a call, that can be sent to multiple contacts at the same time. Problem solved!
Tell us what you think, view the series today:
The only way is Old Street
>NEW for December 2010, Ad-supported and paid-for HulloMail Applications
>You will have received an email this week announcing some slight changes to our HulloMail applications, so we thought we would take this opportunity to provide you with a little more information.
We’re committed to providing a free service and to continue to do this, this week, we are introducing advertising to our popular Android, BlackBerry and iPhone applications. The advertising is visual and not audio, and will be included in the central message list and the message detail screen on the Android and iPhone. For the BlackBerry, the ads will only appear on the central message list due to the lack of a message detail screen.
We understand that not everyone wants advertising so we’re also introducing ad-free, paid-for versions of all our apps. These apps will contain no advertising and will be the first in-line to receive new features planned for 2011 such as enhanced group messaging, further personalisation options and message management tools.
The price of the ad-free app is £3.99, $6.99 or €5.49 for the year depending on your country, which is the equivalent of just pence or cents per week!
This week the ads will be turned-on automatically so to keep using the free service you don’t need to do anything. If you have already decided that ads aren’t for you then you need to delete the current version of the app from your phone, search for HulloMail Smart Voicemail in your app store, purchase it and install in the usual way – signing in with your normal account details. You will notice that the paid-for, ad-free versions of the applications have a different icon.
Any problem you can find the answer in the FAQ section of the website or contact support@hullomail.com who are always happy to help.
>We took voicemail to facebook for Android now we’ve done it again with iPhone!
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>Awards, Awards, Awards
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>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
