Hello hullo!
Over the last few weeks I’ve been playing with the beta of a promising new free service called hullo. Now you can try it too.
hullo bills itself as a personal call manager. The promise is that it will help you stay in touch better than ever before.  It incorporates a buddy-list style softphone with some very slick advanced telephony features. For instance:
- You can quickly and easily have a conversation with as many people as you want. Just select the people you want to talk with and bring them into the conference. It will scale pretty much infinitely, because it’s not peer-to-peer based, relying on Versatel Networks EdgeIQ series hardware on the backend to handle the traffic. In fact, hullo has a “cafe” which is an open party line that anyone can jump into and start talking — the voice equivalent of a text chat room.
- It has the ability to create sophisticated find-me rules. These can be assigned on an individual basis too, so you can have different rules for different people. Want your buddies to be able to track you down on your cell phone, but not your boss? Not a problem.Â
- Don’t like talking on a headset? Use your ordinary phone instead. When you click on your buddy’s name in the hullo contact list, it will ring your choice of handset, and your buddy at the same time.  You can make and receive calls on any handset you choose. This will be a killer feature if they migrate it to a cellular handset.
- hullo also does mid-call transfers. Need to continue a conversation you started at home, but from your car? No problem. hullo can move the call to your cell.Â
Installing the software is simple. Simply visit hullo.com, and click on download. It does the usual things installers do. Because I’m a bit of a legalities nut, I actually read their lengthy license agreement, which, unusually, includes a confidentiality provision. I installed the software in spite of it, concluding that since hullo was public beta, it wasn’t confidential anymore.  The installer will pull down the .NET runtime if you haven’t already loaded it, so be patient.Â
Once installed, the client pops up, asks you to create an account, and then you’re off!Â
The first thing hullo does is pop up a screen prompting you to make a call. Just enter in a phone number, and your own number, and it will make the connection. Your phone will ring, and the other phone will ring, and then you’re talking. It’s that easy.
hullo will also prompt you to import contacts from MSN or Outlook. There appears to be a limit of about 300 contacts, so if you have a large contact list (mine is over 3,000) then you will need to select the buddies you want to include. Once imported, it will then allow you to send invitations to everyone you’ve selected as well.
Using hullo is dead simple. Simply click one of your contacts, and click call. If the contact is also a hullo user, it will use the findme features to hunt that contact down. Otherwise it will simply ring that persons number. Want to add someone to a call? Just drag them into the current call window, and hullo will call them and add them to the call. Want to transfer the call to another of your phones? Just select a phone. The photo on the right shows a conference call with the transfer window pulled down. It’s that simple.
Best of all, all North American calls are free, whether you make them on the softclient, or on a handset, and whether you make them to another hullo member, or to a non-member. When compared to Skype, this means you can make a free call from any handset as well as a PC. And when compared to Gizmo, you can make a free call to anybody, not just a nother Gizmo member. This up’s the ante significantly in the price spat Skype and Gizmo started.
The company is focusing their launch on the college and high school crowd. The features have been designed recognizing that young people are increasingly the most sophisticated users of mobile phones. hullo’s feature set makes it easy to use those phones to socialize, arrange events, or stay in touch with friends and family who might live in different cities. It’s not hard to imagine how appealing this will be for students away from home for the first time.
What’s missing? Instant messaging and presence. For now the focus seems to be solely on voice. No doubt these will be addressed in a future release, as they are two popular features with the college crowd.Â
With a little luck, viral adoption, and good marketing, hullo could easily surpass Skype and Gizmo in North American usage. Call quality is better, you can use any handset you like, there are no restrictions on free usage, and you get a bunch of very appealing new features.Â
To promote the beta, if you sign up now, you can get a ballot for the August 24th launch party in Ottawa, featuring Kardinal Off!Shall!. So go for it. Download it today, and say hullo to your pals.
August 22nd, 2006 at 1:56 am
Very cool feature set but seems to be lacking in the API department, do you have any insight? Not very Voice 2.0ish if it doesn’t launch as a platform.
August 22nd, 2006 at 2:48 am
Very true, Andrew. I don’t know anything about an API strategy at this point, but judging from the push to get it out the door I suspect it’s a secondary consideration.
August 22nd, 2006 at 5:34 am
As far as I can make out this seems to be more of an “added feature to skype” (i.e. JahJah), than a new service type. If they plan to take any of the student market, I think they are dead (especially with the point made above, that they are not a platform that can operate from within their IM, FaceBook, MySpace etc.). Can you think of one compelling reason why I would move from my calling functionality on yahoo IM, or my skype?
August 22nd, 2006 at 6:15 am
[…] Hullo is a little different. The actual process of having a call is the same as Jajah - first your phone rings, then the person calling you. But as Alec Saunders notes in his review, it does a lot more, too. […]
August 22nd, 2006 at 8:59 am
Hey Paul, I am not a student, so I may have a coloured view on this one. However, I am planning to send my oldest off to college this year with Hullo and a cell phone. The quality is superb, the calls are free, and it does a bunch of things that Skype or Yahoo IM don’t do. I think the angle they’re taking — using this as a tool to help better manage all calls, including your cell phone calls, has appeal.
August 22nd, 2006 at 10:40 am
Does Hullo support any protocol handlers? Like Skype = skype:name?call or email = mailto:address or Gizmo = sip:18885551212? I think support for protocol handlers will make or break a lot of services (esp a service like this), as it enables weaving services together.
August 22nd, 2006 at 11:23 am
[…] “The company is focusing their launch on the college and high school crowd”, said Alec Saunders, who profiled the softphone and noted that the installer will pull down the .NET runtime. So be patient if you haven’t loaded it yet. After the beta period, Hullo business model will evolve to a mix of free and paid services. […]
August 22nd, 2006 at 12:41 pm
[…] Hulloã¯ã€å¤šå°‘é•ã£ã¦ã„る。通話を開始ã™ã‚‹æ‰‹é †ã¯Jajahã¨åŒã˜ã€‚ã¾ãšè‡ªåˆ†ã®é›»è©±ãŒé³´ã‚Šã€å—話器を上ã’ã‚‹ã¨ç›¸æ‰‹ãŒå‘¼ã°ã‚Œã‚‹ã€‚ã—ã‹ã—Alec SaundersãŒè©•ä¾¡è¨˜äº‹ã§æ›¸ã„ã¦ã„るよã†ã«ã€ãれ以外ã«ã‚‚ãŸãã•ã‚“ã®æ©Ÿèƒ½ãŒã‚る。 […]
August 22nd, 2006 at 2:01 pm
[…] The VoIP blogosphere is buzzing about a hot new application called Hullo. Alec Saunders, who has been using it for awhile, describes it as “one of the slickest VoIP concepts I’ve ever seen, especially for the college crowd.” Could it become a challenger to folks like Gizmo and Skype because of its social networking focus. Alec’s review is here. Phone Boy is not as impressed because it only works on Windows machines. We would love to see a web based implementation of this, totally devoid of any installs. […]
August 22nd, 2006 at 4:32 pm
[…] Hullo is a little different. The actual process of having a call is the same as Jajah - first your phone rings, then the person calling you. But as Alec Saunders notes in his review, it does a lot more, too. […]
August 22nd, 2006 at 7:27 pm
Hey, you were gang-blogged today. Nice piece.
August 22nd, 2006 at 8:10 pm
Thanks Randy :)
August 22nd, 2006 at 9:40 pm
TechCrunch and GigaOm…. congrats and great review!
August 23rd, 2006 at 3:06 am
[…] Well, it looks like yet another VOIP service launched this week. It’s called “hullo” and half of their logo is on the right (that’s what you get for not making your logo easily linkable boys). Alec’s review is nice and thorough (Om adds, well, no comment, Phone Boy might have liked it but got too caught up in reminding 97% of the world that he only has a Mac, and Michael basically uses 554 words to agree with Alec), and here’s his summary of the business opportunity: With a little luck, viral adoption, and good marketing, hullo could easily surpass Skype and Gizmo in North American usage. Call quality is better, you can use any handset you like, there are no restrictions on free usage, and you get a bunch of very appealing new features. […]
August 23rd, 2006 at 4:10 am
[…] I have already suggest many free voip as Gizmo or FreeCall. Now there is Hullo a new free software voip, a client-based application (only for Windows) that looks like an instant message box with an interesting structure (similar to Jajah but not in a browser) and pretty features as make a call from any normal phone or directly from your computer with speakers/headset and a microphone, do group calling by dragging contacts into the call or adding a new phone number. To promote the beta, if you sign up now, you can get a ballot for the August 24th launch party in Ottawa with this contest. You can download beta Hullo here: in order to start it is necessary to the last update version of the Microsoft .NET Framework 1.1 component. The Voip now support only North American number. […]
August 23rd, 2006 at 5:25 am
Hi Alex, I appreciate that he connection from “mobile” to “internet” is valuable property. But don’t the “nice features” sound like they are “iPabx” . I sign up, set my profiles, set my follow me’s, set my “permissions”, link it to “presence” profiles? Sounds a bit like Orative to me. (Maybe they should have launched with a widget for MySpace and FaceBook?) I guess I am just having a problem seeing where companies can make money in this space. I could be wrong, look at the horrible job Google’s Blogger did of competing with WordPress and SixApart.
August 23rd, 2006 at 6:37 am
[…] Hello hullo! — Alec Saunders .LOG (tags: hullo voip) […]
August 23rd, 2006 at 5:45 pm
[…] Decide whether or not you like the idea of Hullo Hullo. […]
August 23rd, 2006 at 11:47 pm
Seems to be another offspring of Skype. Does this mean Skype source code is really cracked? I wonder.
August 28th, 2006 at 10:03 am
[…] Hello Hullo! - Alec Saunders […]
August 28th, 2006 at 11:44 pm
[…] Hullo is a little different. The actual process of having a call is the same as Jajah - first your phone rings, then the person calling you. But as Alec Saunders notes in his review, it does a lot more, too. […]
September 21st, 2006 at 2:48 am
[…] Targeting the high school and college crowd who likes to stay in touch but apparently is too lazy to pick up the phone, Hullo is now out of beta and ready for everyone to try (don’t be intimidated by the professional website). The connected phone hub runs off the .NET platform on your Windows PC and allows you to quickly create conference calls with your friends via their PCs, landlines, or on the run with their cell phones. Currently, all calls, local or long distance, in the U.S. are free. (At a later date, Hullo will offer a mix of free and paid services.) The client seems to be quite intuitive, allowing you to quickly add and remove callers to the conference calling fray, and even transfer calls. At a later date, it will also support the ability to leave voice mail for users. This is a feature I am especially excited about, since the demise of the pager. | Alec Saunders via GigaOm | […]
September 21st, 2006 at 2:55 am
[…] Hello hullo! […]
September 25th, 2006 at 4:55 am
[…] The VoIP blogosphere is buzzing about a hot new application called Hullo. Alec Saunders, who has been using it for awhile, describes it as “one of the slickest VoIP concepts I’ve ever seen, especially for the college crowd.” Could it become a challenger to folks like Gizmo and Skype because of its social networking focus. Alec’s review is here. Phone Boy is not as impressed because it only works on Windows machines. We would love to see a web based implementation of this, totally devoid of any installs. […]
November 13th, 2006 at 7:31 am
I’ve read an article in a hebrew magazine which claims this software could be the next thing in VOIP, so don’t under estimate it…
November 19th, 2006 at 4:55 am
Hi,
Aprreciate views on this one?
Kind regards
Nick
February 6th, 2007 at 6:04 pm
Is Hullo now out of business ??
February 10th, 2007 at 12:13 pm
What is this hullo thing? I went on their site and I coulnt register. does anybody have an account I can use to try it out? does it still work for some of you? how much does it cost now?
March 3rd, 2007 at 1:22 pm
[…] Saunders ha scritto una completa recensione della beta scaricabile dal sito. Tags: Instant Messaging, presence, Software VoIP, […]
February 1st, 2008 at 12:15 am
[…] tried a new service today on he recommendation of Alec Saunders and […]