Jott is a service that takes your voice message and transcribes it into text. After you sign up for a free account, you can call a toll-free number and indicate who you want to "jott". Say your message, and the service records, transcribes and sends the message on. You can jott yourself (to your email account, for example), you can jott your friends (send a text message to your best friend with no typing necessary!) or you can jott many Web 2.0 services and applications for a variety of reasons.
Signing up is easy! Just enter your basic information - as shown on the left - and validate your email address by checking your email and clicking the link in the email that you get from Jott. Enter your phone number (cell or land line numbers work) and then validate it (Jott really doesn't want someone getting signed up without their permission!) by calling the service (another toll-free number) from the phone number you just entered. After that, you are asked to enter in your contacts that you will be "jotting" and you are ready to use the service!
Why use it?
For people who tend to call themselves to leave voice mail messages on their own phones, this is a nice way to get those messages in other places (email, text messaging application, online to-do list application, etc.) as well. You can also put your group of friends into Jott's contact list and send out a single reminder to all of them (Jott lets you put multiple contacts into a group for broadcasting out messages).
Extend it with other Web Applications!
Jott also partners with many different web applications to allow you to "Jott" them. If you have a Remember The Milk account (an online to-do list), you can call Jott, ask it to jott your Remember The Milk task list and add a task - without touching a computer. You can also post to Twitter, Wordpress.com, Typepad and many other blogging or microblogging applications from Jott. I've tested out the Jott to Twitter service and it's pretty nice for when I want to post to my Twitter account from a phone, rather than from text messaging.
Do you think Jott could be useful to remind co-workers about upcoming events, tasks or meetings? Would you use that way? How else could you use Jott?
22 comments:
The "new and improved" features from Jott that didn't quite make it into this post are at http://jott.com/jotters/ at their blog, if anyone is interested. Mostly it's just new ways to get your information to and from your Jott account. Enjoy!
I really like this, because I hate hate hate to check my voicemails...just because I'm lazy. But I'm a little paranoid about giving out my number, and I don't check my e-mail all that often. But I think a lot of the supervisors here would enjoy this for employees that call in and leave messages and such.
I think Nikki is on the right track. I could also see it being used as a quick way to inform a library group of meeting changes or closings. One quick call, and everyone gets a message. Boom, you're done.
I hate to agree with Nikki but it would be handy for supervisors. Eyeoh's idea for library meetings, closing and so forth is handy. For me, I could use it for my wife and all my girlfriends.
Jott – Wow this is stellar! And its free! I bet they’ll change that once the service catches on. This would be so cool for anyone that needs free transcription services. I wonder how good the voice recognition and actual transcribing is. I’m sure the quality will be improving all the time. So you could be reading a book, and instead of taking notes manually, you could speak them in and then come back to your notes in text form. And then it would be emailed to you. Or you have a paper to write and you could dictate it, and avoid all that typing; you’re supposed to read it out loud anyways as part of the editing process, to see how well it flows. I wonder how they translate pauses, like where you want some punctuation to go, maybe there’s some special lingo (like Boolean operators) with which to signal & differentiate punctuation. This just seems too good to be true, am I missing something here?
I agree w/ the others about the utility of JOTT for quickly leaving email messages--especially those intended for a group. A quick call and you've left an email for the entire staff.
Francesa's comment really got me thinking: JOTT as a transcription service. Say you're in a book store, and you discover a great quote. A quick call and you have the quote in text form in your email. You could transcribe, via phone call, a memorable paragraph, a recipe, some kinda informational tidbit etc. I wonder what the word limit is...maybe that's the rub.
This could be a useful tool for staff to leave messages for their supervisors as the staff email can be checked from home as well as work, but not everyone checks their voice mail often or has cell phones etc. For staff that are "out and about" in the community alot and not near a computer this could be useful for reminding other staff of mtgs, programs etc. This might be useful for staff to send teens and adults a program reminder as well.
It seems that Jott could be used in any modern business setting, including libraries. A supervisor could send out a single message to his staff to inform them of changes in procedure or to make announcements that affect the department. The personal aspect of it seems very useful - sending messages to yourself for reminders. I could see this being used for family announcements as well - as long as you find a way to reach everybody who needs to be reached. Jott seems like a good tool for those who have the proper equipment to both send the messages out and to receive the messages.
One last thought:
Problems I see are voice recordings not being recorded correctly and incorrect or confusing messages being passed along. I just wonder what the accuracy rate is for the system when factoring in different voice tones and dialects.
I like Jott well enough that I shared it with my sister, who frequently calls and leaves voicemails for herself at work. Jott also got me started on the Google calendar. Now I can check my busy calendar from any computer!
Oh my word! This is beyond cool. I love the fact you don't have to text or type! Woo-hoo! I think it could have a variety of uses inside and outside of the workplace---many of those uses have been listed by my insightful MRRL co-workers. I knew absolutely nothing about JOTT, but it is easy to use and helpful!
This is really cool!! This is great for people like me who hate to type text messages. This will be so much easier for me. I think this is a great tool for businesses. It lets them get a message out to a lot of people at once in one step.
I am always emailing or texting myself so I don’t forget to do things. This is another great tool to keep my life in order! I like the idea of being able to use it to get a message to several people at the same time. If you’re not at a computer, texting on a phone can take a while, especially if it’s not a short message. I read on a website that you get 30 seconds to say what you need to say. That’s definitely a fair amount of time.
I really like this and know several people I can pass it on to. Since I'm not a texter, this will be a great way to get a message out.
I can see this being useful for someone who is on the road a lot, whether for work or personal reasons. Because I am in front of a computer for more hours than I am not, I can't see it being useful to me. Just more steps to accomplish the same thing as if I just used my email and mass mailed. But if I were a big traveler, I can see the good points to it.
What an interesting wasy to send messages. It is only a matter of time before this service is no longer free.
@heather - it is now a paid service, but it does still have a free option. If you want "premium" features, you can now pay for them, but the basic service is still free! That's a nice change from hooking us and then starting to charge once we are all addicted...
I cannot imagine me using this but at least I know it is out there! Thanks!
I've never heard of "Jott" until now, but it sounds really cool. I could easily seem myself using it to remind patrons of programs or communicate with staff. I like the idea of being able to leave oneself a message. That could potentially be of the most use to me, since it's not uncommon for ideas to arrive in my head when I'm nowhere near a place to write them down.
I don't know that this is something that I would use often but it a very cool technology.
I agree that there are many office applications for this service. I also like absinthekid's scenario of using Jott at the bookstore. Yeah, it probably won't be free for long.
I have never heard of Jott but this is great, you don't have to type your text anymore.
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