-
What I'm Doing
-
My GTD Tool of Choice - Try it!
-
Vote for Topics
-
Recently Written
- My Son Teaches Me about Professional Communication
- How I Use Evernote
- Thing to Remember When Your Kids Are Driving You Frickin’ Insane
- I Have a Ton of Beta Invitations - Want One?
- The Secret to Mastering the iPhone Keyboard
- Parents: You are Their Best Friend
- Web Warrior Tools - Get Your Smart On
- Productivity vs. Social Media
- Friday Fun: Flip Video
- Brand New Site by Cranking Widgets
-
Categories
-
Archives
I spend a good deal of time in the car every day. Not as much as some, but it’s typically somewhere around 90 minutes round trip on a given work day. And being one of those people whose brain is pretty much always going, I tend to have many thoughts and ideas during that time. It’s easy for my mind to wander around during what amounts to 75% of my “alone time” and I obviously can’t be scrawling notes down whilst operating a motor vehicle. Enter Jott…
If you’ve never heard of it, whoa nelly are you in for a treat. Essentially, it uses your cell phone as a gateway to all manner of applications, websites and services. Some of the more notable mentions are your Wordpress blog, Sandy (my secretary), Twitter and Remember the Milk - all accessible from your cell phone. Oh, and let’s not forget that you can import your entire address book and email/text virtually anybody directly from your phone. Intrigued?
Now, I have to be honest, the first time I tried Jott several months ago, I was skeptical. How well could a computer *really* understand what I was saying? Furthermore, would I be willing to phone something in to Jott and have it sent to 50 of my closest friends, hoping that they got “Meet me at the Phoenix Club in 30 minutes” instead of, perhaps, “Beat me in the larynx nub in 30 minutes”.
Well, after several test drives over the last few weeks, I’m a believer. Here are just a few of the tricks I’ve picked up along the way…
- Capture, Capture, Capture - This is, by far, my most-used Jott function. Simply call the number, tell it I want to Jott myself, then leave a message at the beep. By the time I’m home, it’s waiting in my email inbox, ready for processing. And you’ll always have the option to listen to your original recording if the translation doesn’t come out quite right.
- Get somebody a message, wherever they are - When you create a contact on Jott’s website, you have the option of entering an email address and a cell phone number. Jott that person, and the message is sent to both media with no muss, no fuss.
- One message, a whole slew of people - Every Sunday night, several guys from my church come over for an evening of expensive beer, relaxation and conversation. Sometimes, things need to be rescheduled, or I just need to tell them all that the kids are asleep and to enter quietly - either way, I’d just call Jott and say “Dudes”, and record my message. A couple minutes later, their cell phones and email inboxes all sound off in unison with my fresh-baked Jott. Freaking cool stuff.
- Update my favorite calendar - Just about the only thing that could make 30boxes cooler is the ability to add events with my voice. “Tractor Pull Saturday at 5pm” - that’s all there is to it. It’s on my calendar mere moments later. (Oh and you can do the same with Google Calendar, if that’s your bag)
- Ridiculously easy reminders - I’m ashamed to say this, but I sorta discovered this feature accidentally. Once you’ve finished leaving your Jott message you can either hang up (which I always did), or you can wait a couple seconds and you’ll be asked if you want to create a reminder with the message. Give it a day (”tomorrow”, “March 10″, etc.) and a time and you’ll get an email and an SMS message a few minutes before the time you provided. Even though Sandy is my go-to gal for reminders most of the time, it’s nice to know that I can complete the whole process while sitting in gridlock, just by speaking!
All this cool stuff aside, poking around the Jott site will introduce you to some pretty sweet stuff you probably didn’t know existed. For instance, in doing some research for this post, I happened upon a *very* cool service called Mosio. You call (using Jott) or email/text your question (like, any question, about anything) to Mosio and real people answer it. Definitely worth a look.
For those of you that enjoy the GTD and such, consider this as a way to limit your possible inputs. In other words, Jott just might allow you to look one less place for that random note you wrote on the back of the gas station receipt. You’re already checking and processing your email, so why not have your random thoughts/musings/ideas funneled through the same system?
So, if you have a cell phone, give Jott a try. Add some friends and start sending them random quotes from Tombstone or something - but give it a good once over. You won’t regret it.
Technorati Tags: jott, productivity, cell phone, email, tools
If you enjoyed this post, won't you consider a Stumble?
Popular Posts
comments
14 Responses to “So, You’re Not Using Jott?”
Leave a Reply
One simple reason why I’m not using Jott: it’s only available to US and Canadian subscribers. I’m in the UK. I would love to give Jott a go!
A great article. Your tweets last night are what got me thinking of linking Jott and Twitter. As always, a tip of the hat to you, my friend. As for the quote:
Doc Holliday: I’m your huckleberry.
Michael
I first learned about JOTT on this blog, and that tip alone was valuable enough to make me a regular reader. Once you are set up in JOTT on a computer, you can send an e-mail even if you don’t have a computer yourself, just by talking into your phone. Just be careful with whom you share this particular tip. Thanks for the mention of features I had not yet discovered.
[...] Honorable Mention: Also telephony-related, reminder and messaging system Jott (”use the web with your voice”) launched this year, with lots of interfaces to various webapps you already know and love (like Remember the Milk, I Want Sandy, Google Calendar, Twitter, Blogger) and subsequent cheers. [...]
Jott is great and it works very well with Mosio, especially because people can pick up the subtle nuances and fill in the gaps where a searchbot cannot. Here’s a great example:
http://www.mosio.com/question/SJZPIC
You just sold me on Sandy, i’m going to give that one a Jott!
I am a huge jott fan and had used Sandy off an on for a while. As a matter of fact, that’s how I found out about jott.
Can you talk more/post about how you have used the two together? I have found that jott answers all my needs… maybe I’m missing something and would like to know.
Also, I subscribed to your feed - I saw you on Lifehacker.
I would love to be using Jott. But it’s only available for Americans and Canadians!
Is there any work around so that the rest of the world can use this service? Or are there similar services for the rest of us? (I’m in australia).
I love jott! Thanks for doing this post to bring it to more people’s attention.
One suggestion for your readers: assign the number for jott to the “J” key on your phone.
Assigning it to a speed dial makes it even more convenient.
Craig
I love Jott reminders and the ability to live blog and Twitter. I’ve not tried the new Amazon link, but that sounds like it would be useful during the shopping season.
It does (sometimes) make mistakes. If you get misjotted do let us know. Remember this is just for fun.
[...] Honorable Mention: Also telephony-related, reminder and messaging system Jott (”use the web with your voice”) launched this year, with lots of interfaces to various webapps you already know and love (like Remember the Milk, I Want Sandy, Google Calendar, Twitter, Blogger) and subsequent cheers. [...]
Thanks for posting. I’ll give it a try.
[...] If you’ve got a home phone, office phone, personal cell phone, and work cell phone, keeping track of who calls where and what number to give out is a pain. With GrandCentral, you can ring all your phones with a call to a single GC-issued number, filter, screen, forward to voicemail, and otherwise customize how you handle incoming calls on a per-contact basis, too. Get all your voicemail online at GrandCentral and email/SMS alerts to new messages as well. Here’s how to consolidate your phones with GrandCentral. (Ok, so GrandCentral didn’t launch this year—in fact, we first wrote it up late last year—but switching over to a GC number in ‘07 confirmed our love for the app.)Honorable Mention: Also telephony-related, reminder and messaging system Jott (”use the web with your voice”) launched this year, with lots of interfaces to various webapps you already know and love (like Remember the Milk, I Want Sandy, Google Calendar, Twitter, Blogger) and subsequent cheers. [...]
[...] If you’ve got a home phone, office phone, personal cell phone, and work cell phone, keeping track of who calls where and what number to give out is a pain. With GrandCentral, you can ring all your phones with a call to a single GC-issued number, filter, screen, forward to voicemail, and otherwise customize how you handle incoming calls on a per-contact basis, too. Get all your voicemail online at GrandCentral and email/SMS alerts to new messages as well. Here’s how to consolidate your phones with GrandCentral. (Ok, so GrandCentral didn’t launch this year—in fact, we first wrote it up late last year—but switching over to a GC number in ‘07 confirmed our love for the app.)Honorable Mention: Also telephony-related, reminder and messaging system Jott (”use the web with your voice”) launched this year, with lots of interfaces to various webapps you already know and love (like Remember the Milk, I Want Sandy, Google Calendar, Twitter, Blogger) and subsequent cheers. [...]
I too Jott, and I love it. Only once has my email been distorted and that may have been due to the background noise when I dictated.