Jott: “Think it. Jott it. Do it.”

Have you ever left yourself voicemail?

I have. I’ve left myself reminders, to-dos, tried to capture ideas, etc.

Most often, I’ve done this when I’m driving somewhere. I use my cell phone to make a call to my voicemail because I can’t (easily) write or use my Blackberry.

That’s the basic premise behind Jott.

However, there is one significant difference. Jott closes the loop. In their words: “Think it. Jott it. Do it.”

The loop-closing “Do it.” is one of the reasons why Jott is currying favor with the GTD crowd.

And of course, Jott goes a lot farther than my low-tech solution:

• You call their toll-free number
• You leave a message – your reminder, to-do, idea, etc.
• Jott transcribes your message, and delivers the corresponding text to your phone and email

“Obscenely simple … incredibly clever” (Christopher Null, Yahoo! Tech). I couldn’t agree more!

Unfortunately, I cannot attest to how well this actually works.

I live in Canada, and the public beta only supports US-based cell phones 😦

To be more precise:

I’m outside of the United States, can I use Jott.com?

You can if you are using your cell phone, and the Caller-ID comes through to our systems. However, significant charges may apply to this phone call, so check your Carrier’s Terms and Conditions. Jott.com is not responsible for charges associated with phone calls, internet access, text messages, and the like.

That’s from the Jott FAQ. Regardless, it didn’t work for me 😦

I haven’t been particularly impressed by speech-to-text conversion in the past. This will be the gating factor for me. Because I can’t do my own assessment, I was interested in Jott’s FAQ on this:

Why are my jotts not transcribed perfectly?

We use a combination of machine and human transcription to convert your voice to text. The quality of this transcription is affected by many factors, including recording quality, noise, accents, pronunciation, etc. At times, the quality of the recording will be so bad that we will simply label it inaudible. You are free to click on the speaker icon at our web site to easily listen to your recording.

We encourage you when leaving jotts to speak clearly and normally, understanding that the quality of the recording will affect the quality of the transcription.

Given that personal transcription programs (like Dragon NaturallySpeaking) require substantial training to be effective, this entry in Jott’s FAQ is certainly a reasonable one.

Jott has more to offer. For example, there is Jottcasting. One scenario they describe is simultaneous delivery of a message to a recipient’s phone and email.

What I really like about Jott is its elegant simplicity.

I expect Jott to be an excellent acquisition target for the likes of Google …

And for those who like to have everything integrated, Jott would have much more value if it was a part of some existing solution like Google Office (GMail + Google Docs & Spreasheets).

I look forward to seeing Jott develop (e.g., by tracking their Web site and blog) – and especially to Canadian service 🙂