Ever have a really great idea, but it occurs to you when you are someplace without your computer or even pen and paper? It’s such a great idea that you definitely want to remember it, but you just know you’re going to forget it before you get home or back to your office.
Enter Jott.
Jott is one of the cool, free, web-based tools that has completely insinuated itself into my life. Jott is essentially an easy way to dictate notes using your mobile phone and have them appear transcribed into emails in your in-box.
Once you register for the service and set up your profile, all you need to do is program Jott’s number into your mobile phone’s address book (Jott is on my speed dial) and then when you have something you want to remember and no easy way to enter into your iPhone or Blackberry (or write it down on paper – which some folks in my organization refer to as using their “Blueberry”), you just call Jott.
You’ll get this very posh-sounding voice asking you in a clipped British accent, “Who do you want to Jott?” to which you respond, “myself.” Then you proceed to speak your message to yourself and hang up. It’s that easy. Within a few minutes, you will receive a transcribed version of your spoke message as an email. The transcription is not perfect; there are often weird, and amusing, mistakes that Jott makes. But it’s always close enough that I’ve never had a problem trying to figure out what I was leaving myself a message about. Of course, it could be my garbled diction that is the problem…
Once you get comfortable with Jott, you can expand its utility by Jotting to other Jotters (Jott users) as well as to a growing list of sites on the web. You can Jott updates to Twitter, Google Calendar, to your blog, and a whole bunch of other neat sites. Once you figure out which of these options fits into your life, the power of Jott is unlocked for you. I regularly Jott to Twitter and to my Google Calendar, and I am constantly surprised by how many opportunities I capture by using the service.
Check it out. It’s free. If you don’t like it after trying it for a while, just dump it. But you might find lots of chances (I love using Jott during my commute to and from work) where you can now capture those great ideas instead of letting them swim away.
