We’re very excited to announce the first version of our integration with QuickBooks today. Now you can add items to your QuickBooks to-do list and set reminders using Jott. Jott for QuickBooks is available to all Jott Assistant customers starting immediately. So go check it out and let us know what other QuickBooks functionality you’d like to have Jott-enabled.

Also, stay tuned for some major upgrades in the next month to the Jott Assistant service including a new, much improved (thanks to your feedback) version of Jott for iPhone.

We’re excited to announce an amazing service that let’s you use your voice to directly update your Salesforce accounts and opportunities. Jott for Salesforce is insanely simple to set up and works seamlessly with the Salesforce workflow you have today: no downloading, upgrading, dragging, dropping, cutting, pasting, etc. It’s Jott, and thus works with any phone, and any carrier. It makes the time-consuming task of entering data into your CRM on the go as simple as making a phone call.

As usual, the voice experience on the phone doesn’t mess around: it gets you in and out as quickly as possible so you can get on with your life. If you want, there are easy shortcuts that speed things up even more. Oh, and the voice-to-text transcription is still the best there is. So give it a try today (we’re currently offering a month-long free trial for the service). Whether you’re happy living in Salesforce, or want to minimize your time with it, we think you’ll love this latest addition to the Jott family.

(You might notice that it is more expensive than other Jott services, so we want to get out in front and tell you why that is…)

In the last year, we’ve developed several custom voice-to-text input solutions (including CRM) and have a lot of experience in how they’re used. Because our solutions make complex and tedious inputs almost effortless, they get used a ton…and that makes them a little more expensive to deliver and support (the customer ROI is still amazing). The good news is that if you want to use both Jott Assistant Pro and Jott for Salesforce, you don’t have to buy both. That’s right: when you sign up for Jott for Salesforce, you get Jott Assistant Pro included for free.

If there’s functionality you’d like to see added, please let us know. There’s a LOT more on the way soon, so stay tuned.

Thanks all!

- The Jott Team

PS — If you’re interested in a custom integration for other applications, please let us know.

As the number of services that Jott offers expands, we’ve been faced with
a quandary: can both the overall website, and one of the services, be
called “Jott”? Should we risk customer confusion about what’s included
with what, or do we give each service a separate name?

This wasn’t nearly as easy a decision to make as we thought. We are
going for the latter and choosing “Jott Assistant” as the product-soon-
to-be-formerly-known-as-Jott (eat your heart out Prince). For
existing customers, don’t worry: the product will continue to be the
best mobile productivity assistant around and will continue to improve
all the time, you will just see it re-branded as Jott Assistant here
and there.

An interesting side note - we all believe internally that the name
change raises the bar a bit. We’ve always focused on providing a
quality service that makes your life easier, but now there’s a pretty
direct comparison (an assistant) that we have to live up to. While we
won’t be able to make coffee anytime soon (that’s a skunk works
project that’s testing well in Seattle), our assistant works 24 hours
a day, never forgets, complains or takes sick days, and can be yelled
at without repercussions – all for a few nickels a day.

New customers, if you were looking for “Jott” don’t change the
channel: you’ve found it in “Jott Assistant”. But you should also
check out the free trials of “Jott Voicemail” and “Jott [wait for it]”
– services to help you improve your life and your business.

You’ll notice all of these changes over the next several days.

Thanks a lot!

Dear Jotters,

We experienced a system outage today from one of our telecommunication providers that resulted in services being unavailable from approximately 12:40 PM to 1:20 PM Pacific Time. Providing you with outstanding service is our goal every day, and we apologize for this unplanned outage. Everything possible is being done to ensure this does not happen again. All systems are back up and running now and you should not experience any more delays. Once again, many apologies for this outage.

All the best,

- John (CEO), Shree (CTO), and the rest of the Jott Team

All,
After a long wait, the new Jott for iPhone app is (finally) up in the App Store. Download it here. The iPhone page for the web site should be updated by the end of the day today, but please download it now and leave any positive feedback in the App Store if you think we’ve done a decent job. Again, can’t thank you enough for your patience around this. Don’t forget that the annual discount was extended through the end of February (read the prior posts for instructions there).

Enjoy!

- The Jott Team

Hi all,

We had a release yesterday that added the ability for you to get your voicemail sent automatically to a host of Jott Links (not all of them, as some don’t make sense, but a significant portion for sure - full list below).  So now, if you want to get your voicemail as tasks in Remember the Milk, Toodledo, etc., you can automatically have them forwarded there.  You can even get a sort of visual map of when your voicemails came in by sending them to Google Calendar or 30Boxes.

First, you’ll have to just add your Jott Links (same process as before).  Then, go to your voicemail settings page, scroll down to the “Send notifications to:” drop down and select the link you want.  Then save your settings.

The Jott Links that can receive voicemail are:

Remember The Milk, Toodledo, Nozbe, Vitalist, 43Actions, Heap, Mentat, Enleiten, Google Calendar and 30 Boxes.

We hope you enjoy the new functionality!

Update:  By popular demand, here is a quick walk through of the new app.  Note that we still have a day of internal testing before we send to Apple.  Many thanks again for your patience.  We understand that we ideally would have had it out by now, but we want to make sure the product is great.

Update:  Thanks for the feedback.  We’re extending the 10% off annual plans discount for existing customers through the end of February so you all have a chance to test the new iPhone app.

Hello Jotters,

We’re testing the iPhone App now and have gotten word from the folks at Apple that the current approval process is taking up to 3 weeks (can sometimes be less).  We’re hoping the app will get through the process quickly.  It will be submitted for review this week.  It will include the ability to post to all of your Jott Links, groups, and your iPhone contacts.  It will also work with second generation iPod Touch models (if you have the earphones with the mic - not supported on 1st generation) and with first generation iPod Touch models for text input only.

If you have the old app and are a paying customer, it will continue to work after February 2nd.  If you have not upgraded to a paid plan yet, the old app will no longer transcribe the messages you leave and your messages will not be stored on Jott’s servers after February 2nd.  To those of you who have subscribed to Jott since we de-listed the iPhone application at the end of December, we’ll have it out as soon as possible.  Thanks so much for your patience.  We think you’ll love the new app.

All the best,

Doug

There have been a lot of changes at Jott recently, and one of the most exciting is the launch of our new service, Jott Voicemail.

We’ve heard from customers for some time that we should launch a voicemail service. The reason we didn’t out of the gates is that we felt Jott could be a tool that you would actively use to get more done…sort of turbo-charging your phone. Notes, reminders, calendar entries, group notifications, blog posts, price quotes, etc. We thought voicemail was a more passive problem.

The reason we’ve jumped into the voicemail game now is that our approach fits with Jott’s orientation: deliver a set of intuitive features that allow you to take action using the tools you love. A great example: you can set reminders on your voicemail so Jott will remind you to follow-up at a certain time (just like the regular Jott reminders you already know and love). You get your voicemail transcriptions in email, but you can also organize them in lists like normal Jott notes and manage them in Jott Express or in Jott for Outlook. If you want, you can have your voicemail cc’d to another person so they can help you out.

Existing customers (we love you so), you can get 10% off your monthly bill for Jott Voicemail by entering the promo code “vm[your phone number]” (e.g. “vm2065551212″) when you sign up. You’ll also get a week free trial so you can see how great it is.

Everyone around the office has been using it for a couple of months now (as have a lot of our Beta testers - thank you) and people can’t imagine going back to “old voicemail” again. We like to say that Jott Voicemail is “voicemail that’s actually useful.” We hope you think so too.

Enjoy!

Dear Jott customers,

If you’re reading this, you’ve probably heard that we’re ending Jott’s free services (Jott Basic and Jott Notepad for the iPhone). Unfortunately, it’s true, beginning on February 2nd. Plans for current paying customers are not changing.

I know you’ll have questions, so I wanted to get out in front and tell you why we’re doing this. If you already know you want to upgrade, scroll down for instructions (and a nice discount), but either way I hope you’ll read further.

Our #1 priority is to keep Jott a company that innovates on behalf of customers. It’s why Shree and I started the company in early 2006, and it’s a passion shared by everyone who works here.

Whether you are a paid or a free customer, we thank you for all of the support you’ve given us over the past couple of years, and the support you’ll hopefully give us in the future.

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Why is Jott ending its free services?
As we’ve said many times, one of our goals was to always offer a high quality, free version of Jott. But as with many businesses right now, the economic environment is forcing a change in plans. When we started, we made quality our top priority, and we will always be committed to this. As you know, we use a combination of automated speech recognition and human quality assurance to deliver this, and it costs real money to do it well.While we’ve made remarkable progress at innovating costs out of the system, the current climate is forcing us to focus 100% of our energy on getting to profitability. The great news is that with this change we are within sight of that goal.

Why can’t you pay for the free service with advertising, which was the plan?
It’s a great question – in short, the model is not viable right now. This is true for several reasons: 1) it would have required plastering the product with so much advertising that we’d ruin the experience; 2) ads are a terrible fit for important features like email delivery, Jott Links, and Jotts to Others; and 3) all indications are that advertising rates are going to see an even bigger hit in the next year. We don’t want to bet the company, and the utility that tens of thousands of you pay for, on a model that is not sustainable right now.

Jott’s price – $3.95/month – is not free of course, but it is affordable. We’ve had many paying customers tell us that the stress-relief, time savings and performance edge they get from the service makes it a bargain. David Allen, one of the kings of productivity, even called Jott one of his two “favorite product discover(ies)” of the last year in his exclusive interview with Lifehacker.

I’m going to upgrade. How do I do it?
We always try to take care of our existing customers, and if you have an existing Jott account, you’ll get an additional 10% off any of our annual plans (which already offer 2 months free) if you sign up before February 2nd. Simply go to your account page to change your plan, type in “JOTT” and your phone number (e.g. “JOTT2065551212”) as the promo code for the annual Jott plan, or “PRO” and your phone number (e.g. “PRO2065551212”) for the annual Jott Pro plan. Then enter your billing information.

UPDATE: Does Jott have any “pay-as-you-go” plans?
Absolutely. Please visit our “Pay-as-you-go” plans page. That should have most of the information you need. Jott’s pay-as-you-go plans give you access to all of Jott’s features and give you 60 seconds of recording time. You pay for a bucket of minutes and we deduct from that bucket with each recording. We don’t round up. If you speak for 23 seconds, we’ll deduct 23 seconds. We also don’t charge for the entire length of your call with Jott, only for the length of the recording(s). This is a great option if you are an infrequent user / are using it for emergency contact purposes, or if you value longer recording times. Thanks a ton for all of the inquiries about this. We (mistakenly) assumed it was easy to find as we do have many pay-as-you-go customers.

UPDATE: When will the new iPhone app be ready?
We’re working hard to finish up the new iPhone app. It should be up and ready for download before February 2nd and its usage will be included in all Jott plans.

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Other questions
If you have other questions or comments, I encourage you read the FAQ, or use the forums and customer service forms. As always, we like to hear from you…good or bad.

From everybody here at Jott in Seattle, thanks!

John Pollard, CEO and Co-founder

Just the other day I got an email from our CEO, John Pollard, about how much he loves using the Google Calendar Jott Link to add events both to his personal calendar and his family’s shared calendar. It dawned on me, that many of you might not even know that is possible to link to more than one Google Calendar from the same Jott account. Well… you can! Here’s how:

1) Login and click the “Add Jott Links” box in the right side column.

2) Go to the “Premium Links” and add a Google Calendar link.

3) Change the name of the link to something like, Work Calendar.

4) Save and enter all the necessary info to connect your Jott account to your Google Calendar (don’t worry, we don’t have access to any of your Google Account Info, you’re just giving us permission to send messages there).

Repeat steps one through four for as many Google Calendars you have. Just make sure you remember to name the link something different each time, otherwise you’ll hear a “We found multiple contacts with that name” message when you call Jott. If you have a shared calendar, others can link to the same one from their Jott account as well.