Dear Jotters,

It’s been a while since the last update to the Jott service (over six months!), but last night we made up for it in a big way. This is an incredibly broad release for us, touching many different aspects of the service, and we think you’re going to be pleased.

Read on to learn about all of the great new features we added…

Jott Refer-a-Friend Program
The Refer-a-Friend program rewards you for getting your friends to sign-up for Jott. It’s something we’ve been meaning to do for a long time: since Jott’s growth has come from word of mouth, and this rewards what many of you have already been doing.

Simply invite your friends to join Jott – we make it really easy. We’ll give each of them a free month of service and, better yet, for each new friend that signs up you’ll receive reward credits towards Jott.

Start inviting your friends here: http://jott.com/invite.aspx

For more information, read this FAQ.

Jott Assistant Product Improvements

Voicemail Snapshot
Voicemail Snapshot turns, well, a snapshot of your voicemail into text and sends it to you by email or text message. Best of all, it’s free for Jott Assistant customers.

Set up Voicemail Snapshot here: https://jott.com/selectplan.aspx?v=v

Salesforce Lite Jott Link
On the heels of launching the popular Jott for Salesforce service, we’ve added a Salesforce Lite Jott Link that lets you update your Salesforce.com to-do list w/ your voice. And, like Voicemail Snapshot, it’s free for Jott Assistant customers.

Add the Salesforce Lite link here: http://jott.com/myjottlinks.aspx?v=business

Recurring Reminders
Setting reminders that repeat at daily, weekly, monthly or even yearly intervals has been one of the all-time most requested features – and now it’s available.

Recurring reminders are perfect for birthday, anniversary or weekly meeting reminders.

To set a daily or weekly recurring reminder, just call Jott (1-866-JOTT-123), say “Reminder” and say “every day” or “every Tuesday” when asked “Which day?”.

You can set a bi-weekly, monthly or annual recurring reminder online at Jott.com. Just choose your interval from the “Repeat?” drop-down when setting a reminder.

Set Reminders by Email or SMS (aka I Want Sandy features)
Like a lot of Jotters, we were disappointed when I Want Sandy closed her doors last year. So we’re very happy to add one her best features into Jott – setting reminders via email or text message.

To create a reminder to “Eat lots of turkey” on Thanksgiving, simply send an email to jott@jott.com with the subject:

    Eat lots of turkey @ 11/26/2009 4:00PM

You can create the same reminder by texting the subject above to 40101 (the Jott short code).

For more information, read this FAQ.

Ping.FM Jott Link
Ping.fm lets you update all of your social networks at once. And now, the Ping.fm Jott Link lets you update all of your social networks with your voice.

Add the Ping.fm link here: http://jott.com/myjottlinks.aspx?v=social

Jott Voicemail Improvements

Voicemail 80 plan
For our avid Jott Voicemail customers who’ve been asking us for a larger voicemail plan, we added the Voicemail 80 plan which includes 80 voicemails per month.

Add the Voicemail 80 plan here: https://jott.com/selectplan.aspx?v=v

Voicemail Call History
Your Jott Voicemail email notifications now include a summary of the last 3 voicemails you’ve received from a given caller. This is great if you forget exactly when you last heard from somebody, and makes it a snap to go back to check it out.

Link your Voicemail to Salesforce
For those professionals that essentially live in Salesforce.com, you can now have your transcribed Jott voicemails automatically forwarded to your Salesforce.com account. This is included in any Jott Voicemail package, and is a great way of staying on top of your communications.

To link your voicemail to Salesforce, just add the Salesforce Lite link and update your voicemail settings here: https://jott.com/settings_voicemail.aspx

Jott for iPhone Improvements

Jott for iPhone v3.0
In addition to working with the iPhone OS 3.0, version 3.0 of the Jott for iPhone app is 5x faster (thanks to audio streaming), has a streamlined recording process (1-click to start recording) and sports an improved user experience.

If you haven’t already done so, download the app here.

Anyway, that’s a ton of new stuff, and there is more on the way.

Best,
John, Shree and the whole Jott team

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.

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!

Thanks to everyone who sent in a story about how they use Jott. It was great to read so much about all of you, why you value the product and how it’s come to help in your everyday life. Below are the ten best stories we received, plus an extra one (it was too hard to choose ten!). The grand prize winner announcement is in this month’s newsletter!

Terry G. uses Jott to juggle the many duties his job as a Housing Administrator of a non-profit requires of him. With a staff of only two people, Jott is a resource Terry depends on to keep track of the condition of building and grounds he manages and communicate with residents.

Kerryn is a busy mom of two, who wrote to tell us about two times Jott helped her out with her kids. The first time Jott served as a way for her five year old daughter to create a list of Chanukah gifts, adding all the toys in the store she’d like, while still letting her Mom get her shopping done. The second time as a reminder to mend a stuffed animal, ensuring that a favorite Eeyore doll would be repaired and drying the tears of an (understandably!) upset child.

Andy C. used Jott to announce to all his Twitter friends that he was off to see his first grandchild! He wrote to let us know how easy it was to share this great moment with his entire network, even while embarking on a six hour drive.

Kimberly C. uses to Jott to juggle all the different companies she works with for her bookkeeping company. She credited Jott with helping her stay profitable and on track!

Paula G. at the University of Wisconsin - Green Bay uses Jott for the campus’s emergency website. She’s set up a system that allows a Jott Link to act as a backup means of communication in case of a computer outage on the campus.

Kathryn P. uses Jott to stay in touch with her many students. As the director of an education non-profit that gives adults living on low incomes access to free classes, she uses Jott to stay in touch with alumni and students through group messaging. She says it plays a big role in keeping current students motivated, and those who have graduated still connected.

Jason L. wrote to tell us how Jott helped him overcome difficulty typing, making it easy for him to text, keep lists and update his Facebook status.

Dennis S. wrote to say that Jott has saved him $150 at a time, more than a few times, by reminding him of important appointments that he could not miss.

Glenn H. works for trade shows and uses Jott to keep track of prospective clients and what they talked about. He notes that his prospects are always amazed at his great memory and grasp of details.

Jamison H. used Jott one day to save his wife from having to sit in traffic. Knowing she would be heading out on the same road he was on, and one an accident had just happened on, he was able to send a Jott message to his wife so she could avoid the mess and get home on time.

Eddie M. wrote to tell us how he used Jott to blog while on a cross country trip with his wife. He would send short posts from different cities he was in, or to note an important event. His blogging was even picked up by a few travel sites as a great way to keep track of travels!

If you haven’t heard yet, I Want Sandy is closing its doors on December 8th at 5 p.m. PST. All the details of this, and the CEO’s move to Twitter are available in a nice post from Rael Dornfest. So, what does this mean to all of our Jotters who love Sandy and use the I Want Sandy Jott Link?

1) Your I Want Sandy Jott Link will no longer work, but all of the Jott messages you have sent to I Want Sandy are still available to you on the Jott website, and in Jott Express.

2) Start adding items to your to-do lists via email with Jott and still receive email reminders. Follow the links to learn how to add a Jott Note or an item to a list via email or text message

3) Login to your Jott account, or open Jott Express and set a reminder by clicking on the bell icon. You can choose to receive that reminder via email and/or text message at a specific time and date.

Why give the new Jott Express a try? It’s everything you need right on your desktop!

It works in offline mode.
You aren’t always connected to the internet, so why should your notes and lists have to be? Cross off completed items, add new items, and manage your lists even if you’re on a plane. Once you’re back and connected to the web, the changes you made will sync with your account online.

It’s lightning fast.
If Jott Express were an Olympic athlete, it would beat Phelps and Bolt. Update and manage lists, mark items as complete, set reminders and add to-dos all faster than any other world record breaking desktop app.

It syncs with the iPhone app.
What could possibly make your iPhone better? If you answered longer battery life, you haven’t tried Jott Express yet! It’s the desktop app that syncs with Jott for iPhone, so all your notes are available no matter where you are!

Take a look…

Dear Jotters,

We reached an exciting milestone today: Jott has exited “beta”.

It’s a big deal for the Jott community because it means that together we’ve built a service that has great value. Despite being in the age of perpetual betas, we actually had a pretty clear plan for getting the service to this point: 1) Take the time to figure out what people really want; 2) Listen to how they would ideally want to pay for it; and 3) try to make 1 & 2 work!

We realized pretty early on that we had a product with broad uses, and it made answering the question “Who is your customer, and how do they use it?” very challenging. Initially Jotters were mostly cutting edge types who follow the tech blogs and the start up world. But pretty soon we saw lawyers, sales people, real estate agents, teachers – you name it.

From our earliest days we had “Jott Anywhere” as a mantra, and two new downloads finally get us there: Jott for Outlook, which lets you use Jott to create Tasks, Events and Email Drafts; and Jott Express, a sweet desktop manager for the Jotts you create anywhere.

Believe it or not, it’s not easy asking people for money, because people have different ways of valuing Jott, and we hate to disappoint anyone. A lawyer wrote me back in 2007 that while Jott had real economic value for him, it was the stress reduction he valued most. How do you put a price on that?

In the end, we’ve come up with a good mix – all based on actual usage data and your feedback. The $3.95 “Jott” plan (known internally as the Grande Mocha plan) is really designed for the average user: Notes, Reminders, all the Jott Links, and hands-free Email and Texting – and no advertising. There is a lot more detail at the Get Started page, so have a look.

Anyway, thanks to all of you for helping us get here. We have an amazingly talented and dedicated team here in Seattle and we couldn’t be more excited about Jott’s roadmap.

John

John Pollard, Founder and CEO

Thanks to everyone who has downloaded the Jott for iPhone application. We are now the #12 free app in the Apple App Store and the #1 productivity app! As always, we’d like to keep an open door with you all and so I thought I’d answer a few questions that have arisen…

Do you sell my personal information?
The short answer is no. Sadly there are some people out there who have taken to leaving some nasty comments that are completely false. I want to assure all of you that we absolutely do not sell any private information. Jott has never, and will never, sell your personal information to anyone. We take our customers’ privacy very seriously and would never invade that. If anyone has other questions about this, please feel free to ask. Also, our privacy policy is available on the website for anyone to read.

Why do you need my phone number?
We need your phone number for one simple reason– when you download the Jott for iPhone app and are new to Jott you need to essentially create a Jott account. Jott accounts do require that you give us a phone number because we began as a service accessible via any phone at 866-JOTT-123. Your phone number is your username in effect. For now we’ve kept our iPhone app really focused on notes, but via our phone number you can create reminders, send hands-free emails and text messages to contacts and use popular Jott Links to web services like Twitter, Amazon and Google Calendar.

Why haven’t I gotten a validation SMS yet?
Due to the overwhelming response to Jott for iPhone we’ve been a little bit backed up. Not to worry though, the SMS will reach you! If it’s been a day and you are still having trouble get registered, please fill out the support form and we’ll get right back to you with a validation code you can call in. Thanks to everyone for your patience!

If you have any other questions or are having trouble getting started, please check out the FAQ or visit the Forums. Of course, you can always leave a comment here or fill out the support form!

This week in blog posts by Jotters…

Literary Fangirl wrote: Writers’ Tool: Jott

Photo Steam Shovel wrote: Holy Crap It Worked! Jott/Blogger/Facebook/- web 2.0 at it’s finest!

DetroIT Speed wrote: Jott-reminders on the run

Crafted Webm@ster wrote: Blogging with Jott

Smart People I Know wrote: Want to learn more web 2.0 applications? Ask Jott!

Mad Mortgage World wrote: Ideas, Ideas, Ideas

10,000 Words wrote: 12 Useful online tools for journalists

Crafted Webm@ster wrote: Adventures in Twittering

Reminders are one of our most popular features, so I though I’d share this tip with those of you who use them often. You can easily bypass saying “Reminder” when asked “Who do you want to Jott?” by pressing the 4 key on your phone’s keypad. We’ll recognize you want to set a reminder and jump right to asking you what day and time.