Even as a founder of Jott, it always takes a couple of days for me to bake new features into my life, and our recent release is no exception.
The initial Jott experience was profound for me. Surprisingly, it was not so much because the giant, galactic idea was never forgotten, but really because lots of little, not-life-or-death-but-still-key stuff didn’t drift by as easily. Like doing something unexpected for my wife, kids or myself.
The two most surprising things for me about this last Jott release have been Reminders, and that gem of a JottLink for Zillow.com.
We’ve always had the functionality for setting reminders in Jott, but we stripped it out of the voice user experience because we felt it risked the simplicity of Jott to Self. So now we’ve actually done a purpose built jott called Reminder, and it’s taken off. It’s jott simple, but very powerful: safe, intuitive and rich input, with robust delivery to email and text. It’s the nag jott, except it’s me doing the nagging…and that’s OK.
I am lucky to live in beautiful Seattle, and 15 years after getting here, I’m still coming upon the occasional cool house I’d never noticed before (or it hadn’t been for sale before), and want to know what the bubble has done to it. Pull over, jott to Zillow, say an address, and that itch is scratched right then and there…when I have it. Zillow’s birdseye views are cool, but a truly live Zestimate is amazing.
While Governor Schwarzenegger’s move to ban non-hands-free cell phone use by adults in California makes sense from a safety perspective, there also needs to be a pragmatic solution for daily adult commuters. Throughout California, the U.S. and Canada, livelihoods require being in constant contact, particularly where commute times can reach up to 2 hours. Jott (www.Jott.com) provides an alternative solution that underscores the safety concerns addressed by the new cell phone “hands-free” law, while also supporting working professionals, volunteers and parents. Jott allows individuals to keep their hands on the wheel and focus on the road while emailing or text messaging using their voices.Users say who they want to Jott, then speak their message to an individual or group, and the message is automatically transcribed and delivered to the recipient via email and text message, along with an accompanying recording of the message.
People in California and elsewhere deserve the support of productivity tools, such as Jott, that enable them to traverse daily traffic–safely–while still getting their necessary work done. 1-866-JOTT123.
We’ve made some updates to Jott Links based on your customer feedback. You now have the option to specify whether or not to receive an SMS response when Jotting to a Jott Link. You can specify this when you are setting up your Jott Link. We do, however, recommend that you receive SMS responses on Jotts to Zillow as this will be the fastest way to receive your Zestimate. We have updated all existing links, except for those to Zillow, to have SMS responses turned off.
We have also cleaned up the blog post format used when posting to Blogger, WordPress, TypePad, and LiveJournal. On the footer, we now only attach “Powered by Jott” in small text with no images.
Speaking of blogging, for all of you WordPress bloggers, you can now specify categories that you would like to send your Jotts to. You can specify this by editing your WordPress Jott Link.
For those of us without iPhones or the newest iPod (or even those with), we can post to TypePad with our voice using Jott using any cell phone! And for those of you other bloggers, you can also Jott to Blogger, WordPress, and Live Journal.
Robert Scoble posted yesterday that he plans to Jott the announcement of his son’s birth to his Twitter stream. His wife Maryam is due on the 12th, so we expect the announcement any day.
We’re really honored that Robert plans to include us in this joyous occasion. Our best wishes are with the entire Scoble clan.
One of the features that initially made Twitter so popular is that it enabled users to keep abreast of the online chatter via SMS messaging. It democratized mobile connectivity to the online world because you no longer needed a smartphone to stay engaged with what your friends were doing online or update them on what you were doing in the wider world.
We think our new Jott Links feature is another step in that direction because it enables access to online tools — including Twitter — on the go just by speaking.
Some of you gadget studs out there — and most teenagers — are lightening fast on your cell phone keyboards. But even the fastest texters can’t match the speed of human speech. Jott capitalizes on that efficiency and allows you to quickly blog, Tweet or get a “Zestimate™” from wherever you are. You have more time to get on with whatever you were doing in the first place.
With Jott Links, users can now call Jott and leave voice-to-text messages on the following services:
WordPress (both .com and on local installs)
Twitter
Jaiku
TypePad
Zillow
LiveJournal
Blogger
30 Boxes
Yahoo Groups
We’ll be adding more tools to this list soon. We’re curious to hear what other features you’d like to access with Jott Links. Leave us a note below, drop us an e-mail at feedback@jott.com or Jott us by saying “feedback” the next time you want to tell us your thoughts.
It’s conventional business wisdom that your customers are your best assets and you should treat them as such. This saying comes up most frequently in discussions about customer service, but we think it applies equally to product development.
A number of the new features we’re launching are the direct result of copious customer feedback — feedback that we can’t acknowledge or appreciate enough. Here’s what we’ve got:
Jott Folders:
This feature allows you to organize your Jotts to self. When you’re in front of your computer, create as many folders as you like. When you call in to leave a Jott, you can specify which folder to place it in.
For example, a business traveler can make a quick Jott while she catches her flight that the replacement power adapter from the airport electronics store cost $37.87. Instead of letting that Jott — or her receipt — get lost in the shuffle, she can now specify that this Jott is about “expenses” and have it automatically organized into that folder. When it’s time to create the expense report for her trip, all the Jotts about her costs are in one location.
Jott Reminders:
This feature lets you leave reminders for yourself throughout the day. You can call Jott and specify a date, time and subject. Fifteen minutes before the event you’ll get a reminder via SMS or e-mail.
Profile Signatures:
Signature files are really handy. We’ve all searched through our e-mail for someone’s phone number, instant messenger or other critical information. Jott Signatures makes that process easier for your contacts by allowing you to customize your outgoing Jotts with a profile signature that says anything from your name and contact info to an inspirational quote from Lao Tzu.
You can also add an image to your signature. It could be a photo of yourself, a corporate logo, or your favorite Hugh MacLeod cartoon.
So how did we do? Give these new organizational features a try and let us know if they’re in line with what you asked for. Have any suggestions for improvement? Leave us a note, drop us an e-mail at feedback@jott.com or Jott us by saying “feedback” the next time your use Jott.
Washington, Oregon and Arizona are just a few of the many states that penalize drivers caught using their cell phones to text message from behind the wheel. The same thing is true internationally.
And it’s no wonder. A recent University of Utah study concluded that people who drive while “multitasking” (e.g. texting) were much more likely to get into an accident (PDF).
There are some valid scientific objections to these findings, and the debate is ongoing, but it’s pretty clear that it’s you should keep your eyes and your focus on the road. In a perfect world, we would all do this all the time.
But we don’t live in a perfect world, especially when it comes to business. If we don’t multitask, we run the risk of falling behind. Quality of life issues aside, this presents some serious challenges in the safety realm when we’re hurtling along the freeway from point A to point B.
Jott adds a lot of value in this arena. Rather than taking your hands off the wheel to send an e-mail on your Smartphone, you can simply choose to speed dial (or use voice-activated dialing) along with a Bluetooth headset to call Jott; then speak your message to send an e-mail and/or text message to one person or a group.
So in addition to being dangerous, text messaging using your thumbs while driving is now completely unnecessary because you can use Jott instead.
