Hi everyone and happy Friday. When you log on to your Jott account today you’ll notice a few changes we made thanks to all the feedback and suggestions we got about the new site. Here’s a little summary of what’s new:

Multi-select
Click and drag multiple Jott messages at a time. If you are using a PC, just hold down the Control key and select the Jott messages you’d like to move. If you are using a Mac, hold down the Shift key. Then grab the orange tab and drag to a list or the trash.

All Lists view, and view all your lists
See all of your to-do items, expenses, and more in one neat and tidy place with the new All Lists view. In addition, now all of the lists that you have created (not just five of them like before) will appear on the left hand side of the Inbox.

All Jotts becomes an Inbox
We changed “All Jotts” back to being an Inbox, so that when you click and drag an item to a list, it will no longer appear there. You can also set a reminder, priority and mark a Jott as complete from the inbox.

Add another number
For those of you who have changed phone numbers or would like to add another phone number to your account, you can now do that in the Phones section of the Settings page. Just make sure you remember to validate that second number by calling Jott and entering the validation code you’ll be given!

He uses Jott, and we couldn’t be happier than to have the master of the 4 hour workweek on board! Read the article and let us know what you think of his productivity advice. I’m curious to hear if anyone has ever done a time audit and what the results were.

Robert Scoble’s recent post The secret to Twitter has raised a flurry of comments from readers on the benefits of “listening” vs. “talking” on Twitter. This has got me thinking about how I use various forms of web services that on the surface focus mainly on output, seemingly adding the barrage of information which floods each of our computers and phones every day.

Working at Jott I spend most of my time focusing on ways to organize that information into simple structures that allow for easy access and dissemination. The challenging aspect of which is that every person has their own threshold for incoming messages, as well as desire to create outgoing ones. Everyone also has a different sense of what the best way to organize all of that is. Creating tools that lend themselves to being useful for  both  talkers and listeners, while giving them both relevant organization options is tricky. And though sometimes people fall on one side or the other, most of us live somewhere in-between. After all, with no one willing to talk, there would be nothing to listen to, and without anyone to listen, you might as well just talk to a mirror. 

I do not drastically differ on my take of Twitter from Scoble. I am definitely a Twitter listener, using it mainly as a news aggregate to scan posts from the tech blogs as they get added. However, I am curious about the boundaries of the talk/listen relationship Scoble, and others (including myself), fuel with their posts. After all, it takes a fair amount of talking to make a point about listening. What about the Jott Link to Twitter? Is it yet another way to contribute to information overload, or a way for you to empty the information you’d like to share quickly and easily? Honestly, I believe that answer is different for everyone.

The line between information contributions and information excess is a debate that will continue. Whether you love it or hate it though, the information age is definitely here. The pertinent question then becomes: how do you use today’s web 2.0 world to help you, rather than hinder you, to do both- talk and listen? 

Today is the 1st day of spring, officially noting the start of people getting happier, birds chirping, and ah yes… spring cleaning! After a winter of rain and grayness in Seattle, I figured it was about time I gave my email organization system, if you could call it that, an overhaul. Lifehacker editor Gina Trapani’s new book Upgrade Your Life arrived in the mail the other day too, I took it as a sign that it was time to clean out my inbox.

Enter the new (to me) system: 3 folders and an empty inbox. I created my new folders which I named Archive, Action and Review with some hesitancy… what if I couldn’t find something I needed right away? Calming my nerves with constant reminders that search works well and can find anything, I eventually ended up compromising (note: this is very different than cheating!) by moving my old folders into my new Archive folder as subfolders for reference.

The new folders were created and at the recommendation of both Merlin Mann and Gina Trapani, I took everything in my inbox and moved it to a folder to sort through later when I had time. My inbox was officially empty and I felt… liberated. Dorky? Yes, I admit, but also very true. I can’t for the life of me remember why I hadn’t done this sooner!

It’s been almost a week now since I’ve started down this new path of email organization and life is grand. The best part has to be checking my mail in the morning, it’s no longer a daunting task, I don’t feel weighed down by yesterday’s mail and I feel like the day ahead is manageabale. I am a total 3 folder email system convert.

Onwards and upwards to an organized spring! Got any tips on staying organzied you’d like to share? Send them our way!

We talk an awful lot about hands free texting while driving, but as I just learned this morning thanks to Engadget’s investigative reporting, injuries occurring from texting while walking are on the rise. They are working hard to combat this issue in London by padding lamp posts.

Who needs to look down while they text? Only the people thumbing out those messages. We might not have the cure for UK texters (yet!), but for U.S. and Canadian texters, Jott is an easier, cheaper, and let’s admit it, more aesthetically pleasing way to prevent walking into a lamp post while texting. Keep those heads up Jotters, you are once again ahead of the safety curve.

Today over at the new Real Simple tech blog, the “Manic Mommies” wrote a great post, Why You Should Text Message. The general synapse is that it’s an easy way to stay in touch with your family, especially your kids, a sentiment that I’ve heard time and time again from different Jotters. Being able to text message easily without having to learn a totally new language of acronyms and teenage slang seems to be high on the list of why parents and grandparents use Jott.

The only point I hold in contention…  “Yes, you will start out typing very slowly – although many phones come with predictive texting (which means the phone tries to figure out what you are typing as you hit each button) which makes life a little easier.” We need to introduce the Manic Mommies to type-less texting with Jott!