If you have an iPhone and a premium Jott account, then this trick is for you…

You can add Outlooks tasks and create draft emails from your iPhone app!

Here’s what to do…

1) If you haven’t already, download the Jott for Outlook add-in.

2) You’ll see three lists appear on your Jott account, and on your iPhone app: Outlook Calendar, Outlook Tasks, Outlook Email Drafts.

3) From your iPhone app, open the Outlook list you’d like to add something to.

4) Tap the record screen and say your message.

5) Once the iPhone app syncs with your account, and your account syncs with your Outlook, the tasks and/or email drafts you created will appear in your Outlook.

This post was written by Alicia Power, VUI Design Engineer

When we speak in person, there are environmental, context and body language cues which help others understand what we say or mean even if our words are not crystal clear. Voice recognition on the phone has none of these advantages, and it helps to keep that in mind when calling Jott. You really are talking to a machine! Here are a few tips to help with voice recognition:

Avoid bad connections
As we all know from having conversations with others on cell phones, it can be hard to hear the person on the other end if there is bad reception or background noise. Voice recognition when calling Jott is no different. If your voice can’t be heard well enough, it won’t get through to the system and you will hear: “Sorry, didn’t get that.”

Speak loudly and clearly
If you hear “Sorry, didn’t get that” intermittently, try speaking louder. It sounds simple, but it is really the first step to good voice recognition. Shouting or over-enunciating is not necessary and will not help the system understand you. Just speak with a bit of projection to overcome any unconscious tendencies to speak quietly, mumble or slur your words together.

Be careful of name pronunciation
If you hear the message: “Sorry, we couldn’t find that name in your contacts”, it means that your words were heard, but we couldn’t match them with a contact, list or Jott Link. Often, trying again and saying the name slowly and clearly fixes the problem. Listen carefully to the way the name is read back to you when it asks “Is this correct?” as this can give you clues as to how the voice recognition system expects to hear the name.

Try the Sounds Like feature
If you are always having a hard time getting Jott to understand a name, it may be because you say it differently from the phonetic pronunciation. There is a really easy remedy to this! On the Jott website, go to the Contacts tab, and click on the contact this is happening with. You will find a Sounds Like text box. Fill in this text box with the phonetic spelling of how you say their name and the Voice UI will use this instead of the First and Last names to find your contact. For short names, add a word or two, like “doctor” or “mister”. It sounds silly, but if a name is really hard to recognize, you can simply fill in the Sounds Like field with a fun phrase or a few words which are easy to pronounce.

From time to time we get requests asking for examples of different ways people use Jott. Recently we received one along these lines that was specific to the different types of lists people create. So to get those creative/productivity juices flowing, here are a list of common Jott lists:

To do
Work
Home
Shopping
Groceries
Music
Mileage
Personal
Ideas
Expenses
Books
Movies

I’ve found the Movies, Music and Books lists particularly helpful, though they fall outside the realm of traditional productivity. It’s really nice to not have to struggle to remember the name of that song that came on the radio and I wanted to buy later when I got home.

If there are any ideas you don’t see up there that you think might be helpful for others, let us know!

Did you just listen to something so funny/awesome/interesting/weird that you just must pass it on to a friend or remember it for later?! Have no fear- sharing and bookmarking for Jott Feeds is now here!

Here’s how it works:

1. Call Jott and say “Jott Feeds”, then the name of the feed you’d like to listen to.
2. At anytime while listening to something you’d like to bookmark for yourself or share, press 9 on your phone’s keypad.
3. You’ll be asked “Who would you like to share this with”, reply with anyone in your contact list or a group you created to share it, or bookmark it for yourself by replying with “Myself”.
4. The end result is an email that comes from you, that has the headline and the first line of the article/post, as well as a link to full text.

I am particularly excited about this feature, as it now aides  what my friend likes to call  my “article email obsession”. This is where I feel the need to send any and all interesting articles I read to people I think might enjoy them. I hope a few of you catch the fever too- in my humble opinion, there are few things better than sharing what you just learned.

Today we are happy to announce a new addition to our mobile suite of features… Jott Feeds!

What the heck is it? Well, it’s a simple way of keeping up-to-date with your favorite blogs, Twitter and Facebook when you’re not at your computer… just by listening to them. Jott Feeds is like having a combination personal assistant and your very own news radio station… that you can control as easily as an iPod.

How do I start listening to feeds?

1) Call 866-JOTT-123, or your local Canadian number

2) When asked “Who do you want to Jott?” say “Jott Feeds”

3) When asked “Which feed?” reply with TechCrunch, Lifehacker, Mashable, SmartMoney, News or Weather (all of which have been added to your account already so you can give this a try right away).

4) Listen!

You can add lots of different blogs and sites to your account so you can listen to them. We created a library of sorts, so you can add commonly read sites, and set it up so you can easily enter your Twitter or Facebook information to get those updates too. Finally, we made it really easy to skip forward or go back in Jott Feeds using your phone’s keypad.

So now when you hop in the car on the way to work, put on that Bluetooth headset and have your stock quotes, Twitter updates, and news headlines all read to you. It’s a little bit like a radio station designed just for you.

How does it work?
We take the RSS feed from blogs and sites, convert it into audio using text-to-speech technology and send that audio to your phone.

Not sure what that means?
Have no fear, you’re not alone, and you actually don’t need to learn this new vocabulary to get the full effect of the feature, since we added all of this for you. But in case you’re curious… RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication, a feed is a constantly updated list, and RSS feeds really do mean just that- a constantly updated list of all your syndicated news sources.

What that means for you and me, is that RSS is an easy (they weren’t lying about the simple part) way to get updates from your favorite websites and new sources and Jott Feeds makes this simple even when away from your computer. Some feeds sound better than others of course, so feel free to experiment, and let us know what you think.

Add your own RSS
There are millions of different RSS feeds that are important to people, and we can’t list them all. So if there’s a feed you’d like to listen to that we don’t have listed as a Featured Feed, add your own feed by cutting and pasting the feed URL into your Jott account.

Did you know that you can record your name in the Jott system? This will play when someone calls to send you a Jott message and we ask them to confirm who it’s going to. Just call 866-JOTT-123, or your local Canadian number, and say “Name” when asked “Who do you want to Jott?”. Record your name as however you’d like it read back to people. That’s it! The next time someone wants to send you a Jott message, and our system asks them to confirm where it’s going, they’ll hear you say your name!

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.

Just came across this great idea on Twitter– using Jott to archive your text messages! For a long time now you’ve had a record of text messages you send using Jott, but since we implemented being able to text message your Jott account, now you can forward text messages others send you (not using Jott). Here’s how to do it:

1) Create a list on the website for all your archived messages, for example: Texts.

2) Select the forward option on your text message

3) Insert the name of the list you created, which in our example is Texts, in front of the message you are archiving.

4) Send to 40101

Jeff explains Jott…