Jott

Have you tried Jott?  Jott is a service that lets you call a toll free number on your cell phone and send people messages, either SMS or email, just by speaking.  It translates your speech into text and sends it to people on your “buddy” list.  As I understand it, the translation is monitored by human operators.  If the voice recognition software has low confidence in its translation, the recording waits in a queue and is transcribed by a live operator.

I’ve used it for almost a year.  The translation is very good but I have no idea if my recordings are going to a live operator or not.  The messages are sent pretty quickly – within 5 minutes or so.

I use it mostly to send messages or “jots” to myself.  The most frequent use is to remember the location in the parking ramp where I leave my car at the airport.  After a week of traveling I simply look on my cell phone for the message I sent myself.

What I don’t like is that I have to set up the recipients in a list ahead of time.  When I’ve wanted to use Jott, it’s at a critical time when I want to send a message.  Maybe I’m late, driving, and want to send a message ahead.  But it’s someone I just started working with.  No way am I going to take the time to add those contacts or have the forethought.  It’s a security precaution but the whole thing loses value for spur of the moment communication.

Now Jott has informed me that the service is no longer free.  Or the free version will include advertising.  I assume that means some promo at the bottom of the messages.  We’ll see.  Let me know what you think of it.

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