I Love Jott

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Okay, I broke my rule about always have at least two services to compare when I decide to say something is the next best thing since sliced bread. Because I have to say, why didn’t someone think of this earlier.

I spent about a half an hour this Sunday training Vista to transcribe my voice. It was actually pretty easy and relatively accurate. The last time I tried this was with Dragon Voice about 4 years ago. I gave up that time. I sort of used it like William S. Burroughs would, as a cutup machine. Speak whatever you want into it and you will never know what it types.

I have also been trying to use Twitter with my phone with zero success. Confirming my cell phone never happened. I tried three times. Entering stuff in the phone browser never worked. It looked like it did. But once I checked my account online, nothing I wrote from my phone showed up. I gave up.

Then today, I found Jott which took care of both of these issues.

First, you sign up for free. Then you set up the services that Jott can access and here are a few:

  • Twitter
  • Yahoo Groups
  • Haiku
  • Zillow
  • 30Boxes
  • Blogger
  • Live Journal
  • TypePad
  • Wordpress
  • Tumbler
  • Remember the Milk
  • Xpenser
  • Gumiyo
  • Trapster
  • Mosio
  • Vitalist
  • Google Calendar
  • Recommendr
  • Toodledo
  • Nozbe
  • Mentat
  • Keep up
  • BackPack
  • Heap
  • 43Actions
  • Kwiry

Or you can set up your own using the API.

After you set these up, you call Jott via a toll-free number and using specific terms to choose which service you are going to use, you can post to these services. Jott turns your voice into text and posts it.

I have set up my Twitter account and my BackPack account. And it works. A few of my tweets today were sent via Jott.

No typing on the cell phone. Yay. I still haven’t got the point of text messaging. It’s a phone damnit. If you want to call me, do so. If you type something to me on my phone, I don’t have the time to fit my fat fingers between the damn keys.

No using a voice recorder that I never check to keep ideas. I can send them to BackPack, email them to myself or write a draft on my blog. All through a toll-free number. All with only my voice.

It’s about time someone put voice recognition over the phone to a use that actually benefits the normal guy instead of just pissing him off because the corporation he’s calling doesn’t believe in customer service and would rather lose customers than put another human on the phone.

And, to wrap it up. If you want to go backwards and convert your blog posts into audio, check these services out:

A full speech-to-test post one day? Maybe a draft as I go to work, who knows.

Tags: backpack, Cell Phone, Jott, speech to text, Twitter, voice recognition

Related posts

8 May, 2008  Blogging, Software, Web 2.0, ZTD



10 Comments so far »

Filter: What is this?

  1. Anca said

    May 9 2008 @ 12:43 am

    Wow, this sounds sooo cool. What program do I have to use on my PC to be able to just talk in the microphone and have it put into words?

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  2. Cake Poker Rakeback said

    May 9 2008 @ 6:39 am

    i think voice recognition is a really cool innovation. i would like to have it as a security measure, but nothing in our house right now would benefit from this technology…maybe someday. :-)

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  3. Dennis Edell said

    May 9 2008 @ 8:45 am

    Awesome, just signed up! Quite intriguing indeed. Aside from telling me my first and last name were invalid (I used the AutoFill from Google toolbar), this finally looks like a useful one. Thanks!

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  4. Stewart Schatz said

    May 9 2008 @ 2:11 pm

    Hey, I just signed up for this too. It’s great! I really like the idea of using it to give myself reminders. I thought that it was awesome when our Cisco Unity system got setup and my company voice mail went to my Outlook inbox. Now, I have that same functionality with transcription for my personal stuff.

    Great article!

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  5. Stephan Miller said

    May 9 2008 @ 3:37 pm

    I like it. I don’t have a bitch about it really. For one, it’s free. Another thing is that just after a day of using it, I have found so many more things I can use it to do. I still keep thinking of the Star Trek movie where the crew came back to present day San Francisco and Scotty keeps trying to talk to the computers. It was a joke during the movie. Now that I think of it, that was about 20 years ago. I guess it’s time for it to be a joke no longer. I am so excited about this thing that I tell random people I know about it and most don’t believe until I show them. My wife had to show the kids.

    @Anca, As far as voice activation for a PC goes, Vista comes with it built in. It’s hidden in the Control Panel->Ease of Access. For other versions of Windows, I would say Dragon Voice but I haven’t used it for years so check some reviews on it.

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  6. Dennis Edell said

    May 9 2008 @ 6:42 pm

    LOL@Star Trek analogy, so true so true. Nice one :-)

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  7. AxeCity said

    May 10 2008 @ 8:17 am

    Nice find! It looks really useful.

    Thanks Stephan for sharing.

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  8. Learn Free Magic Tricks said

    May 12 2008 @ 8:42 am

    Stephan,
    I think after writing this post you need to go back to your “how I created my own blogging curriculum” post and add this in on the good and bad side.

    I can safely say that I must have called that number on my drive back and forth from visiting family yesterday, about 20 times each way, just to test it out. I guess the advantage is I’m not running off to another website while doing work, I’m doing the equivalent in the car.

    -Bryan

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  9. Stephan Miller said

    May 12 2008 @ 11:49 am

    I guess there is always a good and a bad side. I leave myself reminders and then when they get to me, I forget I use my pet time of “noon” and they all pile on me at once.

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  10. seo said

    May 18 2008 @ 1:06 am

    Very useful indeed. By the way I can use twitter on phone very successfully..

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