• Cell Phone Takes Dictation, Transcribes To Text
Friday, April 20, 2007 at 02:55PM - WHAT: A way to instantly turn anything you can speak into text
- WHY: Dictate anything, send it to anyone (including yourself) via email and/or text message
- COST: Free (cost of receiving a text message)
Where was that pencil? I know I had it here somewhere. And something to write on... damn - didn't I have an envelope I was about to write on?? Oh man, how long can I remember this number?
Sound familiar? It did to me, too, until I discovered Jott. It's like having a genie in your phone that turns your dictation into text messages and email - and then sends it to yourself or whoever else you want.
This service is so simple, so cool and so complete that it's almost hard to write anything but a short description of it. Call the Jott service number and a voice asks "Who do you want to Jott?" If you answer "Myself" the system knows to automatically send the text of anything you dictate within the next 30 seconds to your email or phone (via text message). You can choose to have the text sent to both, or either place and when the email comes you can actually listen to the audio of what you've recorded.
The accuracy level has been astonishingly good so far. I've been throwing some difficult to spell words and places at the transcribers, along with some dictations in noisy areas, and they've gotten it right in the vast majority of cases.
You can choose to receive a journal of your Jotts daily, weekly, etc., - an email will be sent to you that contains the text and the links to hear the audio.
I've pretty much given up using the built-in voice recorder on my new RAZR V3xx because the Motorola software makes it so damn difficult to record and retrieve the memos (the older RAZR V3 had a MUCH better system) and instead use Jott. It's a breeze to use it to send a note to anyone or groups, or to yourself.



Reader Comments (2)
When I registered it would not accept my cell phone number -- I had to register with my home number --- Can I register under two numbers -- i.e. home and my cell for when I am on the road
Why wouldn't it accept 604-328-2290 (my cell)
While I'm loathe to guess this, I'm wondering if the company is only offering service to U.S. users right now. Your area code indicates British Columbia and may not be in their table of acceptable numbers. That would really be a bummer - I spent lots of time in Canada (mostly Calgary and Ottawa doing training sessions for Nortel) and know that our friends there often get skunked out of services that are available here.
I suggest you check with their customer support to see if that gets you anywhere; if not, leave another comment here and I'll contact the president of the company on your behalf and see what answers we can get for you.
In regards to the two numbers - I'm sure you can register two different numbers but you'd need two separate accounts as far as I can tell. The issue here is that Jott is currently - to the best I can tell - a mobile-only service. That may change in the future but it's a small company and opening the service to landline users might overwhelm them.
Hope that this helps.