I love discovering new tools that are simultaneously cool and useful. I commute about 30 minutes each way to work which isn’t ridiculously long, but it’s long enough that I spend a lot of time thinking about – well – random things. Some of these random things I’d like to capture, but if you’ve ever tried writing while traveling at 70 MPH you know how frustrating it can be. After all, I’d like to arrive at my destination so that I actually get to implement the thought or idea I had on the drive.
Enter Jott. So ingenious yet so simple. When I have my epiphany ("Did I leave the iron on?") on my way to work and I want to remember to call my wife to check when I get there, I whip out my cell phone, punch the speed dial number for Jott, and record my message. When I arrive at work, an email awaits with a surprisingly accurate transcript of my message as well as an attachment containing the audio of the message I left myself. Very slick.
There are quite a few other features that I haven’t begun to explore yet, but this little Web app was just too cool not to blog about. So if you’re a car commuter or road warrior, check it out. It beats the little voice recorder on your phone that you have to remember to play back – Jott delivers your random thoughts directly to your email inbox.
Alright, Scott, you win.
I had heard of Jott before but was pretty content to leave voice memos on my mobile. That was until I forgot an important one.
Then I read your entry, which namechecked my little problem, so I gave Jott the official college try.
I left myself 15 messages on an hour-long trip.
Speed dial three. Talk. Wait for the nice lady. Hang up.
There’s something serious here, something that goes beyond web 2.0 fanboy-ishness, I feel. Yeah, it’s an immediately effective tool, but the potential scares me.
Lately, tools like these have been decreasing the time and distance from a good idea in my head to its actualization. Using Jott, a to-do list, Google Docs, and my blog interface, I can take an idea from my head — a hard drive with extreeemeley limited short-term holding space — and put it in my e-mail box with Jott or on a to-do list — drives with practically infinite storage.
What’s creepier is the faster I push an idea out of short-term holding, the faster new ones slide in. My mind is becoming this frictionless waypoint between tech networks which can store my ideas more reliably. This has been the most productive year of my life, probably more productive than the first twenty put together.
I’ve had a blog post pending about all this but Jott is kind of pushing it over the edge. I’ve gotta write some more about this:
For all practical purposes, I’m part computer.
Scary.
(Thanks for getting me on Jott, BTW.)
Jott DEFINITELY beats that stupid voice recorder on your phone! Especially while driving. You can even voice program your phone to call Jott then jott a friend(or yourself) whichc makes “texting” virtually hands free!! I’m excited to see this thing get big. They have plenty of potential and from my understanding…they have some tricks up their sleeve.
But using Jott makes me one of the myriads of people chatting on their cell phones all over the place at all times disturbing any peace I ever dreamt of having being on the move. We all know about that jakker on the train always picking up his cell phone to say something he didn’t really have to say at the time…
Geir -
Other than some larger metro areas, we don’t have as many train commuters in the states as you probably do. I’m thinking more of car commuting since I’ve never train commuted in my life.