Sunday, July 15, 2007

Cool New Use for Jott

I have discovered a really cool use for Jott. In case you haven’t heard of this tool, it’s a free web service that lets you call a toll-free number and leave a message. The service then transcribes your message and sends it by e-mail. The transcriptions aren’t perfect. But they’re pretty close. It takes about 60 seconds to set up an account. And they don’t ask for personal information except your name, cell phone number and e-mail address.

I heard about Jott on Bryan Person’s “Tools of the Trade” segment on his NewCommRoad podcast.

For the last few weeks, I’ve been sending myself reminder messages, like “Postpone dentist appointment” and “Buy calamine.” That’s been really useful for this working mom of two little tykes.

But I’ve just come up with a use that is even more valuable to me. You know those cute little things children do that you don’t want to forget? I keep a MS Word file of little stories like that. It serves as a journal in a way. I used to be real good at updating it back when I was e-mailing photos of the kids to family members. I’d include a little story too. But now, I post those photos online. So I’ve gotten behind with the updates.

Enter Jott.com. When I’m away from my computer and I think of a cute, funny or touching story about one of my kiddos, I just Jott myself. Then when I get home, I can copy it into my master file. Like this one:
I was reading a story to [my 4-year-old]. There was a drawing of a dairy cow. She said, “Look Mommy. There’s a pig coming out of that cow’s bottom!”
Que cute!

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Thanks for the mention, Christie.

Jott really has become a useful tool for me, and what a great application you give here for using it!

My son turned 9 months yesterday, and he's doing new and interesting things every day. Now, particularly when I'm with him and away from the computer, I can Jott myself about a new development (for example, while at a friend's house yesterday, he sat playing with a blanket for about five minutes without making a sound; that was certainly different).

Taking this one step further, if you have a gmail account, you can set up a filter such that any Jott you send to yourself is automatically given a specific tag, such as "family Jott."

Then, when you have a block of time, you can plow through all your Jott messages in your gmail and enter them into a baby book or other appropriate place.

I'm putting this plan into action right away. Thanks, Christie!

Christie Goodman, APR said...

Thank you for introducing me to Jott in the first place.

The other cool thing is that the email includes a link to listen to the audio. So you can double check the transcription if you need to.
Christie

chrispancho said...

that is by far the cutest use of Jott I've heard of by far! So far I've just seen people using it with Vitalist or Twitter and the O so popular "in the car" haha. Great integration!