Tech Review: Jott - voice transcription for free!

There is so much new technology popping up these days it's hard to keep up, much less test it and see if it's worth your time. I've gotten pretty particular about what I'll even try out but I discovered Jott recently and it's pretty sweet and certainly worth the couple minutes it takes to set up (and it's free too).

Here's what Jott does in a nutshell...call the 800 number and tell Jott who you want to send a message to. So far I've only been sending messages to myself so when it asks, "who do you want to Jott?" I simply say, "myself" and it says "okay." Then I leave a message for myself like a reminder to send someone an email or to schedule a meeting. Jott then says "got it" and I'm done. In about five minutes I get an email with both a text transcription and an audio file of the message I left.

It's been really handy. The other day I was getting a phone number from a guy and we didn't have pen and paper handy so I called Jott (I have it set to speed dial from my cell phone), and said the name and number there. When I got home a few hours later I had it waiting for me in my inbox.

Jott also lets you send messages to individuals or groups. This would be very handy to send a single message to an entire team with just one phone call. Each Jott has about 30 seconds of recording time but you can say a lot in that time. Also, I was cautious about the transcription quality and so far I've been pretty impressed at how well it's done but you get the audio file to listen to if needed.

Like I said above, a lot of new technology is coming along these days that may or may not help you, but for me Jott is already making my life a little easier.