Let Jott get your message across

Unlike many of you, I work in a home office, and my days are filled with online research, phone interviews and writing. My days are not filled with meetings among colleagues who would welcome reminders, encouragement, updates and information. So the service I'm about to tell you about is likely to be more useful to you than to me.

On the other hand, there are five people in my family who need reminders, encouragement, updates and information, so I better pay attention to my suggestions.

You might find Jott.com, a free online service based in Seattle, to be useful for sending cellphone and e-mail notes and reminders to others and yourself, especially while you're out and about.

You don't need to buy equipment or software; it works well on most computers and cellphones with Internet access.

The driving force behind Jott is the belief that people will welcome a way to deliver quick messages from the car, ballpark, grocery store, playground, or any other place where the only technology they have is a cellphone.

Here's how it works:

First, you register by providing your phone number and e-mail address. You can create a contact list with that information for others you're likely to be contacting, or you can import your existing contact list from Gmail, Hotmail, AOL, Yahoo! or Outlook.

Then, to send a message from a cellphone to yourself or others, you call Jott, say the name of the person or group receiving the message, and record the message itself (up to 30 seconds).

A Jott operator converts it to text and delivers it to the recipient's cellphone or inbox. You can also choose to omit the conversion from voice to text and have your voice message sent directly as an audio clip.

The phone call is toll-free. Your cellphone message is sent directly as a voice message or typed and sent as a text message. Or you can send both text and voice messages. If you send a voice message, the recipient gets a message to call a number to hear your message.

If it's handier to send messages from a computer, you can click to the Jott.com site to compose and send the message. The recipient can then read your text messages on a computer or cellphone.

All your messages are added to your Jott list at Jott.com, enabling you to organize and keep track of your Jott communications on your PC or Mac.

Because the service is free, it supports itself by including some advertising. To its credit, Jott's ads are unobtrusive and discreet, and some include links to businesses assumed to be relevant to the user.

In time, Jott may offer a premium ad-free service to members willing to pay a subscription.

What do other Jott users think of the service?

One new user commented in a blog I happened to read: "I just tested it. Simple to set up. Simple to use. Simply wonderful ... Nice find."

On a blog at Law.com, a lawyer wrote about sending Jott reminders to himself: "Just call Jott's toll-free number, speak your message and Jott will transcribe and e-mail it to you. That's sweet, simple and utterly addictive."

Time to try it myself.

I sign up by entering my phone number and e-mail address, and then enter family members' information to my Jott Contact List. To complete the registration, I have to confirm my phone and e-mail information by responding to Jott messages sent to both. Then I'm set to go.

On my Mac, I compose a couple of quick notes to family members and another to myself, and in a few seconds my cellphone rings and displays that text message.

From my cellphone, I send my husband and daughter voice messages, and soon the messages (transcribed to text) also appear on my Jott Web page.

Here's the transcribed text message sent to my daughter Molly: "Hi, Mali this is your mother I am trying out this service Jott where I just speak a message and its enter to your cellphone and your e-mail box, so let me know you thank if you get this. Thanks, bye-bye."

I guess I need to speak more slowly and clearly. Still, I'm surprised that so little attention is paid to grammar and punctuation. Of course, many who use e-mail don't bother with those details, but I do, so I'm a little concerned that such a message is from me. Speed and cost are likely factors that should weigh into my judgment (it's fast and free), so I'll forgive, and you'll have to decide for yourself.

Assuming the spoken message is clear, the quality of transcription probably depends on the human who takes and transcribes the call, so the results may depend on luck. Jott CEO John Pollard notes the company is working hard to make the transcription process better and more accurate.

As I get more involved in this method of communication, I begin to realize that using Jott would make it easy to send messages from my computer to my kids' cellphones, which they'll receive a lot faster than if I send them e-mail and have to wait for them to sit down at their computers and log into their e-mail.

Why don't I just call them phone to phone, instead? Well, I do that too, but it turns out to be easier to send them text messages while I'm working at my computer. Plus, they seem to prefer text messages because they can read them and respond anytime, anywhere, and quietly, without disturbing anyone.

All in all, you might find Jott extremely useful, so go ahead and try it from your cellphone and your computer. It takes little time to sign up and try, and you may surprise yourself about how handy and useful such a service can be.

Write Linda Knapp at lknapp@seattletimes.com; to read other Getting Started columns, go to: www.seattletimes.com/gettingstarted