Warts and all

The previous two posts are remarkable, not for what they say, but how they were created.

Acting on a tip from one of my students, who was goofing around with this as I got to class yesterday, I have become an instant fan of Jott, a web- and phone-based service that transcribes voice into text, then sends SMS messages, emails or posts to blogs, calendars or task managers.

In the past 24 hours, I have sent text messages to friends (maybe my wife, Therese, will get off my back about texting while driving!), posted the aforementioned blog entries, added several items to my Google calendar, and sent an email to a mailing group of 18 Photoshop students, all from my cellphone, by speaking, rather than typing.

Jott's FAQ says the service uses a "combination of machine and human transcription" to convert your spoken words into text. I've left the blog posts as-is to show you, warts and all, the quality of the transcription. As an added bonus, Jott includes a link to the audio file, so if something is garbled in text, your audience can hear your original message.

Currently in public beta (and my guess is a lot of the web services I'll be talking about may be in perpetual beta!) the service is free and signup is fairly painless. My guess is that once the bugs are worked out, there will continue to be a free basic service, with pay-per-feature for added controls, and maybe there will be a cap on the number of messages you can send, or the length (currently limited to 30 seconds).

What is truly amazing about this service is not so much the voice-to-text, although that's pretty neat in itself, but in how it is designed to work with all your other Web 2.0 services. I mentioned how I've been using it, and that doesn't begin to wring it out. The Google calendar trick is a wowser - call the Jott number from your cell, speak "Google calendar" and "lunch with Mike April 15, 11:30am to 1:30PM" and in a matter of a few seconds to a few minutes, the event is in your calendar, on the right day, at the right time, with a note. What a great 5-minute demo!

I showed this to my friend and colleague Mike Fleishman today and he had the same reaction I did - "My mind is reeling with the possibilities!" Yep. Sent a reminder to 18 students in two sections with one phone call. Insta-blog a thought from the car. Twitter your friends and family travel updates as you're running through the airport to catch a flight. Add tasks to your to-do list. Schedule meetings, dentist appointments six months out (did that!), birthday reminders....

Jott is definitely a technology/service to watch.