Think it. Jott it. Do it.

Hands Free Note Taking Strategies

If you haven't read  The art of the doable to-do list yet, be sure to give it a good read. One part that really struck a chord with me talks about using specific, active verbs.

When you're telling yourself to do something, make it an order. An item like "Acme account checkup" doesn't tell you what has to be done. Make your to-do's specific actions, like "Phone Rob at Acme re: Q2 sales." Notice I didn't use the word "Contact," I said "Phone." Contact could mean phone, email, or IM, but if you're taking out all the thinking and leaving in only action, your verbs will be as specific as possible. Literally imagine yourself instructing a personal assistant on her first day on the job what you need done.

So now just be sure that when you're Jotting yourself, clear your throat, and posture your voice to intimidate the life out of your imaginary personal assistant and make sure those things get done. :)

Text Messaging While Driving Banned

It's official, starting 2008 in Washington state you will now pay a $101 ticket if caught with your hands on your cell phone.

For some of us though, the drive time is the best time to be productive on our phones. What to do? The solution is simple:

1. Get an earpiece or bluetooth headset for your phone.
2. Use Jott so you can still text message - hands free!

Jott automagically turns your voice into a text, so you don't have to stare at your phone keys while driving and trying to text message at the same time. And if you don't have a headset or earpiece, you may want to Jott yourself to remember to pick one up.

You-Do Lists

Ok, you've gotten all of your tasks done for the day, and your drive home of glory turns stressful when you remember all that stuff your kid needs to do tonight. In comes: You-Do lists.

Step 1
Call Jott (1-877-568-8486) and one by one, rattle off everything you can think of for your kid to do from washing their uniform to brushing their teeth.

Step 2
When you get home, log into jott.com, select your Jotts and click "Print Jotts" to print them out.

Step 3
Hand off your You-Do list to your kid and return your mind to a state of glory.

3 Reasons Why You Want to Create Groups in Jott

1. No More Repeating Yourself
I had a friend go to court recently, and he spent 2 hours after court got out calling each person in his family to explain the outcome and answering the same questions over and over again. With Jott you just need to create a group and add each of your family members in it. And when you have an update, call Jott and give a 30 second overview and you're done.

2. Jott Your Holiday Cheer
Why not send everybody a 30 second Jott about what you'll be doing over the holiday and wish them well? Sure, its not a flashy email with dancing cats and music, but its something a bit more personal (and hopefully not quite as corny).

3. Pat Yourself on Their Back
Did you nail that presentation? Shoot an 82 on that golf course that you always have trouble with? Beat Guitar-Hero 2 on Expert? Create a group called "Buddies" and you can rub it in their faces with a quick dial and message.

There are many more reasons to create groups whether for work, school, or just personal uses. Regardless, I think you get the point: Groups save you a ton of time.

Text Messaging Issues

Jott has had some text messaging issues with Verizon customers for two weeks. We got it fixed fairly quickly... It should all be working now.

This is John Pollard at CTIA.

                                           CTIA once again is a huge conference, just massive, and there are a lot of exiting things to look at this year from new handsets to services.  Mobile search is going to be pretty exciting and there is a buzz in the air about potential new Google phone.  We will see.  Anyway, I will be blogging tomorrow from the conference and let you know what I see.                                                        
Listen to audio
          Set reminders, assign, and manage this jott on Jott.com

          Brought to you by Jott Networks, Inc.                                        

[JottCast] There is an amazing string going on over at activerain.com.

Jott to Blog on Wednesday, March 21, 2007 10:48 AM

There is an amazing string going on over at activerain.com.

Listen to audio Set reminders, assign, and manage this jott on Jott.com Search the Web for this jott Brought to you by Jott Networks, Inc.

Word of Mouth

What an amazing month or so for Jott.

Mid-winter hurricanes in the Northwest, a wood worker moving in below our office... a few other hiccups.  No problem.  Jott is running well, and getting an overwhelmingly strong reception.  The buzz in the community has been very generous, with people asking great questions, and generally coming down on the side of "this is really cool."

One good area of discussion has been privacy.  We're pretty clear about what we're doing, and most people readily accept it.  There have been some folks who've said 'no way' to the idea of humans being in the transcription mix, and that's totally understandable.  We need to do a better job of highlighting the fact that in settings you can choose not to have your jotts transcribed...we degrade to 'just' delivering the sound of your voice in that case.

Coming up for air: Public Beta

What's the difference between an "early" beta and a "public" beta?  Oh, I don't know.. maybe stability, actual user ed, grouping, the ability to share jotts in simple and powerful ways... JottCast!!  Paseo, the Carribean joint down Fremont avenue knows Shree's voice (and order "tofu side and beans").  The office feels a little more cramped as the cast of characters has grown.  The Cascades are rarely "out", and it's dark by 4:30pm.  And funding from great people.

I remember back in the mid-nineties working on what would become Office 97, and the raging public (and internal) debate about feature bloat.  There was an argument that customers used only a small fraction of the features in, say, Word, and how we could radically simplify Office,  componentize it, sell stuff a la carte on line, etc. etc.  A guy from market research entered the discussion and pointed out that the problem with the "small fraction" notion was that everybody used a different small fraction.  There was a long tail of loved features in any of these products.  And besides, how did one win reviews if you couldn't out-feature the other guy?  So what does that have to do with Jott?   

Well, we've pretty much found from our early beta users that are a many different reasons to love Jott.  Some hard core users really want the task management aspect to be pushed.  Others really want a simple delegation tool.  Others didn't want the phone stuff at all and just wanted a ubiquitous list.  Most find the phone piece to be magic.  Others use it as a intermittent store for big ideas that they occasionally come back to.  Overwhelmingly though, it's about simplicity, and giving people a few tools that they can adapt to their lives, not the other way around.

So based on a limited sample, we're sticking to the mission of very simply helping people remember and communicate actions.  There's no system per se beyond super easy access, flexibility to adapt to how a given user wants to organize, and working with what you already have.   Some users will look at the whole product and see areas they don't care about.. and that's OK.  As long as a bunch of people feel like Jott is useful for the scenario they need.  Great.

Jott Networks won't code a long tail.  That'll come from jotters and all the ways they bend it.

False start....ok, now we're on

So we're a week later than we thought for a couple of reasons: getting our voice, Kendall, up and running took a little bit more work than we thought, but we thought pushing the prototype 2 out a bit to accomodate 'her' was worth it. The Voice UI sounds quick, with high production values. Kendall did a good job for us speeding things up: we specifically didn't want a voice that was plodding and assumed our customers were too. She's snappy, and hopefully will sound good after many dozens of listens.

The other thing was some UI tinkering: getting one click access to everything one wants while keeping the UI uncluttered, and dealing with the subtle differences tween the various browser flavors. Nice.

But here we go, and we'll be releasing this in small waves over the next coule of days.

Most recent jott: Bring Raina home after game on Sunday