Seattle based Jott will launch its new voice to text product sometime this week. It’s very simple – a user calls a specific phone number and leaves a voice message along with a recipient or recipients (an obvious use for Jott will be for people to leave themselves quick notes). The voice message will then be converted from voice into text and delivered via email or SMS. The recipient or recipients can choose between reading the text or listening to the original voice message.
Like many new Seattle startups, Seattle PI reporter John Cook got an early look at them and was able to test out their software. While the voice recognition isn’t perfect, it seems good enough. His message of “Jott Networks is a new startup that converts your voice into text and delivers it via e-mail” was translated into “Jott now works as a new startup that converts your voice and ___ delivers it via E-mail.”
Jot is currently a four person team that includes two former Microsoft employees – John Pollard and Shreedhar Madhavapeddi. The company has raised less than $1 million in capital, from Ackerley Partners, Draper Richards and Skype co-founder Niklas Zennstrom.
Jott looks to be big competition for high flying startup Pinger, which just completed an $8 million round of funding from Kleiner Perkins and DAG Ventures. The Pinger team says that they are seeing significant usage growth, but they do not convert voice into text – recipients must listen to the original voice message. See a Pinger demo here.
Conversion to text is a big advantage that Jott has over Pinger. Chances are Pinger is hard at work to add this feature, too. In the meantime, I anticipate that I will often use Jott to send myself and others messages, particularly when traveling.
Note also competitor Spinvox, which is currently only available in the UK.
Cool idea. As stated in the article, I see this as a great way to send yourself notes and reminders. It is also a great way to send emails to others when you are away from your computer. Well, that is at least for those of us who refuse to succumb to the addiction of a Crackberry. I wonder if it will have some sort of playback and edit feature?
Hmmm…I would love to see the business plan…guess I am just struggling to see the real benefit.
I must be under estimating the amount of travelers who are disadvantaged by a voice message or maybe its the time in which the message is received.
Hoping to see a few comments that can point out the real value in this business.
http://www.reva...squarespace.com
It would be great if it converted voicemails to text automatically. Many times I’m in an environment where I have to be quiet and it would be rude to be seen listening to my phone. But taking a quick glance at my phone to see the message would be very beneficial.
Similar idea to the company that Guy Kawasaki wrote in his blog
http://blog.guy...ox_now_all.html
dirk, you’re on the money.
voicemail to SMS is a big way for Jott or other companies to take money away from telco’s but still save the end-user some cash. Processing is cheaper than bandwidth.
With all due respect , i think its useless in the real world.
People who are interested in this (a) have phones on which typing is awkward and/or (b) aren’t nimble with phones that do have easy-to-use keyboards. I think Jott’s success will hinge on what the next generation of mobile phones looks like.
I don’t know the mobile phone industry well enough to make predictions there, but I can say that I wouldn’t be interested in this because typing is so easy on my Blackberry (7290).
This might be a service for old people. People my age (college-age) and younger are adept typers on all kinds of phones.
Let’s say it’s a service for the older, high-powered executive who is too busy to type a text, even though they have an easy-to-use Blackberry keyboard. The voice recognition must improve, because generally the words of this high-powered set are very important. A mistranscription could be a big deal.
Tom, I echo your question about a review and edit feature.
The concept is interesting, and I’m curious to know how it turns out.
The service looks very similar to Braincast’s offering.
There are two things. One is the alert mechanism through SMS, which is common across. The other thing is the conversion of audio to text, which is again a known feature. To me, the combo does not seem to be a great value addition.
…i read the article and was wondering do they charge for the service or do you get charged regular billing rate of your cell phone for a text?
I am using UK based Spinvox and cant get it to fail to translate even on the complex Irish language
http://blog.roa...ree.ie/spinvox/
potentially of relevance in dyslexic/disabled markets – i wish more such start-ups would openly look at such applications before focusing on general commercial usage; would be possible for them to make good money from a niche such as dyslexia – we all seem to be obsessed with mainstream adoption, however. i am as guilty of this as the next man, by the way!
These guys are way late in getting to market. SimulScribe has been doing this in the U.S. for years.
doesn’t matter if someone’s late to a market – it depends who can best brand themselves in any given market sector and leverage that for growth. i doubt for one moment that simulscribe has 100% market share of a market that has no growth? if that were the case then, sure, they’re late to market …
Spinvox’s conversion is excellent – the only reason I stopped using it was because it took too long to do the conversion. After a voicemail was left, it would often take up to 15 minutes to convert and send a text message.
If they can get that going faster, I’ll be back – the convinience was great!
As mentioned by Psmith I have been using SimulScribe for almost a year now for voicemails. I do not see the market for this…
I lauched the unfortunatly named Dictabrain.com in September at a Toronto Demo Camp. Still in Alpha but similar in general model. We also have a direct voice to blog element that the others have not released (yet). Jott is well done and very slick, looks like we’ve got a horse race in the market. By my count there are now about 5 or 6 players all slightly different but all being pulled into very similar models. Its a strange concept I agree. Those of you who are “typey talkers” will never use or “get” such a service. Those of us who are “talky” typers do
hell my name is gabriel i just need you help. and i know that you well help mi is just ths i want to convert my number to us number pls help. can you help i we be very gerat full if you can hlep mi out
Do you know the companies PINGER and SNAPVINE?
Pinger and Snapvine are highly INSECURE!!!!
What this means: I can break into your Pinger and Snapvine phone accounts. I can listen to your messages. I can send out messages as you.
How do I do this? Easy. I mask / spoof CALLER ID / ANI. Anyone can do this, amateur hacks, etc.
Well, there are others, but suffice to say that these companies are doing new things with social networking sites and phones that help to connect people.
The problem is that these companies have a scalability problem based on inbound calling.
You see, if you have hundreds of thousands or millions of users, you can’t give everyone a unique dial in phone number.
SECURITY PROBLEM
What these companies have done is based user identification on Caller ID / ANI – meaning that you call their service, and their systems recognize your phone via Caller ID.
The problem is that Caller ID is highly insecure and can be faked.
The problem that these “dial in” companies are trying to solve is one of scalability. They simply cannot have enough dial in numbers for each user.
Therefore, they have architected a way to recognize each caller by Caller ID and to base the entire user authentication system on this insecure method.
This can easily be hacked.
SOLUTION
The solution is funny – both Pinger and SnapVine make you enter in a PIN CODE when you dial in without validating your phone.
After you validate your phone, you no longer need to enter the PIN CODE.
So in effect, when you validate your phone, you make your account INSECURE.
What Pinger and SnapVine need to do is always require the PIN CODE.
Pinger and Snapvine are highly INSECURE!!!!
What this means: I can break into your Pinger and Snapvine phone accounts. I can listen to your messages. I can send out messages as you.
How do I do this? Easy. I mask / spoof CALLER ID / ANI. Anyone can do this, amateur hacks, etc.
Well, there are others, but suffice to say that these companies are doing new things with social networking sites and phones that help to connect people.
The problem is that these companies have a scalability problem based on inbound calling.
You see, if you have hundreds of thousands or millions of users, you can’t give everyone a unique dial in phone number.
SECURITY PROBLEM
What these companies have done is based user identification on Caller ID / ANI – meaning that you call their service, and their systems recognize your phone via Caller ID.
The problem is that Caller ID is highly insecure and can be faked.
The problem that these “dial in” companies are trying to solve is one of scalability. They simply cannot have enough dial in numbers for each user.
Therefore, they have architected a way to recognize each caller by Caller ID and to base the entire user authentication system on this insecure method.
This can easily be hacked.
SOLUTION
The solution is funny – both Pinger and SnapVine make you enter in a PIN CODE when you dial in without validating your phone.
After you validate your phone, you no longer need to enter the PIN CODE.
So in effect, when you validate your phone, you make your account INSECURE.
What Pinger and SnapVine need to do is always require the PIN CODE.
someone says, “have been using SimulScribe for almost a year now for voicemails. I do not see the market for this… ”
you cannot see a market for simple, convenient voice dictation, any time any place, that works.
you walk into the public library or local coffee bar and see a poster for a program of interest in 6 weeks. you call jott and send yourself a simple email with date, time, place. back at the office you drag the email in Outlook to your calendar and you have calendered, hands free
or, you have an idea about a project–you call Jott and it sends you an email you drag in Outlook to Notes or Tasks or Journal
Or, you write a letter and block and paste, when back at the office.
This is a killer app.
I agree with JohnD. What’s the idea? talking with your friend TO social-networking OR Bloggs online.
What do you capture? The CONTENT (brands, interests, features, numbers, ages, schools, products…) and the associated TELEPHONE NUMBERS (voice & SMS) and EMAIL ADDRESSES linked to URLs on MYSPACE.COM and FACEBOOK.COM. Creates dead-on targeting for advertising (things Google) directed ACROSS media (mail, email, SMS, voice, Web).
With enough funding for cheap, open-source HW/SW, this could be one of the US market’s best marketing tools (vacuum cleaners) in history.
I’ve read that this service won’t be supported by Verizon Wireless’ SMS service. Not too surprising. They seem to lock everything down.
Jott is a really cool service, that has more use than they point out. As someone who doesn’t use all their minutes each month, I could basically text message people using only talk minutes.
Too bad it doesn’t work in Canada…
I wrote a post on a bunch of other techniques for taking note on the go.
http://www.gear...ith-your-phone/
Just when you buy a new cell phone a better version comes out with more gadgets!