When Seattle-based voice to text service Jott first went live in December 2006 I wrote: “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.”
Things haven’t gotten a whole lot more complicated at Jott over the last two years. They haven’t raised much capital by recent standards – compare their $5.4 million in venture capital to competitor Spinvox’s $200 million. But the company has 420,000 (presumably) happy customers who primarily use it for one of three things: mobile productivity, hands-free communication and web services (voice I/O). People use it to send voice-to-text emails and sms messages, send Twitter messages, add calendar items, etc.
To date the company, led by ex-Microsofter John Pollard, has spent exactly nothing on marketing. Yesterday they left beta and released a free service called Jott Basic (beta users are now on that service, and the iPhone app remains free). Premium plans start at $4/month. Most people will be fine with the basic plan.
The company also released Jott For Outlook (this is really cool) and Jott Express, an Adobe AIR desktop application.
Finally, a startup with a useful, solid idea. It also manages to get out of beta – something you’ll agree, I hope, that it’s quite rare nowadays!
Good luck to them!
I don’t have much to say besides me being the first commenter over here.
I’ve been following JOTT, but I’m not sure if I’m going to use it.
[Am I adding value here?]
I have been happily using Jott for two things…sending updates to Twitter, and sending text messages via voice-to-text. I’m saddened that the latter can only be used with a paid plan now, so I’m exploring my options for that.
At least, it is better than Gmail. I wonder when they’ll leave beta.
good product, good pricing, good luck!
.~.
Oh yeah! I have an hearing problem, which makes it difficult to hear the voice. Now at least I can read the text!
But there is one thing. How accurate is the conversion from voice to text. Different people have different voices, how sure are they that it will translate 100% correctly ?
I’ve been using this service since TC originally wrote about it. The iPhone app is great, and the new desktop app allows for syncing. I primarily use it for notes/todos to myself and it works great.
I’ve also been using Jott for about a year, mostly for notes/to dos when I’m on the road. Works fabulous!
Out of beta and they’ve already made their first huge mistake.
According to Pollard: “We took the site into maintenance mode late last night, and it did not come back online properly.”
Find a copy of the full e-mail here:
http://is.gd/1MPV
Oh nice information for mee, So of course I always continuining using Jott
This is one of the best application that I had seen in the recent years. It does an amzing job at converting voice to text. I use it to update my Google Calender and also keeping track of my expenses, by leaving a voice thru Jott. Their integration with so many other apps is awasome. Great app!!! I have beeen telling all my frinds and tweetting about it. keep up the good work John!!!
I’ve been using Jott for quite a while now and love it. I currently have it set up to send my emails to Evernote (which I also love). It’s great when I am on the road and want come across music or a movie I want to remember.
The Jott for Outlook addon looks interesting and may be worth the money for me. I won’t have to remember to enter a doctor’s appointment in my calendar when I get home. I can call Jott and put it in instantly.
Beta users are not on the Basic plan now; they are still on the full plan until September 8. If they don’t sign up for a paid plan by then they will be switched to the Basic plan. Unfortunately the Basic plan is essentially useless. Not only is it useless but you have to tolerate ads to put up with the uselessness.
I’m sure there are many people who will use Jott often enough to justify the expense. I only use Jott periodically; not enough for me to upgrade at this point. There are a few alternative free services out there anyway.
ly
Thank you for this Information. I get a lot from this. God Bless!
Anyone know of a good Text-to-Voice online service?
Do you mean a webservice you can code against?
Jott is GREAT! I love it! I’ve recommended it to several friends.
GCal and Voice to Email are not included in Basic service.
Now, I’m looking for an alternative.
You wrote
“Most people will be fine with the basic plan”
Nope — basic won’t email you, you’ll need to visit their website.
I’ve loved the service, am one of the happy 420k users, but I think they’re making a bad business move by so severely crippling the free option.
My two cents
Alan
Why can’t they give this away and run ads?
I think they’re right to charge for it. I don’t see why every single web service that provides *value* to its users should be entirely free and run on ads.
Is your DVD rental free and ad-supported, your car rental, your mobile phone subscription, your copy of photoshop? Why should mature web services be different?
I’ve never heard of Jott before, I’m just saying, all the naysayers are way too used to startups with VC funding that don’t even try to become a profitable business and give the illusion that slapping a few ads is a long-term viable revenue plan.
I say props to them for not raising ridiculous amounts of money and staying forever in a “we’ll figure out how to make money later” state of mind.
Look at twitter and how they’ve just cut off the SMS notification for us Europeans. With IM notification not fixed either, twitter has now become pretty useless. And why is that? Maybe they should have figured out a revenue model before spending all that VC money on bulk SMS bills they didn’t even try to negotiate.
If I speak with the accent –
“Hie Venkatrama plleasse koll me at thish nombor fife fife sis sis tho tho” can it translate it ?
Jokes apart I have used it and it is useful (I dont use it all the time) its like Twitter; its not for everyone.
http://mydating...e.blogspot.com/
This is a great app. I am really happy that it did not go to dead-pool. This is one of those web 2.0 apps that I find really useful. When I am driving on my long commute, if I think of something I need to look up or do, I just hit the speed dial.
And I do speak with an accept (now much less pronounced than “tho tho” – I do not know what that is) and it does an super job of translating it.
Sean
I’ve been using Jott to populate my GCal for a while but I just started using it to blog…its awesome. The accuracy of the voice to text translation is amazing!
http://ryanagraves.com
A few people have already mentioned that the free plan doesn’t give all of the services mentioned in the article. Basically it only allows you to record a 15 second message to yourself and then pick up the text on the website.
I don’t have a problem with them charging for their service, it is just that the interface doesn’t delineate what services are included with your specific plan. For example, with the basic plan it asks for contacts and gives you an email link, but it won’t let you email the message. It would have been nice if they disabled those buttons to begin with.
-m