People use it to send voice-to-text emails and sms messages, send Twitter messages, add calendar items, etc. Voice messages are transcribed into text via software with humans to clean things up.

The free version of Jott is going to end on February 2, CEO John Pollard told me today. The terrible advertising market, he says, means every customer has to pay their own way from now on. Customers will need to pay $4/month to continue the service, the current price for a premium account. This includes users of the Jott iPhone application.

New Voicemail To Text Service

Jott is also preparing to roll out a new service, voicemail-to-text. Like competitors Spinvox, PhoneTag, GotVoice and others, voicemails will be converted into text messages and sent to you within a couple of minutes. The application is priced at the same level as competitors, $10/month for up to 40 messages. The product launches today.

Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors

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.

More details on the Jott blog.

Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0

We’ve been gathering videos and overviews of many of the applications and have held them until now. We received demo vidoes for dozens of applications, ranging from basic games to complex GPS-enabled social networking applications. Below are some of our favorites.

Among the apps that we didn’t include below (primarily because of their simplicity) are Recorder (a voice recorder), Movies (movie showtimes), and iMaze (a basic maze game).

Social Networking On The iPhone:

The iPhone, with cult-like users and location aware technology, is the perfect social networking device. Earlier this year we speculated that someone would emerge with a killer social networking app for the iPhone. It turns out that there are lots of contenders.

Loopt

Loopt – We’ve been tracking Loopt’s efforts around their iPhone application for months now. In April we posted early screen shots of the app without saying who had built it. Think of Loopt as a simple social network to find local businesses, message friends and send status updates with where you are (using the iPhones location technology). And a key difference with Loopt and many of the other networks below: you can meet new people who are nearby, if they choose to share that information. If everyone used this, you could see who’s single in a bar before you approach them (and flirt with them by phone first), and know the first name and job of everyone at that cocktail hour at the tech conference. We’re big fans of Loopt, and will have more news on them later today. For now, download the free application here.

Limbo

Limbo – Limbo is another geo-aware social network that behaves like a mashup of Twitter, Loopt, and Whrrl. One of the app’s most compelling features is its grid-like diagram that visually groups your friends according to what they’re doing (for example, all of your friends that are Out Drinking will be lumped together, even if they aren’t necessarily drinking in the same place). The app accomplishes this feat by forcing users to select from a predefined hierarchal list of activities (while this might sound restrictive, the list is pretty comprehensive). This categorization allows users to see what they’re friends are up to without having to sift through each of their messages.

On the geo-positioning front, Limbo allows users to interact users who are within a close radius (about a quarter mile), in a manner that is similar to Loopt. You can download the app here for free.

MySpace

MySpace – The MySpace iPhone app is everything you’d expect from a multi-billion dollar company: the app integrates seamlessly with the massive social network, allowing users to add friends, exchange messages, upload photos, and do just about anything else they could do from their computers at home. They aren’t yet integrating with the location features, but expect that in the near future. If you are a MySpace user, you’ll be using this constantly. You can download the app here for free.

Shozu

ShoZu – The ShoZu iPhone app allows users to interact with a number of social websites, including YouTube, Facebook, Flickr, and a number of others. Users can upload photos to these services, comment on other users’ profiles, and send status updates, depending on the site involved. You can download the app here for free.

Utilities and Reference:

The introduction of the iPhone app store has effectively made the iPhone the ultimate utility belt. We’re seeing no shortage of apps that aim to make life easier for users, and while many of them are a little too simplistic (how many tip calculators do we really need?), others will be godsends for some people, serving up the latest sports news, on-demand drink recipes, and restaurant recommendations.

Save Benjis

Save Benjis – Save Benjis is a shopping tool that will look up a product’s price according to its model number. Using model numbers instead of product names helps take the guesswork out of pricing comparisons (for example, it would be much easier to compare two computers with their model numbers versus a name like “MacBook Pro”). The app integrates the Safari web browser, so users can browse and purchase goods on a website from their phone if they find a better price. You can download the app here for free.

Pocket Express

Pocket Express – Pocket Express is a news and information service that is available for a number of smart phones. The app allows users to browse through news articles written by the Associated Press on topics that include politics, science, and world news. Users can also browse through sports scores, weather reports, and movie information. You can download the app here for free.

Urbanspoon

Urbanspoon – Urbanspoon brings a fun (and gimmicky) solution to choosing a restaurant for dinner. After using the phone’s GPS to detect restaurants in the area, Urbanspoon presents you with a slot machine-like listing of cuisine types and price. To activate the slot machine, you give the phone a hard shake (the accelerometers inside the phone will measure the movement). The dials will spin around a few times, and you’ll be presented with a suggested restaurant (you can shake again if you’re not satisfied). You can download the app here for free.

Cocktails

Cocktails – Cocktails is a well designed reference for “potent potables” that will put traditional bar-tending guides to shame. Users can browse through a large index of drinks, search by ingredient or drink name, and label drinks as favorites for future reference. The app also includes information about the type of serving glass to use, as well as the date that each recipe was created (there are often multiple recipes available for each drink). You can download the app here for $9.99.

ForeFlight

ForeFlight – ForeFlight is an iPhone app that is aimed towards pilots (both recreational and professional) rather than your average consumer. The app allows users to find nearby airports, maps, diagrams of airports, and lookup of plane information by tail number. The app also includes the A/FD, the Airport and Facilities Directory, which includes location data like field and approach information and location data on hotels. You can download the app here for a whopping $69.99 (the highest price in the store).

Audio and Video

App providers will make use of the 3G iPhone’s speedy network with streaming audio and video apps that will allow users to consume a near-limitless amount of content without having to sync up with their computers. Unfortunately, the iPhone is still unable to record video, so all media uploading will be limited to photos for now.

Kyte Mobile Producer

Kyte Mobile Producer – Kyte’s Mobile Producer is a mobile image uploading app. Users can upload the images they take from their iPhones directy to Kyte Channels that they’ve embedded in their blogs or onto their Facebook profile through Kyte’s facebook app. Users can also compile their images into slideshows, complete with captions and polls, which can also be played through the their Kyte Channels online. You can download the app here for free.

mdialog

mdialog – mdialog’s iPhone app allows users to browse through content that have been uploaded to the video site. The app is reminiscent of YouTube, allowing users to share and bookmark their favorite channels, leave comments, and browse through a “What’s New Section”. Users can also attach polls to their videos. You can download the app here for free.

Pandora Radio

Pandora Radio, our flat out favorite application so far, is an audio app that streams music to the iPhone over Wi-Fi, 3G, or Edge. Pandora is a popular music service that creates a “Music Genome” to analyze music a user likes and then recommend new artists. Users can enter the name of an artist or song they like, and Pandora will generate a streaming playlist, even if they haven’t created a profile. You can try out the app here for free.

Update: Here is a late addition:

Jott

Jott – Self-dubbed “the notepad you’ve always dreamed of,” the Jott iPhone app records your voice and turns it into text. You can add items to specific lists and cross them off once you don’t need to worry about them any longer. Additionally, all of your notes are backed up online. You can try out the app here for free.

Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.

When I first started out in the real world in the mid-nineties voicemail was an important productivity tool. I remember people talking about the pros and cons of various enterprise voicemail systems – which had the best forwarding and group messaging, which allowed for archiving, and how many messages could be stored and for how long. Even though email was around, people were still unsure how to use it. Letters went on letterhead and were formal. Voicemail was informal and common. Email etiquette was still being developed. It was good for mass-forwarding jokes and moving Word, Excel, and Powerpoint files around, but it took a while for email to take over as older generations moved out of the workplace or got with the program.

But now an increasing number of people are just plain avoiding voicemail (for my impromptu and unscientific survey, see the comments here, which are predominantly anti-voicemail). It takes much longer to listen to a message than read it. And voicemail is usually outside of our typical workflow, making it hard to forward or reply to easily.

Typical voicemail messages today include things like “Please don’t leave me a voicemail, I rarely listen to them. Please just email me at xxxx@xxxx.com” Many people don’t bother setting up their voicemail accounts at all. Then there’s my favorite method, the one I use personally – let the message box get full and then don’t empty it. Caller ID still tells me who called, and I can simply call them back.

How many times have you called someone back and said “I saw that you called but didn’t listen to the voicemail yet, Is it anything urgent?”

Senders often feel guilty for leaving voicemails, too. And to make sure you get the message, quite often people will follow up with a text message – “Just left you a VM, it’s important” – just so you know it’s there.

There are startups that are trying to make voicemail more useful. Pinger, GrandCentral and YouMail are among them. The iPhone’s visual voicemail feature helps clean up the clutter, too. But at the end of the day you still need to take time to listen to those voicemails, and that usually comes after other equally urgent but less disruptive tasks.

The services that really make voicemail more usable are those that convert voicemail into text and then send it to you via email or SMS (Spinvox, PhoneTag Yap and Jott, for example).

More mobile carriers are offering text conversion for a monthly or per-message fee. It’s my guess this will become more and more common. Voice is here to stay as a data input method, but listening to messages will certainly become an increasing luxury, to be reserved for loved ones or those messages that aren’t transcribed properly (or you need to hear it for tone or emotion).

For now most people don’t have voicemail transcription services. So think before you voicemail, more and more people just find it annoying.

Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.

A number of services have launched to allow users to record messages and link to the recording from Twitter (see Twitsay, Twittergram). And services like Jott and Spinvox are providing tools that allow voice to text conversion for Twitter, Facebook, Pownce and other social networks. But nothing I’ve seen so far is as simple to use as TwitterFone, a new service by serial Irish entrepreneur Pat Phelan.

The service launched moments ago into private beta. To use it you need to verify your phone number and Twitter account, and TwitterFone will then give you a local phone number to call to leave messages (they support the U.S., UK and Ireland now, adding more). Then, any message you send will be transcribed, and posted to Twitter along with a link to the recording (here’s a test message I left). If the message is longer than 140 characters, just the first part is transcribed, but the entire recording is still available. There is a time limit of 15 seconds on the recording.

The service is partially automated via voice recognition software, and flagged words go to a human for translation. For now the service supports English only; Japanese support is promised in 8 weeks or so.

One problem/slightly humorous aspect of the service is that there is no going back once you start recording. In this test message I started coughing and just hung up. The coughing was dutifully transcribed and posted. A simple option at the end of a call to delete the message is needed.

The service is free for now, they may add premium features over time. We have a handful of beta accounts to give out now. Tell us why you think you need it in the comments below – the most compelling get an account.

Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors

Previously GotVoice was a simple service that used your voicemail credentials and turned each voicemail into a MP3 file. Got Voice would then send out an email with a link to your GotVoice inbox. It basically allowed users to move voicemail administration from their phone to their computer.

The new features take that basic service several steps forward. First, two phones can now be associated with an account. Also, you can now compose voicemails via a flash recorder in the service (or via your phone), and deliver it to the voicemail of people in your contact list. This is great for responding to messages, or to broadcast a new message to one or more people.

Another useful feature of Gotvoice – since it has access to your phone admin via your credentials, you can also use it to change your voicemail greeting. They’ve created a tool that mixes your voice with any MP3 you care to upload. Once you’ve created the greeting, GotVoice will turn it into your voicemail greeting.

Finally, the coolest new feature. GotVoice will be launching a stripped down WAP version of the voicemail inbox page for access from a mobile browser. The result is a visual voicemail product that is sure to be the rage as soon as the iPhone launches with it’s own visual voicemail. This page can be accessed from the browser, and GotVoice is working to do deals with carriers in the U.S. to offer this directly as well.

What GotVoice isn’t doing yet is converting voicemails to text, something that they say they’re working on via a partnership. Jott and Spinvox do this now, and it is a bit of a hole in GotVoice’s offering. I look forward to the feature being added soon.

GotVoice has a free and premium ($9.95/month) version of the product. The company raised $3 million from Ignition Partners, Second Avenue Partners and Cedar Grove Investments in October 2005.

Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0

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.

Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.