Jott for Your Mobile Life

It appears that Jott has been busy making their service more and more functional. For a free service, they sure give you a lot. They have added more links to other useful services I thought I would share with you. The implications of Jott’s willingness to work with other sites is that it enables you to break free from a computer for simple things. You can live a very mobile lifestyle with your main weapon being your cell phone. You can use your voice, text messages, and mobile websites to get much of your work done, or at least remember to do it. I mention Jott because I love using the service. In case you are wondering, Jott transcribes your voice message and emails it to you, your friends, a group, or some service like those listed below. You speak it; and they write it down.

Services That Work With Jott

• Twitter is a messaging system that answers one question: what are you doing now? Twitter allows you to keep in touch with friends all at once easily via text messages or instant messenger.
• Yahoo Groups is a well known forum-type of service. You can Jott your replies rather than type them in.
• Jaiku is a Twitter-like service. I’m on it, but don’t use it as much.
• Zillow allows you to look up real estate estimates. I don’t use this service as it is not in my line of business. If you are in real estate, you may want to check it out and combine it with Jott.
• Blogger, as the name implies, is a blogging service. If you are already on Blogger, Jott is handy. The only drawback is that you can only record for 30 seconds. So Jott is good for very brief blog posts.
• LiveJournal is a blogging service just like Blogger.
• Tumblr is in between Twitter and a blog. It’s just a place to collect photos, short notes, and other media.
• 30 Boxes is supposed to help you get your act together. It has a calendar, to do lists, and such. I just never quite got into it. However, if you are on 30 Boxes, you now have the ability to use it via voice command through Jott.
• Recommendr is a site that is supposed to help you make informed buying decisions. I haven’t used it, but it sounds promising.
• Toodledo is another service I haven’t used. It seems like a to do list service.
• Remember the Milk another to do list service. Nothing wrong with it; I simply use another service.
• WordPress is turning out to be the champion blogging platform. You can use it like Blogger, LiveJournal, or TypePad.
• Google Calendar is a service I just linked to my Jott today. I think it promises to be a great addition as I am neck-deep in Google services.
• Sandy is a virtual assistant service, which I gather is like 30 Boxes. I signed up for it today. It looks promising, especially with Jott.
• Xpenser is another service I linked to my Jott today. I totally love the concept. Xpenser allows you to keep track of your expenses. Now with Jott, you can call in your notes and save yourself some data entry.
• Gumiyo is for mobile online classifieds. I have not looked at it, so can’t say how useful it would be. You are welcome to share your experience with them.
• Trapster seems like an interesting service. It allows you to report where speed traps are located. I rarely speed, so find this to be of limited use. However, some of you scofflaws may find it handy for sharing intelligence amongst each other.
• Mosio allows you to ask any question and have it answered by real people. Not much use for me as I know everything.
• Vitalist is one of my absolute favorite services. When I signed up with them, I was looking for a GTD system. Their implementation came the closest and is the easiest to use. Plus, it has a mobile site I can check after Jotting into my inbox.
• TypePad is another blogging service.

So What’s the Big Deal?

The big deal is that any combination of these services can be accessed via your phone. This is not quite the Star Trek computer that can do anything via voice command. It is pretty darn close. Jott started off as a service for itself. I think perhaps their direction has changed from a simple reminder service to being a gateway for mobile people to access their online accounts while out and about.

Jott can handle most of the services that these other sites offer. Jott has reminders, you can create a to-do list folder, you can create a folder for notes, you can message people by email or text message, you can even message groups of people like Twitter. Many of the things these outside services offer are already a part of the basic Jott service. What has made Jott infinitely more useful is that they link to the services listed above. This makes Jott a useful interface to our favorite services. What is more, they probably have more subscribers for that reason than simply providing a standalone service.