JOTT TRANSCRIBES CELL CALLS TO TEXT

Never before have we been so connected to each other. When it comes to instant personal communication these days, the cell phone and the Internet are how we do it. A mere century ago and back, our options to communicate with each other were limited mostly to writing letters, using carrier pigeons, sending the occasional smoke signal, drums, messengers, you get the idea. The past hundred or so years brought us the telegraph, the telephone and radio communication. But it was back in the last 25 or so years when someone got the bright idea of combining the radio and telephone technologies. That gave us the cell phone which is fast becoming the most popular personal communications device (mobile or otherwise) of the 21st century. And of course there's the Internet. The cell phone and the Internet comprise a major portion of the personal communications pie today.

Now it seems like the next big thing in personal communications is coming up with ways to combine the cell phone and the Internet. After all, look what happened when we combined radio and the telephone, right? So now we're seeing some interesting results. Voice Over Internet Protocol or VoIP is one example of how we can speak over the Internet rather than just type something. Services like Skype and Vonage are continuing to grow rapidly.
Using a computer and the Skype software for example, you can make free long distance calls to other computers connected to the Internet running the Skype software. Other services such as Vonage make telephone connections using the Internet for considerably less cost than traditional switched telephone services. But there are many new companies finding some alternative, clever ways to utilize the power of the cell phone and the Internet together. One of these is called Jott.

The basic premise of Jott is a simple one. You speak into your cell phone and Jott converts what you say into text. Now let's expand on that simple premise and you'll see how just that one ability lets Jott offer a wide variety of services. The basic service offered by Jott takes anything you say into your cell phone, converts it to text and sends it off to anyone as an email to be opened and read. I've tried it and it's amazingly accurate.
I've since come to discover how Jott does it. You begin by first setting up a free Jott account by going to their website (www.jott.com). Then all you do is call their toll-free number (866 JOTT-123). Jott knows who you are by the Caller-ID information and asks you to begin speaking. When your message is finished, the audio file is first passed through their automated speech recognition software. Then if they think it might need a little extra tweaking, it's passed along to their quality assurance team to clean it up.
As for privacy, Jott assures that their teams don't know who you are or even where the message is going. They work in a clean environment much the same way as medical and legal professionals use for the transcription of highly confidential documents.

Once it's passed, the message gets emailed to whomever you have set up within your account which could be one person, a group or even yourself.
Depending on how you've set things up within your Jott account, the transcriptions can be used as emails, as to do lists, reminders, inserted into appointment calendars, used in Amazon, Twitter and Blogger links as well as in Facebook and a variety of other feeds. The best way to see all of the options being offered by Jott is to go to their website and check them out. Many of the services are offered for free while others come with a charge. Jott even offers a free iPhone app on iTunes that streamlines the whole recording and sending process.

Combining the cell phone and the Internet is where the next big thing will be coming from so while you're giving Jott a try, be sure to keep an eye out for it. And don't forget to feed your carrier pigeon tonight.

www.jott.com

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