A New Page In The Jott Notebook
by Staff Writer
January 16, 2009
The once free Jott Notebook will be free no more, since they have recently decided to charge for their app - effective February 2nd of this year - less than a month away. There has always been premium service that cost a monthly subscription fee, but now everyone will have to pay their own way.
The free Jott Notebook that is going away, so all you Jotters out there, it's time to decide if this app is worth paying for.
For those of you who don't Jott, here are the basics. It allows you to vocally record messages (up to 15 sec.) then it transcribes it for you in real time. Yes. It sends the message to an office somewhere and real people listen to what you said, write it down, and send it back to your iPhone in text form.
When AiA reviewed the app, it got a so-so review. The biggest issue was that, once a note has been transcribed, there was no way to send it via e-mail, text message or Wi-Fi - it was imprisoned on the iPhone.
Jott has added a few cool new features that will be included when they start charging. Here is where the decision-making gets tough.
Jott Voicemail
It converts your voicemails to text and sends them to you via email and text message. It looks like the people at Jott are paying attention to what people want. This service is already available as of Jan 15th (for a monthly fee).
Outlook Contact Syncing
Here, Jott allows you to sync your contacts with Outlook, making sure you always have your most up-to-date contact list at hand (or voice).
Reminder Updates
Again, Jott has been listening to customer feedback. The process to create a reminder has been simplified and shortened. One of the big differences is that you can now say 9PM when prompted and it won't ask you AM or PM. That was one of the bigger complaints Jott received about this app.
Jott Express
Another interesting feature to look forward to. The easy-to-use, simple and useful list manager is now integrated with voicemail (if you have the Jott Voicemail plan, of course).
What'll it be, Jotters? Do the new features make up for the lack of free-ness? Or is this just a marketing plan to make money (we all know how tight things are money-wise these days)? Now that Jott will be charging, how are they different from their competitors, like PhoneTag, Spinvox and GotVoice? As we can see, there are still some questions to consider. Is this a new page in the Jott Notebook, or a new book entirely?
