jott
Top 10 Amazon Power Shopper Tools
2:00AM Kevin Purdy | You already love the one-stop convenience of shopping online at Amazon.com, but chances are you’re not getting everything you can out of this feature-packed shopping engine. Did you know Amazon can email you suggestions from Mom’s wish list two weeks before her birthday? Automatically ship you a new case of toilet paper every two months? Refund the difference on the price of an item you purchased that went on sale? Several advanced Amazon features and third party apps and add-ons can help you get the best deals and the stuff you want delivered to your door right on time. After the jump, add our favourite 10 Amazon power-shopper tools to your cart. More »
Use Jott to Keep a Medical Diary
1:03AM Kevin Purdy | Web marketer and migraine sufferer Scott Clark is tracking all the daily variables—food, environment, activity, and the like—that surround his attacks with a migraine diary, and he’s found text-to-speech services like Jott (original post) are the best hassle-free tool for the job. Not only will Jott (or ReQall or most similar systems) automatically record the date and time of the entries, but it’s always accessible by cell phone, and one can create a dedicated “inbox” for migraines to separate the diary from productivity-related uses. For anyone looking to track a diet, health issue, or other things that happen away from the desk, it’s worth looking into. Photo by robtxgal. Migraine Diary Creation using Jott [Site Creations] More »
Check Home Prices on Your Cell Phone
6:00AM Gina Trapani | US-centric :Ever drive by a house for sale and wonder what the price is? Find out on the spot using voice transcription service Jott and real estate valuation search engine Zillow. You’ll need to register at Jott (it’s free), and to set up a Zillow link within your Jott account. Once that’s done, you can call Jott on your cell phone and speak the address of the home to get back a text message or email with the “Zestimate,” Zillow’s valuation. Hit the play button on the link to hear how Jott and Zillow work together to help you hunt for real estate. Jott Zillow Link More »
Jott Your Way To EverNote Bliss
3:00AM Lifehacker US Edition | US-centric: Editor: When you’re out and about and think of something you want to remember, you can leave yourself a voicemail you have to transcribe later, or you can use the excellent voice transcription service Jott. We’ve covered many ways you get can get things done over the phone with Jott, but today guest writer Brad Isaac has a new one: how to add to note-taking application EverNote with Jott. More »
Jott Beta for Blackberry Lets You Reply to Email by Voice
12:30AM Kevin Purdy | Blackberry users ony: Mobile speech-to-text service Jott has released a beta plug-in for Blackberry phones (series 8800, 8300 Curve, and 8100 Pearl only) that lets you respond to those ever-present emails with a “Reply with Jott” feature. The main advantage is that if you notice a message while driving, you can speak your reply and have it sent as an email, rather than drastically increased your chance at an accident. The program should work with most Bluetooth headsets as well, but users have noted that the program defaults to speakerphone mode upon hitting reply, although I don’t have a model myself to see if that’s configurable. Jott for Beta is a free download (while it’s in beta, at least), and be downloaded by pointing your Blackberry to jott.com/bb. For ideas on getting more out of Jott, see how to get things done over the phone with Jott. Thanks Joshua! Jott for Blackberry More »
Get Things Done Over the Phone with Jott
4:00AM Kevin Purdy | US-centric: At its most basic level, webapp Jott is a voice to text transcription service: you call Jott, leave a message, and Jott transcribes it and emails you or your contacts the text. That alone can capture the big idea that pops into your head on the drive to the office, but Jott can do a whole lot more than send you email. With Jott’s built-in links and tools that capitalise on its email-sending abilities, it can give nearly any personal organization system a go-anywhere, add-anything boost. Today we’ve got a quick primer on how to turn your phone into a ubiquitous capture tool that zaps info into all your favorite organisation apps by voice. Getting Started If you don’t already have a Jott account, have your cell phone handy and head to their sign-up page. Fill in the forms, confirm your email, add 1-866-JOTT-123 to your contacts and/or speed-dial and make the confirmation call. Once you log in, head right to “Contacts” and add “My Phone” (first name, last name) as a contact with only your own phone number. “Wait,” you might ask, “doesn’t Jott let you have all your messages sent to your phone as a preference?” Precisely—that’s every single Jott, which isn’t something I want to deal with. By having “My Phone” as a contact, you can skip your email inbox and leave yourself notes on your cell phone—which comes in handy when trying to remember a number or address while driving. Next, hit up “Groups” and think of any sets of emails and phone numbers you might want to message all at once using one phrase, such as “Co-Workers” or “Family.” After that, head to “Jott Links” and enable any the growing number of Jott-enabled webapps—including Lifehacker favorites like Remember the Milk and Google Calendar—you use. You owe it to yourself to check out Jott’s simple How To guide before calling, but the basic technique is simple. Dial the number, wait for the “Who do you want to Jott?” prompt, and then say either “myself” or one of the contacts, groups or “Links” you set up. After the confirmation and beep, you can speak clearly for less than 30 seconds, and your message will be translated by a mix of computers and humans (your privacy, they say, is assured) and then sent to the right inboxes, phones or web apps. I’ve had pretty decent luck with both the accuracy and turn-around on the service, but your mileage may, of course, vary. Filter and customise your Jotts Sending yourself email from a dial tone can be pretty handy, but only if your Jott messages don’t get lost amidst your other messages. You could filter all of them into one folder or label by the “@jott.com” sender, but why not organise your messages by topic? If your email server allows the common username+label@email.com format (detailed here), simply add that extended email as a Jott contact and set your filters accordingly (like I’ve done to record my feature ideas). If your can’t accept “+” emails, think of a unique phrase you can say in your messages—like, say, “gigantic awesome idea”—and have your email client file accordingly. If you find yourself using Jott a lot, and you can use this method to set up a Gmail/Jott to-do list. Group and print projects/ideas If you’d rather not mingle your wandering thoughts with your email inbox, you can create folders to store specific memos to yourself on the “My Jott” page. Say “Home,” “Work,” or whatever else when asked who you’re Jotting, and the messages will end up inside folders that have easy printing tools. iGoogle users can also go email-free with the Jott gadget. Make your organising tools more accessible Great organisation systems provide a single place to drop all your to-dos, events and thoughts, but what if you’ve just remembered a task while you’re walking to the store? Jott has you covered. The site provides built-in Links for many web-based systems previously mentioned on Lifehacker—including To-do manager Toodledo Expense tracker Xpenser Calendar and task organizer 30 Boxes Vitalist, a frequent commenter favourite If you have Google Calendar hooked up your own preferred scheduling app, just add it to your Links and you can call in your quick-add items (like, say, “9 p.m. Sunday Watch The Wire“) for easy posting. But perhaps the strongest Jott integration tool is Remember the Milk, which already can seamlessly insert itself into Google Calendar and Gmail. Put them all together and there aren’t too many places where you won’t be able to record your thoughts and ideas for later use. Keep Sandy close at hand (platonically) Sure, she’s technically an organisation tool as well, but the integration of Jott and
Set Your Agenda by Phone with reQall
8:00AM Kevin Purdy | New voice-to-text reminder service reQall is more than a little bit like the better-known Jott, but stands apart with wide accessibility and support for users in the UK and Canada. As with Jott, the primary feature is a phone number to call and speak a reminder to, which is then transcribed and made available a whole heck of a lot of ways—on your reQall and iGoogle pages, by RSS, through a standard iCal feed, a text message alert, or in a daily email agenda. As you might expect, the transcription isn’t perfect (see screenshot above), but fairly accurate and able to both time-shift and set reminders into categories. reQall is currently a free service (and the founders have stated that a free version will remain after beta), and can be signed up for by phone or at the web site. reQall [via MakeUseOf.com] More »
