I’ve written about a free service called jott.com before because I use it to capture ideas when I’m driving or reading the Sunday paper in bed. I just hit a phone number and speak my message and then I get the message transcribed and delivered to my email – or, and this is really helpful, to my virtual assistant or anyone else I have set-up, including groups of people.
Recently they’ve been hooking this service up to other services allowing you to a whole bunch of useful things just by making a phone call. You can set-up and post to Twitter, Wordpress.com blogs, TypePad.com blogs, and Tumblr blogs just by leaving a voice mail. You can add events to Google Calendar or 30 boxes calendars while you drive down the highway. You can create BackPack, Vitalist and Remember the Milk to-do lists. You can jott any question to Mosio and get an answer.
As more of these services are added this tool just gets better. A couple thoughts – this is for short messages, don’t try to create a 300 word blog post. It doesn’t always get it right, speak slowly and enunciate like you’re talking to your grandpa from the old country. It automatically creates a link to the audio file though so people can hear the message in your voice too.
I just got on my JOTT and I am surprised at its accuracy...you do have to speak slowly but for the most part (not great on proper names sometimes), it's very good. You definitely don't want to assume it's right and just copy the text from the email they send you into another email or blog post (review and verify first!!) BUT I have enjoyed the simplicity and practicality (kinda like duct tape!)
My wife and I use it with each other now and she really likes it to. I like that she will get an email AND she can play back the audio as well (if the transcribed message doesn't make exact sense, or if she just wants to hear my voice...believe it or not, somebody actually does like to hear me talk!)
I look forward to using it on my blog posts .... not for flawless transcription, but to get an idea going (when I'm driving and I have one of those brainstorm moments). I like the idea too that I might create a quick "word from the road" when I'm traveling and my blog readers can get an audio post, something a little more personal and different.
Thanks for the heads-up on Vitalist.com - they hadn't made my radar yet and they look useful.
I've been using Jott since I saw Robert Scoble interview their founders some time ago and I LOVE Jott now. I've turned lots of friends into happy users.
Tumblr is also excellent but recently they got a bit derailed because they started limiting RSS feeds that you can use to aggregate your own online content (down to 5 from unlimited). You can ask for more but it took them 3 weeks to get back to me and I moved to an alternative by then. Why should we care as marketers? A lot of people use services like Tumblr as a lifestreaming tool so the RSS limit is a problem. I found a good Tumblr alternative that I've been using for a few weeks now called Soup. It's at http://soup.io and you can see an example by viewing my lifestream at http://julians.name
This post reminded me to ask you what technology/application do you use to record your phone conversations for your padcasts? Are you just using a Skype voice recorder or something attached to your fixed line? Whatever you are using, the recording quality is always good so I'm sure many of us would be interested to know.
Cheers
Sam
John Jantsch
Sam - I'm afraid after lots of software and hardware trials I came up with a very low tech solution that works the best. Because all of my shows are interviews over the phone it presents some real quality issues.
So, I got a high quality mic and put it to the speaker of the phone and conduct the interviews on speakerphone with me speaking into the mic.
Then I edit and do a little work in Garage Band.
I've never had any luck with Skype from a call quality standpoint.
Sorry if that blows my cover as being a hi tech guru!
Wow, I'm unfamiliar with these services, but they look like they could be very useful in helping market one's book. Especially the JOTT service as little marketing ideas pop into the head.
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