Jott

http://jott.com/

Jott is like having a fancy word-recognition program on your computer.  Basically, you sign up, call the jott telephone number, dictate you message and your message is sent back to your email account or blog.  Useful if you are ever stuck in traffic and want to create a to-do list hands free!  Right now, Jott is a free service, but that may not last forever - so let's play around with it while we still can :-)!

**UPDATE (8/27/08): Jott just came out of beta.  Good news, we can still use the Basic version for free.  Bad news, we have to endure some ads and the messages will no longer appear in your email.  However, you can still call the Jott number, leave your message and have it appear in your Jott account.

**UPDATE (10/5/08):  Some people might have trouble accessing Jott (Thing #4) due to firewall/filtering issues at their library, if so just move on to the next thing (4b), Mint.com.  Thanks!

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If you need to send yourself a message & can't get to pen/paper/keyboard, just speed-dial the Jott phone number, speak a message, & it will store that message online at your Jott account.

It's better to set this up on your cell phone as Jott will only know you by the number you call from, but you can set up multiple numbers as well. It can be a really powerful tool (see the video below), but keep in mind that if you want your messages transcribed to text you'll need to talk a bit slower and as clear as possible.

Check out this short video:

Discovery Exercise:

1. Go set up a Jott account (basic account).

2. Call in a reminder to yourself to check out the Learning 2.1 blog next Monday.  Here are instructions.

3. Comment on your experience on the Maryland Learning blog.  Is this something you might use in your work or personal life?  Is Jott the answer librarians have been looking for to get our patrons to return their books on time ;-) ?!