I think I found the perfect combination of Jott and Vitalist for my use. I signed up for a Jott account soon after watching Robert Scoble interview the developers on his show a while back. Lately, I’ve been increasing my use of Jott because I have to walk from office to office around the Capitol. Sometimes, I’m in a hurry and need to focus on walking faster instead of shuffling along entering a reminder on my phone. There was a tradeoff.
When I call in a Jott, I can walk faster because I don’t have to focus on the itty-bitty keys on my phone. I just walk and talk. The drawback is that I can’t read my Jotts on my phone. I have to wait for the Jott to come into email. Even then, I have to check both Vitalist and email to figure out what I’ve got to do. Then, I have to transfer my Jott entries into Vitalist manually.Very time consuming.
On the other hand, if I enter stuff straight into Vitalist, I have to walk slowly and be careful not to bump into people while typing. Vitalist has a feature that allows you to email an entry into your inbox. The drawback to this is that it’s the same as typing it into the Vitalist Mobile site. There is no significant difference. I’d still walk slowly while typing. Still time consuming.
The light bulb turned on a while ago. What if I could have Jott send the transcriptions to my Vitalist automatically? I logged into Jott and added Vitalist as a message recipient. I tested it out a while ago and it worked! I can call in a reminder to Jott, where my recording is transcribed. Then Jott sends an email with the note to Vitalist, where it shows up in the inbox. It’s perfect! Well, maybe not. Jott doesn’t transcribe 100%. Sometimes there are misspellings or completely different words than you intended. The good news is that it’s correctable, which is much faster to do than to have to manually enter every single item. These two services combined should be included in your arsenal for Getting Things Done.
Update
One thing that I wished I could have from Jott was a non toll-free number to call. This way, I could put Jott on my phones myFaves list. T-Mobile myFaves does not let you add toll-free numbers, so all calls I made to Jott were eating up whole minutes for 15 second calls. I posted the request in the Jott forum and got a response with the Jott number. You can call 347-523-8843 on your mobile if you have a friends list or myFaves that lets you make unlimited free calling. This way, you save Jott money on long-distance charges and you save your minutes.
5 Comments
I got this comment from a reader:
I replied:
He then added:
I appreciate the tip.
Thanks Jeff. I hope it is working well for you. I still use it, especially when driving.
Shane, you may have seen this Consumerist post, but wanted to point it out. It might help your Fave 5 issue.
http://tinyurl.com/2dp747
Only thing is, since Google bought GC, there are no new accounts at the moment.
Thanks Darren. I submitted a request to reserve a Grand Central number, so as soon as they open up to new users I will give it a try. I’m sure I could use this number for incoming calls.
Unfortunately, I use Jott when I’m not at the computer, so this tends to be outgoing calls, not incoming. However, with myFaves, it’s not a problem thus far.
Hello,
I work for Brain Murmurs, Inc., a Research and Development company based out of Seattle, WA. We’ve built a web service called Mentat to help integrate personal task management with collaborative team projects, especially for small businesses and entrepreneurs.
I saw that you have to manually enter the tasks from Jott into Vitalist, so I think you might be excited to hear that our system has complete Jott integration and will automatically create new “tasks” for you in your Mentat todo list. You can use Jott to capture a task from your cellphone via a voice call, and browse and update tasks if you have an iPhone (and soon on other mobile clients as well). Being able to manage all of this within one simple application, from the desk or on the move has really been a boost for our productivity.
Mentat is available as a free web service for personal users. A richer feature set can be purchased at low monthly rates for small teams&businesses. Large corporate options are also available.
You can read a more complete overview of the Mentat product at our corporate website:
http://www.brainmurmurs.com/products/mentat/
Feel free to test drive Mentat now. We’re up and running!
http://mentat.brainmurmurs.com
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