Two days ago I posted about Jott.com, a new service that transcribes voices messages into text.
I told you my head was spinning with ideas.
Well, in our little world here, we (in this case, Steve Zehngut And I) like to run with ideas until they die on their own. So, in that spirit we set out to test whether or not Jott.com could effectively be used to write a new kind of blog content delivery system that would allow blog posts to be "written" in real time. The notion of "in the moment" blog posts intrigued me.
Well, it worked.
Every post in The JotBlog Experiment was created by using Jott.com's ability to transcribe your voice messages into text.
Jott.com's John Pollard and Shree Madhavapeddi were extremely responsive to our requests for input on how to make it work correctly. And John their CEO spent a good deal of time on the phone with me today bouncing ideas back and forth. In the end, we had to find out own solution, but as Mariana Wagner said in a comment on the previous post, "I cannot stress how impressed I was with Mr. Pollard and how he dealt with this."
This is not flawless.
Jott.com is still in beta and the transcription is not always 100% accurate, but we think it's close enough even in it's present form. The added benefit of this kind of content creation is that the voice that created it gets linked to the content. There's an added personal connection value to that!
This was painless once we got it configured correctly. My head is still spinning and I plan on keeping The JotBlog Experiment up and use it to blast ideas on it's use. Feel free to peak in!
I'd love to hear your thoughts on this little experiment?
Jeff Turner aka respres

NICE! I am going to check out the JottBlog Experiment ... I will return.
Im back! So, you were able to Jott directly to your blog? How? I use the Wordpress platform as well and would love to know what plug ins I would need to make this a facet of my blogging life. And, yes, the audio option is so cool!
Mariana, the Wordpress Plugin you need is called Postie and you can find it here: http://www.economysizegeek.com/?page_id=395
We have not tested this, but according to Shree Madhavapeddi from Jott.com, those of you on Blogger, MSN Spaces, Live Journal and Typepad, the post via email should work without the reformatting issue we faced with Wordpress. The standard install of Wordpress strips classic html from emails, so the Postie plugin allows you to set options to allow the htim content. You can also set the default category the post falls into.
John, the text can't be edited verbally once it's been transcribed. At that point, you'd need to edit it manually.
JT
I ditto John's comments, and I'm starting to see the possibilities. WOW! I Love your ingenuity with all this technology.
I see you have already addressed the question of how the system handles uh and um, but what about pausing while recording, or linking several recordings into one longer recording, is that possible?
I'll have to check this out and the call me button...
Thanks
Martin
John and Martin, I'm just taking what someone else built and applying it... the rocket scientists are at Jott.com. We're just flying the rocket and thinking about all the cool things we can do with the rocket. :)
I spent a long time on the phone with Jott's CEO today and some of what he told me was under a verbal NDA, but I can tell you that the feature set will be improving and expanding in the not to distant future. Right now, you have a 15 second limit and you can't append recordings together. For the time being, this is perfect for short "in the moment" thoughts and ideas. Martin, I'm out most of the day tomorrow, but perhaps we can get together on Thursday?
Laurie, thank you. I was looking around the web and found that there was someone else in the world (imagine that) thinking along the same lines today. http://blogwithjott.blogspot.com/2007/03/jott-5-steps-for-using-jott-and-browser.html
The post is their instruction on how to do this inside Blogger. :)
Hmmm your head was spinning? How well I know that one!
Ok, so I have a title you can use for something about Jott.
How's this?... "Hit Me With Your Best Jott!"
So thanks Jeff... it's 5:11AM and you got my brain cooking already!
Jott It Forward.. (Geez there's another)
Me
Jeff,
Another new thing for me to investigate. And free at that. Thanks for sharing this.....Now all I need is the time to check it out. Won't be this week!
OMG! This is going to be such a great tool for my husband who does motivational and instructional speaking. He is sooo old school with writing on legal pads (faster than typing for this wonderful man!)..then getting the secretary to transcribe....I am going to impress him.
Thanks for the cool find Mr. Turner !
Jeff,
I think it is a good idea, I am always interested in this type of new age platform.
Please keep me informed about any patches that might be out on this ,I gather there are still some bigs to get out from the beta version.
I love it! Since I do my best thinking (and have my best ideas for blogs) while I'm driving down the road (well, I am a Texas gal and even when we're not real estate agents we do a LOT of driving), I'd already thought Jott would be perfect for saving them until I could turn them into an actual blog. This is gonna be fun! (Hmmm, wonder if Jott can transcribe "gonna" accurately . . . )
{SVW Hubba}...
Okay then. Now that you've taken all this to the next level I see where I may be able to use something like this.
The only problem I have is that I have a hard time wrapping my brain around all this 'new to me' technology.
One question. How private is all of this? Is there someone behind the scenes reading what's been transcribed?
I'm from the old school. The "nothing is really free" is stuck in the back my busy head. SVW...
TLW...ROAR!
Jeff,
Thanks for the post. I have bookmarked this to go the distance in testing it myself. Now on a more serious note, is there some metamorphosis afoot here? Alas have the socially conscious based posts given way to a new AR technocrat? :-)
TLW- that is a great question. The transcriptions are "kept" somewhere- hummm. Who and How..? This "tech stuff" gets me as well! Trying to hold on tight, seems like this train gets faster and faster!
Hope you have a great day!
Jeff T. .... wow.... soon we'll be blogging underwater. This is pretty cool. Thanks for sharing this information with us. This is stuff that I would probably not come across if it were not for Active Rain. thanks
I absolutely LOVE that I can count on finding the latest and greatest in real estate-applicable tech news here. Bookmarked to pursue in a quiet moment, Thanks!
Ooh. Tomato.
Very cool stuff, Jeff. Thanks for sharing. Love the JottBlog Experiment. I set up my blogger email so I can try Jotting to my blog. Will let you know how it works
Jeff
All, I'm out on the road today, so I'll be testing the quality in various situations. I just did a Jott Post from Starbucks here in Chatsworth, California to see how it transcribes "starbucks" and "chatsworth." I have a hard time believing it will know these are proper nouns and should be capitalized, but we'll see.
William Collins... socially conscious posts coming. :) I've been doing a lot of writing on one of my other blogs, StopChildSlavery.com. Lots of stuff swimming in my head and not enough hours in the day to get them all out and run a business at the same time! But boy am I enjoying myself...
Jeff, I'm very interested to see how this turns out. I'd love to have this service available to me. Thanks.
Hi everybody,
great to see the response to this. We will keep our eye on this space for feedback, and make sure that Jeff gets a heads up on our new releases.
If you want to write me directly, I'm jpollard (at) jotts.com . thanks!
John Pollard
CEO, Jott.com
Jeff,
Just as a though, it would be very cool to call a Telephone number leave a message that can be transcribes edited, posted and e-mailed
The telephone number would be an E-Scribe that is virtual with a Profile of options
1 - Save to Draft
2 - E-mail it to xyz
3 - Blast it as a SMS
Here's why the transcription is so good:
"If we were dealing with a very limited set of words, in a known context, spoken very clearly by a accentless person in a noise-free environment, then pure machine-driven Speech Recognition might have been the way to go. Instead, we wanted to be immediately useful and simple to adopt, letting any English speaker jott using an ordinary cell-phone, their natural voice, in a realistic setting (their car, running between meetings, etc.). So we use a mixed Human/Machine method for transcription, and that blend will change over time." - John Pollard, CEO, Jott.com
Quote from this article: http://www.entrepreneur27.org/archive/interview-with-john-pollard-of-jott
To Billie's question about privacy...
The human part of the transcription is being done by agents of Jott Network on the other side of the planet who don't know your name, account information, etc. They are not able to store or rerecord your jott, and they work in a monitored environment with "clean" desks (no writing materials, etc.).
But I understand your concern. If you left a jott that said "this is Billie Tutas, my SS# is xxx, and my bank account info is yyy", then yes, it's possible that this person over there could memorize the information, and later do something with it.
We have a lot of Lawyers using Jott, and they are rightfully pretty concerned about privacy. So far, we've seen them take great advantage of Jott, and easily adjust what they say about sensitive information.
Hope this helps..
J
John...
Thank you for addressing that extremely important question.
I will delve deeper into all of this and with Jeff's help I'll figure out how to use Jott.
My best,
Billie :)
TLW...ROAR!
Jeff, Gotta tell my friend, you turned me into a Jott junkie, and I infected three teen aged daughters (Note to John Pollard - sorry about that. Hope you've got lots of transcribers working with those three in the loop). When I read this my first thought was, still is, "curses, what a day to be in the office and to have forgotten my cell phone in the charger." That will probably make my manager happier though.
So, any thoughts on if it will become possible to access Jott through land line, tie into our cell numbered account, and still use the service?
I would love an answer to that question as well...
TLW...ROAR!
Thanks for the link up there! So how did you get rid of the [Jott] or [Jottcast] in the title?
Also, I'd definately pay for expanded service - ie. longer recording, customizable messages, etc. I'm just not sure how much. Also, some type of "linking" capabilities would be excellent... if that got implemented, I would never blog with anything else.
To the question about multiple phone numbers:
You can add multiple phone numbers to your account, including landlines. The only issue will be whether Caller ID is blocked (or not presented). Sometimes PBX systems don't expose that information (as I'm sure you've seen: sometimes you get a call, and there's no Caller ID, or there's just the area code). No Caller ID, no jotting from that number. It's on the list to have an option there, but right now it's down a ways.
Hope that helps.
John
About the office number: there's really no way for us to deal with that right now unfortunately. We have some ideas, but honestly you probably don't want the pooled number jotts going to your inbox .... unless it's a shared jott inbox... Not the most elegant solution to group collaboration :-).... and we like elegant solutions....
Thanks,
John
JT - I tried it with Blogger on my Fans of Coastal San Diego blog and it worked like a charm. Then I went in and edited the post to give it another title (taking out what JOTT adds automatically)that I thought would be more meaningful to readers. Easy.
Jeff
Sorry Maggie, no, only one person can register a number.
John
If I had the time to look into this I would...
It looks interesting.
I had to come back and share this. I set up the account and recorded my first message "Hi, I am really excited about using Jott."
I just checked my email and had received this: "Hi, I am really frightened about using Jott." I busted out laughing! I hope it's not an omen of some sort.
Must be that nu yawkah in me. Maybe I should try some marbles in my mouth...
Jeff-
Thanks for the great post and your testing...another blogger friend of mine had mentioned this in passing...but your post brought it to top of mind...I am off and Jottcasting...freaky, I love it. Talk about true transparency, your true self...imagine a service using streaming vid also. Soon and very soon we are moving to the Holographic image just like star wars....I'll be sending and shipping to all my little zeeps.
Jeff, I got so excited about Jott that I forgot to comment on this awesome simple but huge achievement. I tried it and I liked it.
While driving..just dialed the number several times and left myself messages, left myself phone numbers. It really works!!!
Went out to dinner with a group of friends tonight and every one of them signed up.
This is a real WOW, a real AH HA!
Keep us posted!
Margaret, I will... I'm going to keep posting thoughts to the experiment. New features will be launched very soon. The JottBlog Experiment was picked up by FutureLawyer, you can see their thoughts here:
http://futurelawyer.typepad.com/futurelawyer/2007/03/the_jottblog_ex.html
{SVW Hubba}...It's down for maintenance. Any idea when it will be back up?
Oh! Wow...
The comment I just made was #7000. Whoa. That's a lot of comments. I'm going to link to this post in my post about my comment record :)
Would like me to leave you alone now? Okay. I'll go bug someone else. SVW...
Elderberry? Ben. I just got done telling you to knock it off :)
TLW...ROAR!
I just got this email from Jott:
Dear Jotters,
We've had an amazing couple of months at Jott, with a ton of buzz and feedback. We've seen great press, including the Wall Street Journal, Law.com, Yahoo! Tech, Lifehacker.com, Informationweek, Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Seattle Times and many others. Jott's been hailed as 'insanely clever' and a 'godsend'.
Best of all, Jott's being used for a huge variety of things: hard core legal work to sales to blogging to rapping. It's what we dreamed about.
I'd like to thank you for your business. You've been a big part of our evolution.
Soon, we are rolling out a much improved version of Jott. There are small changes and big ones, and of course there is a long way to go. But we are confident you will like what you see. Unavoidably, we need to bring our service offline for some hours. Hopefully this will be done during a time when you don't need us.
After the upgrade is complete, I will send a much more extensive email explaining our new features. But what you need to know for when we come back up: when we ask 'Who do you want to Jott?', say 'myself' if it's a jott to yourself, and wait for the beep.
That's it.
More later, but in the meantime, I appreciate your patience during our downtime. Thanks,
John Pollard
CEO
Here is the link to Jeff Dowler's blog post using Jott.
http://fansofcoastalsandiego.blogspot.com/2007/03/jott-hi-this-is-jeff-i-wrote-about-jott.html
Jeff,
Like Sue, I also see uses for this in the medical field. How about a speed dial "jott" number in each patient's room. Each nurse, doctor, caretaker, family member and maybe even the patient could jott all updates. Each medication could be recorded, each treatment , IV change, I&O charting, etc.... The time saved, the accuracy, the cleanliness, etc...... The possibilities are endless.
Now you have my head spinning!
Jeff, I just signed up with Twitter. If it is right for you, I will try it.
I would love to see what John has to say about the medical ideas.
I'm an active reader of Scobleizer, and a fan of Robert Scoble's book Naked Conversations, so when he commented on The JottBlog Experiment in his Twitter stream tonight... I felt a bit giddy. Here was his comment...
”Thanks @ResPres for the Jott blogging experiment. I gotta try that (cell phone blogging). http://tinyurl.com/2sgyqr ” 7 minutes ago…
Which reminds me, I added TwitThis to The JottBlog Experiment and a Friends Timeline Widget in the sidebar... Twitter meets Jott. I like it.
You can get my Twitter stream here.
Did anyone ever develop a plugin for WP.org?
Missy... not that I'm aware.
Missy... the JottLinks pages list Wordpress and give you instructions on what to do if you want to send a jott to your self hosted worpress account. http://jott.com/jott/wordpress.html
"If you are hosting your blog locally, provide the URL of where the xmlrpc.php file is located. For example, if the xmlrpc.php can be found at http://url/xmlrpc.php, enter http://url next to "Blog URL:"."
I know Jeff is talking but all I hear is BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH....very similar to a different language
LOL!
Jeff, Did you know you were the 100th comment on your own post?
That's funny. I did not. But I am now fully aware that this is number 102. :)
All the old posts are coming alive again today. Missy was my 400th comment on the Do you SEO today! The native must be restless.