(ajaynes1@mscd.edu)
Over the last week, I've been reviewing a Web service called Jott. It is a speech to text transcribing application which allows users to stay updated on many popular Web applications such as Twitter, Facebook and various to-do applications via phone. Sounds cool, right?
Setup is fairly straightforward, and while Jott recently did away with their free, ad-supported plan, I opted for the cheaper of the two offered plans at $3.95 a month. Subscribing to their service gave me a plethora of options, including adding links to a multitude of sites that I could post to over the phone. The drawback of the lower-priced plan, however, is you only get a 15-second window to record your message, as opposed to the 30-second window with the higher-priced plan.
My first impression of this application was that it would take away the urge to text while I was driving. I know, I know ⎯ talking on the phone while driving is not really safer than texting, but at least my eyes are on the road while I’m updating Twitter or whatever.
Over the course of the week, I tried several different features including updating my Facebook and Twitter, adding events to my calendar and e-mailing or texting friends in my imported contacts list.
Jott did reasonably well with understanding contacts’ names, dates, times and other sorts of common phrases. But it garbled symbols, and other characters normally not phonetically expressed. Not surprisingly, Jott had difficulty understanding accents and often replaced entire words with its best guess. The trick, I found, was to enunciate as clearly as possible; however, I often wasted so much time trying to speak clearly that I ran out of time to record.
My biggest complaint from the beginning when updating Twitter was Jott’s inability to understand spoken symbols such as @. To get it to translate correctly, you actually have to say “at symbol.” This issue, combined with trying to reply to tweets, started an aggravating pattern. In order to reply to bob1’s tweets, I would literally have to say, “At symbol, no space, bob, no space, number one,” and then the rest of my message. This eats up your 15- second recording time considerably. And there is no way for you to check whether Jott transcribed the message correctly before it is transmitted, I would get weird responses to messages that were “Jotted” incorrectly.
Jott’s back-end is streamlined and quick to respond. Many of the menus are difficult to find at first, but with use, it becomes easier to navigate.
Granted, Jott presents a service made to fit the needs of a specific niche of mobile Web users. As one of those users, I expected a more finely tuned and streamlined application, especially as it was developed for use with a Blackberry more than a year ago. Instead of being impressed with Jott, I came away from it feeling like I wasted my time. Talk about a supposed time saver doing exactly the opposite.
www.jott.com
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