Peace of Mind Organizing

Jott: Free no more

22 August 2008

One of my favorite free services, Jott, is now out of beta and is no longer available as is free of charge. Jott allows you to dictate messages via your cell phone that are then emailed to you. I first blogged about it last January and posted a somewhat amusing cautionary note in March.

You’ll now be required to pay $3.95 per month in order to receive the service that had been free. There is a free version, but in order to see the messages you’ve Jotted, you have to go to their website, which (for me, anyway) is practically worthless. I need the in-your-face aspect of having the messages emailed to me.

I know it’s not much money, and I know that these people deserve to earn revenue for their great idea, but it irks me. I’ll probably pony up, because I do find Jott very helpful. And I’m not even using all its features. All I’ve been doing with it is dictating notes to myself or my husband from my mobile phone. In addition, I could be creating to-do lists or calendar items (using Jott apps for Outlook or iPhone if I used those things). I just realized upon exploring the new services offered that I can also call Jott, say “Amazon,” name a product and they’ll email me the Amazon search results for that product. That’s just one of the Jott links they’re now offering.

In addition to the $3.95 a month plan, there’s a premium $12.95 a month plan that allows for longer messages (30 seconds, as opposed to 15 seconds) and includes a Jott for Blackberry application. They also offer a pay-as-you go service, for 89 to 99 cents a minute, depending on how many minutes you buy (10 to 100).

If you used Jott during its Beta phase, you can get a 26 percent discount when purchasing a one-year subscription by entering your cell phone number into the Promo Code box when signing up. That brings the first year subscription down to $34.95.

While it’s hard for me to pay for something I used to get for nothing, Jott really is offering a valuable service for a low fee. I wish their developers success.

Tagged with: jott, productivity, time management

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