It’s been a while since the last update to the Jott service (over six months!), but last night we made up for it in a big way. This is an incredibly broad release for us, touching many different aspects of the service, and we think you’re going to be pleased.

Read on to learn about all of the great new features we added…

Jott Refer-a-Friend Program
The Refer-a-Friend program rewards you for getting your friends to sign-up for Jott. It’s something we’ve been meaning to do for a long time: since Jott’s growth has come from word of mouth, and this rewards what many of you have already been doing.

Simply invite your friends to join Jott – we make it really easy. We’ll give each of them a free month of service and, better yet, for each new friend that signs up you’ll receive reward credits towards Jott.

Start inviting your friends here: http://jott.com/invite.aspx

For more information, read this FAQ.

Jott Assistant Product Improvements

Voicemail Snapshot
Voicemail Snapshot turns, well, a snapshot of your voicemail into text and sends it to you by email or text message. Best of all, it’s free for Jott Assistant customers.

Set up Voicemail Snapshot here: https://jott.com/selectplan.aspx?v=v

Salesforce Lite Jott Link
On the heels of launching the popular Jott for Salesforce service, we’ve added a Salesforce Lite Jott Link that lets you update your Salesforce.com to-do list w/ your voice. And, like Voicemail Snapshot, it’s free for Jott Assistant customers.

Add the Salesforce Lite link here: http://jott.com/myjottlinks.aspx?v=business

Recurring Reminders
Setting reminders that repeat at daily, weekly, monthly or even yearly intervals has been one of the all-time most requested features – and now it’s available.

Recurring reminders are perfect for birthday, anniversary or weekly meeting reminders.

To set a daily or weekly recurring reminder, just call Jott (1-866-JOTT-123), say “Reminder” and say “every day” or “every Tuesday” when asked “Which day?”.

You can set a bi-weekly, monthly or annual recurring reminder online at Jott.com. Just choose your interval from the “Repeat?” drop-down when setting a reminder.

Set Reminders by Email or SMS (aka I Want Sandy features)
Like a lot of Jotters, we were disappointed when I Want Sandy closed her doors last year. So we’re very happy to add one her best features into Jott – setting reminders via email or text message.

To create a reminder to “Eat lots of turkey” on Thanksgiving, simply send an email to jott@jott.com with the subject:

    Eat lots of turkey @ 11/26/2009 4:00PM

You can create the same reminder by texting the subject above to 40101 (the Jott short code).

For more information, read this FAQ.

Ping.FM Jott Link
Ping.fm lets you update all of your social networks at once. And now, the Ping.fm Jott Link lets you update all of your social networks with your voice.

Add the Ping.fm link here: http://jott.com/myjottlinks.aspx?v=social

Jott Voicemail Improvements

Voicemail 80 plan
For our avid Jott Voicemail customers who’ve been asking us for a larger voicemail plan, we added the Voicemail 80 plan which includes 80 voicemails per month.

Add the Voicemail 80 plan here: https://jott.com/selectplan.aspx?v=v

Voicemail Call History
Your Jott Voicemail email notifications now include a summary of the last 3 voicemails you’ve received from a given caller. This is great if you forget exactly when you last heard from somebody, and makes it a snap to go back to check it out.

Link your Voicemail to Salesforce
For those professionals that essentially live in Salesforce.com, you can now have your transcribed Jott voicemails automatically forwarded to your Salesforce.com account. This is included in any Jott Voicemail package, and is a great way of staying on top of your communications.

To link your voicemail to Salesforce, just add the Salesforce Lite link and update your voicemail settings here: https://jott.com/settings_voicemail.aspx

Jott for iPhone Improvements

Jott for iPhone v3.0
In addition to working with the iPhone OS 3.0, version 3.0 of the Jott for iPhone app is 5x faster (thanks to audio streaming), has a streamlined recording process (1-click to start recording) and sports an improved user experience.

If you haven’t already done so, download the app here.

Anyway, that’s a ton of new stuff, and there is more on the way.

Best,
John, Shree and the whole Jott team

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We expect the maintenance to take one hour (until 9PM Pacific), during which time you won’t be able to create Jotts (from the phone number, website or iPhone and BlackBerry apps). However, any voicemails that you receive during that time will still be recorded, but you will not receive the notification until the maintenance is complete.

We apologize in advance for any inconvenience.

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We experienced an issue with one of our systems that may have affected your use of Jott for iPhone, Jott for Outlook and Jott Express from approximately 5pm last night to about noon today, Pacific Time. All other Jott services we not affected.

Providing you with outstanding service is our goal every day, and we apologize for this unplanned outage. Everything possible is being done to ensure this does not happen again. All systems are back up and running now and you should not experience any more delays. Once again, many apologies for this outage.

All the best,
- John, Shree & the rest of the Jott Team

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You may have already gotten wind of this, but I am thrilled to announce that Jott is now part of Nuance Communications, an innovative company which has established itself as the world leader in speech and imaging solutions.

You might not know it, but Nuance’s technology will literally ship on a billion phones this year, and they are trusted by a very broad array of customers, from huge cell phone makers, to Doctors dictating patient records.

The obvious question: “Why did you sell?”

When Shree and I started Jott back in 2006, we wanted to build a service that millions of customers would use because it solved real problems — simply and enjoyably. Thanks to you, we made a great start.

In our conversations with Nuance we heard and noticed some very important things:
• they had an expansive vision for what we could do together, both in terms of reaching many millions of customers, but also in terms of innovation that was still to come.
• they loved Jott, holistically, from how we build products to how we communicate with the people who use them.
• they had an incredible set of people and technologies that we wanted to plug into. And,
• they really loved the team, and wanted us come in and work on some key businesses.

Shree and I knew immediately that Nuance could help us meet our goals, and visa versa.

It’s never easy for founders to make a decision like this, and it wasn’t easy for us. We’ve lived and breathed this business. But this is a great outcome for everybody, and I’m super excited about continuing the Jott tradition, getting to work with incredible new technologies, and helping you all get more done.

All of Jott’s services, including Jott Assistant, Jott Voicemail and Jott for Salesforce, will remain available, and existing customers will experience no interruptions in service.

Thanks for your support. We couldn’t have done it without you, an absolutely first rate team, and the support of our family and friends.

John and Shree

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Also, stay tuned for some major upgrades in the next month to the Jott Assistant service including a new, much improved (thanks to your feedback) version of Jott for iPhone.

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As usual, the voice experience on the phone doesn’t mess around: it gets you in and out as quickly as possible so you can get on with your life. If you want, there are easy shortcuts that speed things up even more. Oh, and the voice-to-text transcription is still the best there is. So give it a try today (we’re currently offering a month-long free trial for the service). Whether you’re happy living in Salesforce, or want to minimize your time with it, we think you’ll love this latest addition to the Jott family.

(You might notice that it is more expensive than other Jott services, so we want to get out in front and tell you why that is…)

In the last year, we’ve developed several custom voice-to-text input solutions (including CRM) and have a lot of experience in how they’re used. Because our solutions make complex and tedious inputs almost effortless, they get used a ton…and that makes them a little more expensive to deliver and support (the customer ROI is still amazing). The good news is that if you want to use both Jott Assistant Pro and Jott for Salesforce, you don’t have to buy both. That’s right: when you sign up for Jott for Salesforce, you get Jott Assistant Pro included for free.

If there’s functionality you’d like to see added, please let us know. There’s a LOT more on the way soon, so stay tuned.

Thanks all!

- The Jott Team

PS — If you’re interested in a custom integration for other applications, please let us know.

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This wasn’t nearly as easy a decision to make as we thought. We are
going for the latter and choosing “Jott Assistant” as the product-soon-
to-be-formerly-known-as-Jott (eat your heart out Prince). For
existing customers, don’t worry: the product will continue to be the
best mobile productivity assistant around and will continue to improve
all the time, you will just see it re-branded as Jott Assistant here
and there.

An interesting side note - we all believe internally that the name
change raises the bar a bit. We’ve always focused on providing a
quality service that makes your life easier, but now there’s a pretty
direct comparison (an assistant) that we have to live up to. While we
won’t be able to make coffee anytime soon (that’s a skunk works
project that’s testing well in Seattle), our assistant works 24 hours
a day, never forgets, complains or takes sick days, and can be yelled
at without repercussions – all for a few nickels a day.

New customers, if you were looking for “Jott” don’t change the
channel: you’ve found it in “Jott Assistant”. But you should also
check out the free trials of “Jott Voicemail” and “Jott [wait for it]”
– services to help you improve your life and your business.

You’ll notice all of these changes over the next several days.

Thanks a lot!

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We experienced a system outage today from one of our telecommunication providers that resulted in services being unavailable from approximately 12:40 PM to 1:20 PM Pacific Time. Providing you with outstanding service is our goal every day, and we apologize for this unplanned outage. Everything possible is being done to ensure this does not happen again. All systems are back up and running now and you should not experience any more delays. Once again, many apologies for this outage.

All the best,

- John (CEO), Shree (CTO), and the rest of the Jott Team

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Enjoy!

- The Jott Team

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We had a release yesterday that added the ability for you to get your voicemail sent automatically to a host of Jott Links (not all of them, as some don’t make sense, but a significant portion for sure - full list below).  So now, if you want to get your voicemail as tasks in Remember the Milk, Toodledo, etc., you can automatically have them forwarded there.  You can even get a sort of visual map of when your voicemails came in by sending them to Google Calendar or 30Boxes.

First, you’ll have to just add your Jott Links (same process as before).  Then, go to your voicemail settings page, scroll down to the “Send notifications to:” drop down and select the link you want.  Then save your settings.

The Jott Links that can receive voicemail are:

Remember The Milk, Toodledo, Nozbe, Vitalist, 43Actions, Heap, Mentat, Enleiten, Google Calendar and 30 Boxes.

We hope you enjoy the new functionality!

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