♫ It’s magic, it’s magic, it’s magic.
Strange magic,
oh, what a strange magic…♫

Words and Music by: Roy Wood, Jeff Lynne and Bev Bevan, recorded by Electric Light Orchestra

My good friend Jim Calloway put me onto Jott in his blog. I think it is one of the coolest things I have run across lately. Being in Canada, it took a bit more to get it to work, but all that meant was a bit of perseverance. First I will talk about the Jott concept and then we will move to how to actually get it to work.

Most of us wish we had a digital recorder with us when we are ‘out and about’ when an idea hits. However, if you are like me, the best that you have is a cell phone. Here is where the elegance of Jott comes in. You dial the Jott number that is programmed into your cell phone (*hopefully by speed or voice dial*) and connect to Jott. Then you select the person to whom you wish to Jott a note (being yourself or you can select one person from your list of contacts or you can select a group of contacts that you have established with Jott) and dictate up to a 30 sec note. Jott then transcribes your dictation and emails your note to the selected contact or group. It is really that simple and easy. The best part – it is free!

Here is how to get it to work (*with directions from both the USA and Canada*):

Step 1: Go to the Jott web site (www.jott.com) and register your name, email address and create a password (and approve the terms of service).

Step 2: Then follow the directions on the Jott web site and validate your email address (they send you a confirming email to your email address).

Step 3: You have to validate your cell phone number by calling the Jott number. In order to do this, you have to have ‘number blocking’ turned off or use the prefix that your cell phone company provides that will ‘unblock’ your number for certain calls. In my case you have to prefix *82 in front of the Jott telephone number. I also found that I had to call the specific number that they list for Canada rather than the USA number. Once I combined both of these, the Jott service validated the cell phone.

Step 4: This is optional – but once validated on the Jott service, you can establish a list of contacts to whom you wish to ‘Jott’. This serves as a way to quickly “Jott” to someone on your list a quick memo.

Following the speed dialing of the Jott number on your cell phone and the selection of a contact (lets assume it was yourself), you would dictate up to a 30 second memo (you can do this over and over for a longer thought!). Later…once you are on your computer, you can see the emails of your Jott memos in your in-box…from there, you can click on them to take you to the Jott website. Signed into the Jott site, you can see your transcribed messages (and listen to the original voice recording) and send the eamil memo to others (including the audio file), set reminders, click them off as being ‘done’ etc.

This ability to ‘Jott’ yourself a email note from wherever you may be, using only your cell-phone, is as close to magic as we can come. Of course Arthur C. Clarke said that: “Any sufficiently advanced technology is virtually indistinguishable from magic.”