Jott To Come Out of Beta and Begin Fee Based Service

This is one of those interesting dichotomies in geek life. You find a new service or application in Beta, you begin to use it and because it is in Beta it is free. It becomes one your goto tools in your toolbox. You live through the ups and downs of being in Beta, and then the developers reach that point where they are ready to pull that Beta tag off and say, here it is! Of course the rub for that means that what has been a free ride during the Beta, usually now becomes a fee based service or you have to purchase the app. You certainly can’t blame the app or service developer, because they have to make money off of their efforts sometime. But I always have mixed feelings when this occurs.

Jott, the voice and transcription service, is now coming out of Beta and beginning September 8, Jott will begin charging fees for its services. Yes, there will be a free ad supported version called Jott Basic, along with the two paid tiers of service. The details of the different Jott Service plans are in the graphic below (click to enlarge.)

You’ll also notice that Jott has added two new applications to its arsenal. Jott Express and Jott for Outlook. You’ll need to be subscribed to one of the premium plans to use either, which is the same for any of the other services that work with Jott.

Jott Express allows you to quickly add reminders and to do lists to your desktop. Jott for Outlook allows you to quickly create tasks, appointments, and draft emails when you are away from your computer.

How I use Jott

I’ve been using Jott in combination with EverNote for quite some time now and it really helps me in my day to day workflow. Usually when I driving from one place to another if I think of something I need to remember, I will call Jott, speak the thought or idea into Jott and then it becomes a note in EverNote. The transcription is usually bang on. I’ve used this combo with both my Windows Mobile device (Sprint Mogul) and the iPhone 3G and it has worked well on both platforms. The beauty of this is, that regardless of which device (mobile or desktop) I’ve got that Jott on all of my machines thanks to EverNote.

Jott is one of the cloud services that I find very useful. I don’t use it everyday, but when I do need it, it works very well. I’ll now have to evaluate my usage and see which of these plans work for me.