I’ve just spent a half hour searching for a video clip to get my message across, but it seems that Saturday Night Live has not yet added any of Norm MacDonald’s ‘Fake News’ segments to its growing list of online content. I suppose even comic news doesn’t age very well. For those who do remember these weekly reports, will recall that MacDonald seemed to corner the market on a specific brand of comedy I’d like to call ‘jerk humour’. Throughout his reports he would stop, pull out his trusted (and sometimes invisible) tape recorder and announce the most personal thoughts to millions of viewers.

The schtick always started the same way: “Note to self”. As soon as I saw it, I knew I needed one of my own – not only for the jerk humour opportunities, but mainly so that I could capture those sudden memory flashes of a new idea or another item for the grocery list.

EDIT: Apparently this behaviour is common with my lawyer friends. They claim that voice recording to file documents and transcribe letters is much more efficient this way. I can’t personally believe it, but I suppose they don’t have the carpal tunnel concerns. Any thoughts?

Well it seems that progress has finally caught up in the form of Jott. Jott has just launched in public beta and I can already see that I’m going to be ‘that guy’ talking to himself. The concept is just so simple that it hurts:

Step 1: Call the Jott toll-free number
Step 2: Say something
Step 3: Receive the message as an email (transcribed!)

I’m blown away by this tool, and have already annoyed many people showing it off. Early experiments have shown it doesn’t deal well with profanity (late night demos lead to NSFW emails!) but nearly everything else is dead on transcribed. Now that I’ve joined the cellphone culture, I have the ability to send myself a quick note whenever and wherever. For a guy like me with my mind racing on all cylinders, it’s one more way to help keep track of it all.

The truly dangerous part is that you can define other recipients and send them notes as well. Instead of “Note to self” it becomes “Note to kids” or “Note to co-worker”. Something tells me the impulse to spew ideas to colleagues (great new idea: LOLcats feature film!) may not be the best method.

Another nice thing about it is that I can already see a nice way to integrate a business model without sacrificing the user experience at all. Every email I receive has a fresh idea transcribed into text and ended with a signature: “Brought to you by Jott Networks, Inc.” – I can immediately see how embedded advertising in the footer of each message (related to the keywords in your message, of course!) would be an unobtrusive way to recoup some revenue once traffic starts to build.

This one, I’ll admit scares me a little though. Not sure if I’m quite ready to post here from my phone yet…

P.S. Just came across this tool called Stikkit. Could this Jott-Stikkit combo be the killer app personal assistant I’ve always been looking for? I haven’t tried it yet in concert – so stay tuned for an update soon.

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