I’ve just been using Jott for two days, but I really like it. I’ve received a couple of good reviews from other users and so I’ll encourage my readers to give it a test drive. How many times do you have a bright idea in an odd location or think of something you need to remember to do at work? In a perfect world, you’d be carrying a pad and jot a note to yourself. (And in a perfect world, you’d even remember to take the note to work.)

I know I’m not the only one who has called my own number to leave myself a voice mail reminder. With Jott, I can do that in a much more usable form. I have Jott’s 800 number to call on my mobile phone. I can talk for up to 30 seconds. It will then send me an e-mail with the text of what I dictated by voice and a link to the audio file in case the voice recognition software didn’t get it correctly. By receiving text instead of just voice mail, it is easy to copy and paste into a calendar or to do list or e-mail to another. Of course that’s how a Jott to me works. But I can also add others to my contacts in Jott and identify them by voice command to send them voice-dictated e-mail as well. It will import contacts from many popular e-mail programs including GMail and Outlook. Visit Jott.com for more info or to set up your account.

There’s not much risk in trying it. It is free and you do not have to load any software on your phone or PC. You do need to to have access to both your e-mail and your mobile phone for verification when you set it up. Jott obviously retains the text for at least a time, so it is not for confidential matters. It is in public beta. There may be ads later. Jott has been available for a few months. I’m really glad I tried it.