Jott Service Ending May 3rd

For the past 2 years (at least) you've heard me discuss the advantages of Jott.  A voice to text solution that provided reminders, text messages, status updates to Twitter & Facebook, as well as lots of other services.  Jott made my semi-unmanageable life a tad more manageable and I was very grateful for what it provided.  Well today I got the following email saying the Jott service is ending in one month.

Disappointed?  You bet.  Jott has become a big part of my life and I'm really going to miss it. Now i've got to get busy finding a new solution.  Any ideas?  I'm listening.  If you've got a good "jott like" service leave a comment.

I have to give the folks at Jott credit for giving me plenty of lead time to find another service.  As outlined in their email, they've made this about as easy as a situation like this can be.

Here's the email:

Dear Jotters,

We are writing to give you advance notice that as of May 3rd, 2011, the Jott.com service will no longer be available. We know how much many of you have come to rely on the Jott service, so please know that this decision was not made lightly. Please be assured that we'll work to help you through this transition. We truly appreciate your business and enthusiastic support over the years, and apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.

In 2006 Jott emerged as a leader in mobile voice-to-text applications. Now, nearly two years after Jott's acquisition and a successful integration into Nuance, we will officially end the Jott service. This may seem counter-intuitive - success leading to a shutdown. But while it is an ending of sorts, the reality is that the technology, service, talent and imagination of Jott will continue on as part of a far broader set of services. The Jott team, vision and technologies are an integral part of a global business which includes partners such as AT&T, Rogers, Bell Canada, Vodafone, Cisco, Vonage, and many others.

The dramatic expansion of Nuance's voice-to-text services is clear evidence that consumers will respond to innovations that carriers offer, and with that in mind, we will focus our voice-to-text service investments on carrier and enterprise distribution, and no longer on Jott.com.

What to expect
After May 3rd, 2011 you'll no longer be able to access any of the Jott services - Jott Assistant, Jott Voicemail, or Jott for Salesforce. Until then, Jott will continue to run as you've come to expect. You will not be charged for this last month - we're making it free to all of our current subscribing customers, starting today, April 4th, 2011. Those of you who have paid in advance for annual or pay-as-you-go plans should expect to see a refund by June 2nd, 2011 for any unused portion of your plan as of April 4th, 2011.

How to download your information that's on Jott.com
After May 3rd, 2011 you will no longer be able to access your jotts, voicemails, or contact information. Until May 3rd, you can download any jotts or contact information that you wish to keep. We will send you a reminder, but recommend that you export the data that you want to keep as soon as possible via the following link:

- Export your messages and contacts to a .csv file

It's also recommended that you download any invoices you want to keep before May 3rd via the following link:

- Download your Jott.com invoices

Once you have everything that you want to keep, you can permanently delete your account at any time via the following link:

- Permanently delete your account

Making the transition
We want to make sure that you have the necessary information to transition to another service that meets your needs. We've included a list of some other innovative Nuance-powered voice-to-text apps and services:

• Dragon Dictation for iPhone, iPad and iPod touch from Nuance lets you speak text for emails, text messages, status updates and more, and see your text appear instantly.
• Dragon for E-mail for BlackBerry from Nuance lets you speak text for your emails, including the contact details in the 'To' lines, the subject and the body.
• Flex T9 for Android from Nuance is a unique for-in-one keypad app that lets you Speak, Trace, Write or Tap your text for emails, text messages, web searches - anywhere you input text.

Visit Dragon Mobile Apps to learn more about the apps listed above in addition to other exciting mobile apps.

Other partner options include:

• AT&T's Voicemail to Text is Nuance-powered voicemail direct from your carrier. (Compatible with all AT&T mobile phones except the iPhone.)
• Get Nuance-powered Vonage Visual Voicemail with Vonage's VoIP phone service.
• Bell Canada, Rogers and Telus also offer Nuance-powered voicemail to text.

Have questions?
Please view the FAQs for more information.

Again, we want to emphasize that this wasn't an easy decision, but we're proud of the broad popularity of voice to text services that Jott helped to drive into the industry, and the impact that Jott's team and technology will have worldwide through Nuance's reach. Thank you so much for being a loyal Jott customer and advocate.

Sincerely,
The Jott Team at Nuance