Send email, text messages, and reminders with your voice

If there is one thing I’ve learned 17-months into fatherhood, it’s that I no longer seem to be able to keep a thought in my head! Between running a busines, working with clients, the endless list of things to do around the house, and frolicking with my little boy – my brain is often full.  So I realized that if I don’t write things down immediately – within seconds – whooosh – it’s gone.

The problem is that many times when I think of these things I am driving, on line at a store, or somewhere else where it’s just not practical to write down my reminders.  My savior and solution has come through exploring some new services available that let you use your cellphone to easily send yourself a reminder, or send emails and text messages to others all with just your voice!

The two services I have tested in this space are Jott and Dial2Do.

They both were basically the same way – after setting up an account (which only takes a few minutes) you activate your cellphone by entering a special confirmation code that they will send as a txt message to your phone.  Once you do that you can add contacts to your account for the people you are likely to want to send emails or text messages to.

Then you simply call the special phone number they give you.  It will ask you a few quick questions like “what do you want to do?” you reply email, txt, or reminder.  Then it asks “to who?” You say the persons name – it confirms it has the correct person from your contact list and then it beeps. You simply speak your message or reminder into the phone and when you are done it sends it off to the email address or cellphone you requested.

I was floored at how accurate the voice transcription is – sure it may get a few words wrong here or there – but overall I’m very impressed.  They use a combination of computers and human operators to improve accuracy.

I started out using Jott when they were free but they recently moved out of Beta and are now charging for all but their most basic service (which only allows 15 seconds of record time per call and will not send email or txt messages – instead it only records your reminders to their website).  While I feel their rates are reasonable (you can get accounts for either $3.95 or $12.95 a month depending on the features you want). I wasn’t sure just how much I would use the service so I searched for another free option.

That’s when I found Dial2Do.  They are still in beta and are offering all of their services free which includes 30 seconds record time per message and the ability to send yourself email reminders,  as well as text messages and email to others.

Jott and Dial2Do both provide the ability to intergrate with some 3rd party services like twitter however Jott offers a longer list of services it works with such as the ability to add items directly to Google Calendar, Remember the Milk, and a host of others.

While these are useful what I find myself using the most is the simple reminder function which lets me speak a quick reminder which then gets sent to my email account. I use it so often in fact that I made it one of my speed dials.

So now when I’m driving around I can quickly call the Dial2Do number and say Reminder followed by “Get more mulch for the backyard” or  “Don’t forget to call Jason about updating the home page of our website”.  Then when I am back at my computer the reminder is waiting their for me in my inbox. My flaky memory problem is solved and I have found an exciting new way to be more productive with my cellphone!