Who's ticked at Jott?

I'm ticked at Jott. Jott.com came out of beta this week. Suddenly. So suddenly that I suddenly lost about 98% of the functionality of my Jott account. Oh I can get it back, all right-- for a price. I guess I should've known it was coming-- Jott is too awesome of a service to remain free-- but still, a little warning would've been nice!

In case you haven't heard of Jott.com, it's an amazing productivity application. It's a transcription service, where you can use your cell phone (or any phone) to call a toll-free number, and send text messages, e-mails, make notes to yourself... with your voice!

You know how sometimes you're driving along and you have a great idea... and then you've forgotten about it by the time you get home. Well with with Jott, you do this:

• Press Jott's speed dial on your cell phone (because of course you've got it in your speed dial)
• Hear a perky voice saying: "Who do you wanna jott?"
• Say: "Myself"
• Perky Voice says happily: "Jott yourself!" Beep!
• Then you leave yourself a message.
  

Miraculously, you get home, and there's an e-mail to you, from you (your Jott account), with that great idea you had in the car 25 minutes ago.

Or another true-life scenario: I am in the car running late picking up my kids from school. I can't call them, because their phones will ring, and they're not supposed to have cell phones at school (that's another rant for another post...), so I call Jott:

• Perky "Who do you wanna jott?"
• Me: "Kids"
• Perky: "Kids. Is that correct?"
  
• Me: "Yes"
• Beep!
• I say "I'm running late guys-- I'll be there in ten minutes."
• Perky Voice says "Got it."

And because I have my "Kids" group set up that way, both of my children get a text message on their phone that says exactly what I said. (They can discreetly pull out their phones and see my text message without getting busted!)

There are many more things you can do with Jott besides those examples-- you can even create a blog post, post a tweet on twitter, send a message to Sandy, your personal assistant-- and loads more.

Well, this week, I was on my way to work, and I thought of something I needed to tell my nanny. Perky Voice said, "Who do you wanna jott?" I said "Erin" and Perky Voice had the audacity to say "This feature is not included in your plan!" Say what? What plan?

Then I get to work and as I'm firing up Outlook I get a message: "You do not have permission to run Jott in this application." Um, OK-- something must've gotten screwed up. I'll fix it later.

Later that same day, again while driving, I thought of something I needed to do later.

• Perky Voice: "Who do you wanna jott?"
  
• Me: "Myself"
  
• Usually-Perky-But-Suddenly-Kind-of-Stern Voice: "Record your note."

Huh? Record my note? What happened to that cute little "Jott yourself!"? Oh well....
Then I get home and notice that there is no miraculous e-mail in my inbox from myself. I go to my Jott.com account and see that my note is there, but has not been sent to me. I also see "Jott.com is now out of beta! Choose your plan!"

Choose my plan? Well, all right, I click.... zoiks! Three plans-- two of which cost money! I suddenly have to PAY for this fabulous technology I've been using for a year and have grown to depend on? Crap!

There are three plan options. One is free... but it has almost ZERO functionality. All you can do is leave yourself a voice note, which is transcribed, but just sits there in your Jott account, not reminding you of anything unless you remember to go and LOOK AT your Jott account. No good. The whole point is I NEVER remember things-- Jott is supposed to be reminding me.

OK, second option. $3.95 a month. Guess I'd have to skip my latte one day, but that might be worth it-- what do I get? I can access my contacts again, check. I can access all the web apps (Remember the Milk, i want Sandy, twitter, Blogger-- only some of these can be accessed with the free plan). But there's ony a 15-second record time. I don't know if most of my messages are longer than that or not.

Third option: $12.95 a month. Geez! I had all this for free just a few days ago! The Jott Pro plan gives you a 30-second record time, and includes Jott for Blackberry. Those are the only two differences I can see from the $3.95 plan, and I don't have a Blackberry, so if I want to keep the majority of my account's functionality, I'll have to talk quickly and give up a latte.

Oh sure, the early-adopters get a little price break, but only for 12 months, and you have to pay those twelve months up front! And hello, Jott: Early adopters are supposed to be allowed to stick around for FREE, since they are your best cheerleaders and evangelists....

There are some still-free alternatives to Jott out there, as LifeHacker pointed out in a post yesterday. But none of them is quite the same thing-- they all seem to be a bit more clunky. (Read other people's takes on the alternatives here).

Like some kind of crack dealer, Jott got me all hooked, and now I'm going to have to shell out for it, or go through painful withdrawal. Ingenious. Infuriating.