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Best ev’r reminder service fails to its own success – RIP Jott.com

I can’t remember…oh right, RIP Jott.

"We founded Jott in April of 2006. … In 2006 Jott emerged as a leader in mobile voice-to-text applications… we will focus our voice-to-text service investments on carrier and enterprise distribution, and no longer on Jott.com." [Source, Jott blog]

Of all the services I’ve played with and have seen go, this is the first that almost brought a tear to my eye. My first Jott was on September 5, 2007 at 9:54am. I spoke into my phone and the service translated my words to text. I would later learn that Jott used a combination of computer software and people at call centers. I imagine that if the software failed to understand a word, that segment of the message would be pushed to a queue and transcribed by person. Jott sat on my speed dial and I could verbally leave a message, send it to another service like Remember The Milk or another person via email/sms/etc, and even set a reminder which would send the transcribed message to me via SMS. I even had Jott installed as the default software for my Jawbone Icon. A while after using it, Jott turned to a paid subscriber model that left a small feature set to free users and shortly after that killed free accounts altogether so I quit using Jott. But I found myself lost without it and soon relented to paying $4.95 a month for the service. Money well spent! Jott became my capture tool of choice and kept me organized and eased my forgetfulness. Now it looks as though Jott is turning to corporate clients.

How the hell am I going to remember anything?! (Springpad of course!)

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Knoxville STEM School Excites Students

The student/parent orientation and final tour of the STEM school before major renovation begins was this week. Noah received his official acceptance letter and will be one of 43 students in the sophomore class. A graduating class of 43! My graduating class from Germantown High School in 1988 was 672 people. I can only imagine how unique and special Noah’s education will be. The orientation was akin to a family reunion. Everyone seemed to know each other and be very like minded with regard to the goals of education. The principal is extremely enthusiastic. I have high hopes and think the Knoxville STEM Academy will do great! Oh, one of the highlights was the announcement that all students will be issued an iPad 2. There will be no textbooks. I’m thrilled and I’m thrilled for Noah.

Video source: WBIR.