5 steps to make appointments on Google Calendar with your voice
For legions of users, Google Calendar has become the way they organize their lives. While it’s easy to add appointments and reminders at a computer and through text message already, Jott announced today that they’ll create appointments on your calendar by transcribing voice commands transmitted via phone call. Did I mention it’s free?
Now adding an appointment to your Google Calendar takes only takes 5 steps and then can be used anywhere you get a cell phone signal, it’s a great example of open systems working together.
- First, you need an active Google and Jott account. Jott is a beta service that transcribes your voice into text based on software algorithms and when necessary, humans.
- Second, when signed into Jott, click on the “Jott Links” tab, then click on the “Add” link next to Google Calendar. Google will ask if you’d like to give Jott access to your account, say yes.
- Third, call Jott’s toll free number and say “Google Calendar”.
- Fourth, describe your appointment. Be sure to indicate the subject and when it will occur using natural language
- For example you could say “Take out the garbage tonight at 9pm”
- Or “Holiday party tomorrow at 8pm”
- According to the Jott Blog, “Google will go through your message and find the date and time, so no need to worry about saying anything in a specific order, or in a particular format.”
- Finally, hang up.
Jott will create your appointment and send an e-mail confirmation to your stored address. This has the potential to make Google Calendar more useful because making appointments no longer requires creating a text message or a nearby computer.
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December 6th, 2007
Hey Matt, thanks for spreading the word! We couldn’t be any more excited about this new Jott Link, and we’re so very happy to see others are enjoying it.
We’d love to hear how it’s working for you. Please don’t hesitate to send any suggestions you have our way to feedback@jott.com.
December 8th, 2007
I used Jott this week and I am 100% sold. With 12 years in IT, the possibilities for leveraging this in ‘last minute’ scenarios is endless in IT infrastructure where globally critical issues ‘hop up’ constantly.
I love it.
I did notice some latency and the site IS down for maintenance, but Beta is Beta.
:-)
Can I mail in $100 for the 1st share of IPO?
March 12th, 2008
Here is cool way to use a similar technique to book appointments into GCal and then Sync them into Outlook. http://www.abitgeek.com/time-management/make-appointments-in-outlook-and-google-calendar-by-phone.html
April 22nd, 2011
Good thing you didn’t send the money. Jott has messed us over and shuts down the first few days of May, 2011. Cold. Get our stuff off the servers.
I have tried Dial2do to Evernote, Dial2do to Remember the Milk, and they say that it works well with Google Calendar. I’m fixin to try that. I do note that Dial2do transcription is really good, and it can read your emails, and let you reply by voice.
Note: Dial2do to Evernote sends the voice clip to Evernote as well as the transcribed text, sort of like Jott, so if they screw up, you can know what was said. Although Evernote does have reminders, you can edit the text, and it remembers when the note came in, and sort by date/time to figure out your note’s context. Maybe Jott did me a favor in the long run, but it was very costly in hours and frustration!