Jott - Phone, Voicemail, Email communication

Jott.com is a newer web service that is providing expanded communication options to its users. This free tool allows users to call in emails, send voicemails to a wide group of people, and even post blog messages from your phone.

SIGN UP
Signing up for their public beta was easy. I gave them my information, confirmed my email address, called a number on my phone, and was ready to go.

Jott.com uses some kind of caller ID technology to match the phone you're calling from with your account and then sends you notices via email of any changes in your account. Additionally, a recorded voice message (limited to 30 seconds) will be transcribed and sent to your email for your future reading. You can also set this up to send emails to friends, family, or people you work with. Of course Jott also gives the option of sending the message to your contacts phones.

GROUPS
You can also record one message and send it to a predefined group of people. This might be great for when you have an important event in your life. Announce an engagement, a new child, or both by calling Jott and letting it disperse the information to everyone on your contact list simultaneously.

Over at lifehacker.com they described how Jott can also be used as a personal TO DO List.

Get Important Emails As Text Messages On Your Phone

Have you ever been expecting an important email but had to step away from the computer for a while and don't have a blackberry or the new iPhones. Now you too don't have to wait to receive email messages while you're out and about. In previous posts we've talked about receiving notices of scheduled events on your Google Calendar via text messages. Today we'll explain how you can also receive those important emails as text messages. While this technique should work for any mailing software that allows you to set rules for your incoming mail (Outlook or Thunderbird for example) we'll use gmail to show and explain how you can easily setup your phone to receive those important emails as text messages.

DISCOVER YOUR PHONES EMAIL ADDRESS

In addition to having a phone number that allows you to receive standard text messages, most cell phones now also have an email address that you can receive text messages at. To discover this, open up your text message and in the TO: box enter your email address and send yourself a short message. Now check your email and you should receive a new message from your phone. Check the address of the sender and that should be your phone's text message email address. Mine for example was my phone number at vtext.com (for example: 7035551234@vtext.com) I replied to that email to see if I would receive back a text message. After a few seconds my phone chirped to let me know I received a message and it was the email I had just sent.

CREATE A RULE OR FILTER FOR YOUR EMAIL

Now that you know you're phone's text message email address you can setup a rule or filter to send those important emails to your phone so you're always in the know. For Gmail this is quick and simple. After signing into your gmail account click settings and then the "Filters" link. Click Create a new filter. New input fields will pop up with a number of different options to filter new emails. Most email clients have these same options but may call them rules.

One of the options is the "FROM:" field. You can enter in the specific email address of someone you're expecting to hear from or if there are a number of people from the same organization that you don't want to miss emails from you can always use the "*" field and the domain name to apply to all messages from that group (For example: *@gmail.com).

The ability to get these messages on your phones is set at the next step. Select the "Forward it to" option and then enter in the email address for your phones text messages. Apply the filter or rule and you'll be set to receive future emails on your phone as text messages.