Technology

They say that Mac's never crash. Yet I get this error every time I connect my iPod Shuffle to my Mac. It started with the latest mandatory iTunes update. My iPod works fine with iTunes on my work computer... a Windows Vista machine. Unfortunately that machine doesn't have my music library on it.

So now I'm stuck with a shuffle full of 90's house music. What can I say, I had a desire to listen to artists like Jesus Jones and The Prodigy for a couple days. Now I'd like to listen to something else, but I can't.

I wrote about Jott before. Jott is a Seattle company which uses intelligent voice recognition software to connect your phone with a number of useful online applications such as Google Calendar. I've found their service to be convenient, especially when leaving OB or Pediatrician offices. I simply call the 1-800 number, and speak the details of our next appointment (i.e. "Pediatrician appointment on Monday the 18th at 8am") and it's added to my calendar. Much easier than trying to type it into my phone with one hand while holding a crying baby in the other. Taking home a reminder card requires me to remember to put it on my calendar when I get home.

When I wrote about Jott before, I mentioned that they lacked a revenue stream. They were totally dependent on venture capitol. Well that has changed. Jott has announced a pricing structure for their service. No one likes to pay for something which used to be for free, but this is one case where it's probably worth it. $3.95/mo for unlimited service seems like an excellent value for what Jott provides. They also provide a Pre-Paid Plan which is probably the best bang-per-buck for most casual users.

If you find yourself having to set yourself reminders, to-do events or simple notes you should really check out Jott. With some simple tools like KiGoo, GCalDaemon or Google Calendar Sync it's easy to sync this to your existing calendar applications.

For the record, I still think Jott will be bought up by Microsoft and have their software integrated into a future version of Exchange. Even though $3.95/mo is a bargain, I don't think it will be enough to make Jott profitable.

I've written before about Web 2.0 apps that suck. Twitter is one that comes to mind. It's a popular web app, but for no good reason. Fortunately they'll eventually disappear once they run out of venture capital money. Like so many web-based companies, they'll never make a profit. It's rare to find a Web 2.0 app that offers a useful service. So it's sad for me when I do find one and I know that like Twitter, it will eventually run out of money and then I won't be able to use their service.

The app in question is Jott. Jott is the first useful voice recognition application I've seen. Here's the gist of how it works:

After registering a free account on Jott, you dial up a 1-800 number on your cell phone. Jott asks you what you want to do. You speak a phrase to Jott, such as "Calendar". It then asks you what the appointment name is, and what time you want to be reminded. Then it adds it to your Google Calendar. You can also do this with text messages, but why would you?

There are plenty of plugins for the free service too. You can add other services, such as Twitter or Don't Forget the Milk. They even have an SDK (of sorts) to create your own plugins.

I don't see how this company will ever turn a profit. Hopefully someone with some deep pockets will buy them out. Imagine if Microsoft bought this for Exchange. You wouldn't need to log in to a computer to setup a new appointment or to-do item. You could just pick up your phone, any phone... not just a smartphone or a blackberry, and setup that meeting or task item. As a standalone product I don't believe it can survive. But as part of a larger product, I think it would be profitable.

In the meantime, check out Jott. I've only been using it for two days so far and I've already found it valuable.

Here's a neat trick if you're looking to secure your WiFi access point. Use a comma in your WEP/WPA password. While your router, and any Linux or Mac computer can successfully use a comma in the password, a Windows XP machine can't. Only took me a half-hour today to figure that one out when I tried to connect Tina's laptop to our WiFi network at home.