VisionBeta

Reviews of Free Jott Alternatives

Ross Beyeler — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 19:32:13 +0000

I was recently heartbroken to hear that Jott would end it’s free services come February 2nd. I’ve been a big users of Jott ever since it first launched – probably recording an average of 10-15 notes per week. In the end, I probably will end up subscribing to the premium service, but for all those who have become too spoiled in their expectation of free web applications, I did a little research into your alternative mobile voice to text services:

Dial2Do
Dial2Do seems to offer more than just voice to text translation by performing tasks such as ’send email’, ‘check calendar’, ‘post to Twitter’ and many more. I know Jott allowed you to post to some of your other web accounts such as Twitter, but I always used it for simple note taking on the go. Dial2Do is free throughout their BETA (let’s see if they end up like Jott).

SpinVox
SpinVox offers many of the same function as Dial2Do (i.e. blogging, texting, memos, etc) but has more of an international focus. I am very suspicious of their pricing. I can’t seem to find anything more than ’start a free trial’ on their website. It probably means that you will get caught up paying for this after 30 days. I will share my results if I end up registering with them.

ReQall
ReQall is another voice to text service that also expands beyond just your mobile phone. You can use it from an IM account, web browser or SMS as well. One benefit ReQall has it that you can record and listen to a shopping list on the go (or any other form of a to-do list).

Drop.io
Drop.io allows provides you with a unique number for each account. You can then call and leave voice mail to this number with up to 100mb of storage. Although this doesn’t provide direct voice to text translation, the practically limitless storage space is a plus.

TwitterFone
If where your notes are captured is not a big concern and your a fan of Twitter, you could easily use TwitterFone to ping your Twitter account while on the move. If you are also concerned more with mobile note taking in general and not on voice mail to text translation, then you can always message Twitter directly and check your feed later.

I don’t want to be just another customer willing to switch as soon as a service I find valuable decides to charge me on what they provide. However, for those interested in free Jott alternatives, the above list should cover your options. I’ll let you know if I cave and switch providers.

Why PowerPoints Aren’t Bad

Ross Beyeler — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 23:31:26 +0000

One thing that often stereotypically defines the corporate lifestyle is an obsession with PowerPoint presentations – almost to the extent where nothing but making presentations gets done. While I do despise work for the sake of work, we have been introducing a weekly presentation day in our company and have been seeing success with it. Here are a few reasons why PowerPoint presentations (when done in moderation) are a great practice for your startup:

They Force Quality Research
Diligent research into competition, industry and your customer’s needs is essential to running your business. During periods of intense research (those that come with business plan overhauls), it’s more effective to segment research amongst your team and have them report their findings to the company. It’s easy for everyone to get away with copying and pasting a few stats, recommending a few competitors as examples and calling it done. Forcing everyone to present their findings in front of the whole company can ensure they research thoroughly, organize the information and digest it to the point where they can answer questions thoughtfully.

They Give Sales Experience to Those Not in Sales
Topics that you will research include strategy, finance, technology, marketing, etc. Assigning topics to the leaders in those fields (i.e. technology for your CTO, finance to your CFO) will ensure you get maximum expertise and direction going into the research. However, having only the specialist in that area understand the research is not enough and forcing them to present their findings to the team will give them an opportunity to enhance their presentation and sales skills. Getting your CTO to step away from the shell for a second and speak to the team is great preparation for the time he/she will have to come to your next investment meeting. There is never any harm in having your team refine their ideas and demonstrate they understand your industry.

They Strengthen Communication Between Teammates
Setting some time aside each week for your team to present any research findings gets everyone away from their computers and asking each other questions. At For Art’s Sake Media, we have noticed that our most productive days are those spent away from the computer and huddled together brainstorming over issues raised in presentations.

Keep in mind that the reason presentations have such a bad rep is that many companies turn them into the goal of their research. The goal should always be clear going in – you are researching a particular area to draw conclusions that will directly help you shape your business plan, business model, marketing strategy or what have you. Use presentations to refine understanding, build speaking confidence and encourage collaboration.

Work is Momentum

Ross Beyeler — Wed, 23 Jan 2008 04:01:57 +0000

Work is momentum. The problem is setting your force in motion – after that, inertia takes care of the rest. It’s the energy, discipline and focus required to get things moving and whether one has it – that is what separates those who achieve and those who dream.

Domain Name Industry Watch Out Demand Media Raises $100 Million

Ross Beyeler — Tue, 25 Sep 2007 23:32:05 +0000

Demand Media Raises $100 Million

It looks like my dreams of becoming a major player in the domain name industry are over. Demand Media will focus on buying domain names with organic search traffic and optimizing them through social networking technology.

Buidling a Base of Websites Through Clusters

Ross Beyeler — Tue, 25 Sep 2007 03:11:01 +0000

Although the 30 DC has passed, I have been going over all of the training and blog articles to refresh/catch-up on what I missed.

They bring up a great concept on clustering and building a network of websites to drive traffic to a major money making site. The idea is to form clusters around keywords that you want your main site to own. Create content sites around those keywords and have everything point back to your site.

Day 21 – The Big Picture | Mike Mindel – Thirty Day Challenger

Linkbuilding Made Easy with Social Poster

Ross Beyeler — Tue, 25 Sep 2007 02:46:30 +0000

Social Poster is a social bookmarking aggregator that lets you post across over 40 different bookmarking sites (such as digg, stumbleupon, etc) all from one menu and having to only fill in the information once. Check out Mike Mindel's explanation for more info . . .

Day 17 – Part I – Social Posting | Mike Mindel – Thirty Day Challenger

New Vision

Ross Beyeler — Tue, 25 Sep 2007 02:42:30 +0000

I have slacked off, a little shy of a month since my last post. I have been busy – not completely slacking off, but nonetheless should have paid VisionBeta a visit every now and again. I’ve shifted my plan for this Blog a bit and so you will now (hopefully) see more content, but of a shorter length. Originally I wanted this to turn into my expose on life, but that takes more time than I hoped for. Instead, expect a tumblr-like experience of frequent links, references and randomness that I like. Every once-in-a-while I’ll throw something nice at you, but for now it will be just quirky stuff on the usual: entrepreneurship, technology and productivity.

Stumbling Across the Web: 08.01.07

Ross Beyeler — Wed, 01 Aug 2007 23:24:58 +0000

As I have become a newly addicted StumbleUpon user (don’t ask why it took me so long), I have decided to post, hopefully daily, recaps of cool sites that I come across. I will try to keep the labels to business, web and personal development – but no complaints if I find that I need others:

Personal Development

NLP and Persuasion site

Business

Ten Types of Innovation

Web

The Thirty Day Challenge and Google Groups

Ross Beyeler — Wed, 01 Aug 2007 15:56:54 +0000

Today kicked off the start of the Thirty Day Challenge. I’m sure you are wondering what challenge would take thirty days and why I would be interested in joining it. Basically, the goal of the 30DC is to earn $10.00 online within thirty days without investing any money in the process. At first, I had the same reaction – $10? Are you kidding me? However, the goal is not to become rich in thirty days but rather to realize that it is possible to make money online even if you know little to nothing about the internet. Well, hopefully I am a bit above the little to nothing category, but I thought this would be a great way to hear of some additional traffic building techniques as well as potential monetization tactics that could help improve my own online ventures. It is also important to note that $10 is a very reasonable amount someone could expect to earn after thirty days. If they picked something like $500, then people would assume they were kidding and never even attempt to follow the challenge process. The 30DC is all about motivating those who have tried and failed or never tried out of fear of failure.

Another cool component to the 30DC is the focus on teams and team collaboration. The idea is still to work independently by working on your own product that will earn you $10 in the thirty days. However, they encourage you to form a team that you can collaborate and communicate with regarding your questions, concerns, successes, resources, etc.

For those interested in joining the challenge, entry is still open (although today, August 1st, was officially kickoff). Sign up for the forums and you can start participating as a member right away. After you setup your account, be sure to check out their pre-season recap post to get up-to-date on all their 30DC tips.

A few friends of mine and I have all formed a 30DC team and will be using Google Groups to organize our communications. This was actually and surprisingly the first time I have every used Google Groups and must say that I am impressed. The idea is to create a public or private web space where you can do the following:

Create forum-like discussion topics
Create individual pages
Communicate via private messages and email with your group
Share up to 100mb of files between your group

I set up our group in 20 minutes and had no problems getting used to the navigation of the site. My only criticism is the way forum topics are organized. As soon as you create a new title for your thread, it creates an entirely separate topic, which gets messy. I was hoping to create 5-7 general topics (SEO, monetization, etc) that we could all post questions/comments in. Looks like I will just have to get used to it, but at least all posts are search-friendly via the Google search engine – so finding past threads shouldn’t be difficult.

Hope to see you in the challenge!!

If You Were Emperor of the Internet . . .

Ross Beyeler — Wed, 25 Jul 2007 19:15:36 +0000

What would you do if you were emperor of the internet? Well slam-poet Rives might make Napster, Jobster and Friendster all one site where you could listen to music, pretend to search for a job all while you were really talking to your friends. Check out this amazing video from TED of Rives as he performs a four minute slam on what things would be like if he controlled the internet.