Dean(ish)

…and one iPhone app that doesn’t exist yet.

Now that the iPhone 2.0 firmware is out, there are tons of third-party applications available for it. Here, I’m going to talk about some of the more productivity-centric apps I’ve used that I really like, as well as one that doesn’t exist (but should). What I’m talking about here is Jott, Xpenser, Evernote, and YouNote.

Jott is a service like no other that I’ve ever heard of. At its base, it allows you to record 15 seconds of audio. Big whoop, right? Well, that’s just the start. Jott then takes that audio and converts it into text. That’s pretty cool because it saves you time and effort when compared to typing notes out. Not only can you record notes for general note-taking, but you can make to-do lists as well. Pretty nifty.

Although it’s not an app, Xpenser has an iPhone-friendly website with which you can easily keep track of what you’re wasting your money on. What’s really cool about it is that Xpenser works with Jott over the phone (although, sadly, not with the Jott iPhone app [not yet, anyway]). You call Jott’s 800 number, say “Xpenser” and then say what you’ve spent - “toy store $8.99 TMNT action figure”. Jott then converts that phrase to text and automatically adds it to your Xpenser account with a title, cost, and description. Pretty awesome, and a lot easier than balancing a checkbook. You can even export Xpenser reports to Excel and Quicken.

Evernote is a really cool application that will literally read pictures. Take a picture of something and Evernote will scan the picture for text, convert that text, and make it searchable. Searchable pictures. It even recognizes handwriting. Amazing. Handwriting results will vary, but it’s still pretty incredible. You can also use Evernote for regular note taking and audio recording and, although it doesn’t convert audio to text like Jott, you can tag everything to make searching a bit easier.

YouNote lets you record just about everything (except video), including text, audio, pictures, and even drawings. It has a nice categorizing features that allow you to categorize things by color associations, keywords, and it even utilizes geo-tagging. It seems pretty basic and it’s a bit buggy, but I appreciate its all-inclusiveness.

So those are four apps that can be used to make your life a bit more productive. However, I’m not totally satisfied. What I really want is Everyoujott.

If you haven’t guessed, Everyoujott is an amalgam of the three iPhone apps mentioned here. Why would I want that, you ask? I want it all, and I want it to be easy. I really like Jott’s voice-to-text application, but I also like Evernote’s picture-to-text features. Those features should be together. They belong together. They’re like peanut butter and jelly; fraternal twins separated at birth. They can combine their awesomeness with YouNote’s drawing and organization and all-in-oneness to form Everyoujott. By the time these products merge, Jott would’ve taken care of its current inability to work with Xpenser via the iPhone app, so Xpenser and many other services would be compatible with Everyoujott too.

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