Blake Schwendiman's Blog and Blook

I've been in California most of this week, hence the complete silence here. I do have a couple of things that I thought were worth mentioning.

First, I've been using a service called Jott for a few weeks now and I really like it. Basically it's an on-the-go voice-based note service. You go to the web site and sign up (for free!) and then simply call the Jott service number (also free!) to leave voicemail notes for yourself. That's probably not notable in itself, but here's the cool part: Jott automatically coverts your voice mail to an email message and sends it to you or anyone you want. You can set up distribution groups or whatever you need. It's a great way to capture quick ideas when you're on the road and don't have a way to quickly jot something down on paper. It works very well -- if it can't understand your voice, it tries to convert to text, but it also includes the original voice recording in the email.

Next, have you seen all of the new Google stuff? Google maps now has street view. If you have never seen the Paris casino in Las Vegas, just click here and walk around the view. Street view is available in limited areas today, but will certainly be expanding. Google has also released some cool new developer features and tools that I'll comment on another time.

I've been looking at beyond tv as a long-term solution to my DVR woes. This is something I may actually do this year. If Netflix somehow gets it's downloadable movie option aligned with software like this, I'll be even more likely to jump on board.

That's it for now. Hopefully some of it was interesting to you!