When I got it, I was initially confused, but then impressed by the creative packaging. It’s pretty low-impact since it has no nasty hard plastic covering to cut away, and when you pull the tab on the right, the package opens to reveal the card and reader on the left, and the quick start guide on the right. Nifty, I thought.

So I figured I would try the installation, since it seemed so easy. Not so fast there, though, things are never quite what they seem. When I plugged the card and reader into my USB port, I initially got the device to appear as a mounted drive on my iMac. So far, so good. So I clicked through to the “START HERE” folder, and ran the installation program. That went okay, too. But, on running the program, I got a message that said the card could not be initialized, so hey, WTF on that? Not only that, it brought up the web-based Eye-Fi manager, asking for my user name and password. Since I didn’t yet have the opportunity to sign up on Eye-Fi, I had no user name or password, and there was no option to sign up for one. Very frustrating.

So I looked around on the internet, and found an article somewhere that said that user ran into the same kind of thing, but when he plugged the reader into another port, it worked. So I tried that. No joy. Then, being a dyed-in-the-wool Windows survivor, I decided to try rebooting my Mac. After that, the reader would not even show up as a mounted drive. So I began to think about the arduous process of having to return the darn thing to Buy.com.

However, deciding not to be hasty, I though of putting the card itself into my trusty multi-card reader. I first deleted all the Eye-Fi program from the computer. Then I put the card in the multi-card reader, re-installed the manager program, and even got prompted to update the software. Good sign. After updating, I ran the manager program, and viola! The card was recognized, initialized, and I got directed to the sign-up portion of the web manager. From there on, smooth sailing.

I was then able to go through the setup, to point the card to my account on Flickr, and to direct it to send the photos to iPhoto on my Mac. I did the required test photo, and it uploaded perfectly. At this point, it’s all set up for my upcoming vacation, and I couldn’t be happier. Nifty product, buggy reader, but solid otherwise. My advice: if you have a card reader on your computer already, bag the Eye-Fi card reader and just use that. Bottom line: totally worthwhile product.

Jott is basically a service that translates your voice to text. So you can call in on its toll-free number, speak for thirty seconds, and Jott will then email you the text, or email it to your friends, or send it to any number of applications, including Twitter. I can see that it would be a great way to record a “note to self” when you’re on the go, and don’t have something with you to write a thought down (who writes things down these days anyway?). And if you have hands-free mobile set up in your car as I do, you can easily even send yourself, a friend or coworker an important message while you’re traveling.

So it seemed like Jott would be quite useful after all. However, when I tried several times to import my Mac address book via vCard export and then importing the list through Jott’s import wizard, all it imported were the names, not phone numbers or email, which is necessary in order to make it at all useful. Since I’m on Plaxo, I tried that, but it only imported 15 out of my nearly 200 contacts. So that functionality has a long way to go before it can ever be, well, functional.

I did to a couple of test Jotts, two to myself, and one to Twitter. They all behaved really well. There was just one wrong word in my Twitter, but I don’t think I was speaking very clearly, which the application reminds you over and over should be done. I’d have to say the speech to text functionality seems pretty good at first glance.

Overall, I think it has real promise as an application. I do think people need a good way to take a quick note or tell a bunch of people something on the go. But there still needs to be some work on the import interface because who wants to enter their address book all over again?

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My college magazine (http://tinyurl.com/3ah8mv) carries the following story about me:

Patrick M. Mulcahy, Religious
Studies C86, passed away in
May 2007.

This is what I get for pursuing a Catholic education. I might be tired, but I am certainly not dead. Erm, I think I’ll check my pulse now…

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