Round 1: account creation
You've created a brilliant product and people are beating down your web portal to try it! You've made one mistake. You've made the process to sign up for your product difficult or time consuming. After development and marketing have created exactly what the consumer wants, why do so many companies let a different group create the application process? This is one of my biggest pet peeves.

Signing up for a service should be an extension of how wonderful and easy to use the product is.

Jott wasn't too bad to set up. After the usual general info questions, an email is sent to your account with a link to click for activation. From clicking "Get Started" to having Jott available for use took 14 minutes. The confirmation of activation email includes the telephone number to call to record my memo and several links to tutorials, FAQs, and their blog.

SpinVox, however, was exceptional. Right on the homepage it asks me what I want to do and who my carrier is. No wading through a confusing myriad of options. The account creation is similar to Jott's with a short list of general questions. Then, I received an email less than two minutes later with my SpinVox account activated and ready to use. Their brief email gave me the number to call, a link to my account, and an email address to write to if I ever need assistance.

Score: SpinVox 5, Jott 3

Round 2: ease of use
Creating a great product that can't be used makes it not a great product. Sure that knitting machine can make a sweater in 10 minutes, but if it takes 3 hours, $20 in the swear jar, and a manicure to set it up, nobody is going to tout it as the boon to mankind it might have been. So how easy to use are these voice-to-text services?

When you call your SpinVox number a pleasant voice says "Memo through SpinVox now" followed by a little beep. You say your message and end your call. It couldn't be any simpler.

When you your Jott number a not so pleasant voice says in a mechanic yet hard to understand way "Who do you want to Jott?" Who? I was at a loss. Myself? No. Note? No. I had to hang up and go to their tutorial.

Because you can do so much from their basic account - whether you want to or not - you have to answer the question with "Jott notes". I should have made myself a reminder of that because I forgot what to say the first four times I used the service.

Jott Note to Jott: If I could remember an anti-intuitive command I probably don't need to leave myself brief notes during the day. If I wasn't running the test between the two services, I would never have used Jott again.

Score: SpinVox 5, Jott 0

Round 3: speed
I'm not concerned with speed when it comes to a voice-to-text service. If I needed the note as text immediately, I would probably have typed it myself. However, I'm sure it is important to somebody so I clocked both services.

Both services had one message that took an unusually long amount of time to process. Jott's average time was 3 minutes, SpinVox averaged at 4 minutes. Both are more than fast enough for me. The shortest time for both services was 2 minutes from dialing the number to receiving an email.