Using JotSpot Live
I signed up to use the new JotLive service because I really liked its concept. At work I’m beginning to do a lot more conference calling and this sounded like a great idea.
And it is a great idea. It’s just not very well executed yet. Is it highly usable? Yes - partially because of all the AJAX it uses. Is it highly reliable? No - mostly because of all the AJAX it uses.
Summary: cool tool, but not something I’d use because it has
- unpredictable behavior
- no export feature
- no way to delete an old meeting’s notes
Right now its behavior is unpredictable. I feel like I’m fighting my browser: I want to edit this paragraph.
No, this paragraph.
Wait, why can’t I edit all of these pargraphs at the same time?
And trying to get nested bulleted lists… sheesh. (And yes, this is using Firefox - maybe IE has a better user experience?)
Oh, and there’s no text export. They have the right idea: it’s a specific tool for a specific job: groups take collaborative notes in meetings.
But when I’m done with the meeting, I don’t want to send everyone over the my JotLive page… (yet another login to remember…) I want to copy the content of all the text and paste it into my wiki (or an e-mail, or a document (OASIS-friendly, of course)) - right now all of the AJAX drag and drop disables my ability to do a selective cut and paste.
My last issue? There’s no way to delete a meeting. Maybe this is so they can upsell you on their service plans, but as a tool designed to be used in meetings… once my meeting is over and my notes are exported (doh!) I really have very little desire to spread my knowledge over yet another website.
Like I said: great idea. Novel concepts well executed in AJAX. But the novel functionality needs to not interfere with the other basics I expect the tool to carry out.
[...] I was about to show the JotLive - “Live, group note-taking” - service to some non-techie people … but thought better of it after reading one user’s review here. Non-geek users are too easily put off by stuff like unpredictable behaviour etc. They tend to form their opinions after one initial experience and then never go back to try it again. [...]
Hi James,
I’m the lead developer on JotSpot Live.
Thanks for taking the time to write up your impressions of Live here. I’d say you’re pretty much spot on in identifying our current weaknesses, and I’m personally working on addressing the problems you mention. The ability to delete (and rename) pages is coming later this week, along with HTML and text export.
We’re also working on improving the usability of Live. If you’d be willing to write up an email with some more details of what you found confusing about the interface, I’d appreciate it. In the meantime, here’s a tip: you can select multiple paragraphs (or list items) at once by holding down ctrl while you use the arrow keys. It’s fast (and fun) to use the keyboard in JotSpot Live, and we’ve tried to make the arrow keys and keys like insert, delete, enter, and escape work as they would in a typical desktop app. But I understand the need to make these things more discoverable.
Again, thanks for checking out JotSpot Live, and for posting this. I hope you continue to come back and check it out, so you can see how it improves over time.
-Abe