My friend Bill Vick is nearly always at least one step ahead of me in finding and testing new Web 2.0 applications. Sometimes I wonder how he keeps up with them, but when he sends me an invitation to join something new, I usually take up the invitation.

Like today, with Jott.

It wasn’t immediately clear to me what Jott is or does, so I checked out the About Jott page, which said:

Headquartered in Seattle, WA, Jott Networks operates a voice to text service that makes staying organized and in touch easy. Jott allows consumers to easily and safely send emails and text messages, set reminders, organize lists, and post to web services with their voice. Since its introduction in late 2006, Jott has made world class voice transcription accessible to anyone with a cell phone. Life is busy. Talk to Jott. Get Simple Back™.

Nice tag that, Get Simple Back (TM).

And I was really pleased that, unlike some other companies that have one word names, there was no exclamation mark to be included when I typed it in.

Simple is so often better than complex.

As in an online signup form, wouldn’t you say?

Generally I do indeed prefer a simple signup form, but I also like the underlying programming to be as complex as it needs to be in order to make the signup process simple to execute.

Which is why I don’t like having a signup blocked because the programming is so US (or any country) centric that it won’t recognise an Australian phone number and postcode (or zip, if you will) as real.

I could of course make up a phone number with the standard US/Canadian configuration and I could pick a US postal code at random and put that in. Presumably then my membership would be accepted.

But from what I can discern from the site, the service is not actually available outside the US or Canada anyway.

So for me and others dwelling in foreign climes there is no point.

Just that it wasn’t obvious.

But why annoy people by not making that clear? Especially if there is any aim to expand in due course to other countries?