One of the features the iPhone still lacks is a way to record your own voice. A new website, Jott.com, goes a long way to filling the gap. The service is still in beta, but it already works well.

After you sign up for the service, you make a list of contact names for your messages. Then, when you want to record a message, you call the Jott number on your iPhone. It will ask you who you want to send the message to, (it can be yourself), and you start speaking. There is a time limit on the length.

The cool part is that your voice message can be sent both as email or text to yourself or your friends. If you "Jott" yourself an event reminder, they will send the reminder 15 minutes before the event.

The text is transcribed by a combination of human and machine, and there is some privacy information in the FAQ to reassure you about having your messages intercepted in this way.

There are a lot of partner sites set up so you can also use Jott to blog or twitter with your voice. For a list of some of the things you can do with the service, take a look at the Jott Links list

For the moment, the service is free while it is in beta, and the API is available to create your own Jott Links.

Update! Since this was written, iPhone version 2 has come out and with it, all the iPhone native applications. There are several good alternatives for voice recording now, which still include Jott as one of the best. Now you have a choice whether to store the recordings on your iphone (as in "Voice Notes") or on the Jott server ("Jott for iPhone").