Pursuant to my last post about keeping a 100 year old journal, found a .99 cent journaling program for the iphone / ipod touch in the App store called MyDiary.
This software closely mimics the journal approach of the small pocket calendar I was talking about before. Plus it feels similar too – with exception of the pen to paper tactile sense.
I’ve been using it right at 1 month and here are my thoughts…
Again, one of the cool things about MyDiary is the fact that it resembles the day by day calendar I was describing in the prior post. Each time you hit the new post button [+] you start with a new date where you can do your journal entry. This is an advantage over paper journals because when you miss a day in a paper journal, you get a blank spot. In MyDiary, there are no blanks, it just goes to the next entry.
Another advantage is obviously the portability. You carry your iPhone or iPod touch with you anyway, here you have your journal in your pocket with you too. I put the application on the first screen so I see it every time I turn on my iTouch. So I am prompted to make a journal entry every day – even when I wasn’t intending to.
Privacy
There is simple dial controlled password feature of MyDiary. This isn’t the most secure code on the planet as someone could brute force break it in a couple hours if they really wanted in. The code dialer resembles an old combination lock you’d use to lock your bike to a rack. By simply going through the numbers 0001, 0002, etc. You’d eventually hit the golden code. Maybe they’d consider doing a 10 minute lockout if you dialed 3 passwords incorrectly. Or they might consider making it a 5 or 6 digit code, which increases the brute force time.
Either way, the code IS a better security than a paper based journal.
Other Features
Widescreen (yay!)- Most appreciatively, they’ve included widescreen entry and editing. This, of course, makes text entry much easier for giants like me.
Email journal entries to yourself or others – If privacy isn’t your biggest concern, you can email your journal entries all over the world. I can see this possibly being handy if you’ve got an email to Twitter or FaceBook account set up and wanted to keep your Twitters in your journal as well. Simply do an entry and choose the email button. Just be careful not to send your entry about what’s going on between you and that cute co-worker up the hall 
Auto backups through iTunes – The reviews in the app store express concern about no backup feature. I did some poking around and found the database is pulled into an iTunes backup when you dock your device. I contacted the developer and he said that was true. If you factory reset your iPhone you’ll get your MyDiary entries back.
Bugs and wishes
MyDiary does have a few small bugs. First and foremost I will say that it has not crashed once on my iPod touch. That is a good thing.
But in widescreen mode, there is no way to go back to the main screen when you complete an entry. You have to physically rotate the iPhone to go to portrait mode to get back. So if you are editing one of your diary entries, you hit the done button, nothing happens. You must go rotate your device in order to see the back arrow button. This is a small oversight that I am sure will be easily corrected in the next version.
The other thing I would like to see is a way to a way to back up outside of using the iTunes application. As I mentioned, iTunes does backup your MyDiary database. The database itself is not encrypted. However, finding it on a computer is difficult and virtually impossible to find on an iPhone itself without doing major surgery.
But it would just feel a little bit better if there was a button that said backup and you could copy your database in an encrypted format to a hard drive of a computer or e-mail the encrypted database to yourself.
But overall, I consider MyDiary an excellent substitution for the paper based journal I mentioned in the prior post. It is a convenient way to keep track of your life with some bonus features thrown in for good measure.
What are your thoughts?
Link: MyDiary in the App Store 0.99 cents
Developer website: MyDiary for iphone/iTouch
{ 8 comments }
This sounds awesome but you forgot to mention one drawback – it lacks the “magic” of the paperback journal. It’s just a big pile of bytes. Maybe I’m a little oldfashioned but no matter how many times I tried to keep my journal in a “computer form” I always ended up bored with it. When I use my real journal it just feels nicer
I’ve been using Evernote lately for an electronic journal. This one sounds interesting, but what do you do when another application comes out? Are your entries exportable, or you they pretty much locked into this program?
Eric S. Muellers last blog post..One of the Happiest Days of Christinas Life
@Ann I tend to agree with you. However, with the amount of stuff I have to keep up with, carrying around one more thing is a risk that I’ll lose it or it will be found and misused by someone.
@Eric, you can email journal entries or an entire month to your Evernote online account.
wow that seems like a cool application. the iphone is really stepping it up and making a case for why its the best. i love journals and the iphone is making my life easier again.
I was sure that I had read that one could add photos to the daily journal entry when I was readiing about this app but now that I have purchased it,can’t figure how to do it.
How do you enter your entries? Do you pull up the screen keyboard or can you hand write it and the program converts it into a font.
i like this app too. though… i can’t figure out what the circle with the arrow on it is for. i can’t turn it off apparently… but no clue what it does.
anyone?
You will use the on-screen keyboard to enter your journal
{ 1 trackback }