Choosing An Online Journal

Move your journal online


An online journal can be the answer if you love the idea of keeping a journal, but are not jazzed about the idea of having to write it, or carry it about with you if you move around a lot.

Having an online journal means that you can update it on the go via your laptop, tablet, or your phone (depending on the journal).  Most of the good ones also allow you to personalize them, from the look of the journal, such as colours and backgrounds, to things you can include in it, like photo’s and, in the case of The Journal even your own doodles!

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But there are three main areas where online journals really come into their own.

Search Functions

Any journal worth it's salt will have search functions, so you can easily look for older entries.  This is great for firstly looking back to see how you have grown over the past year or 6 months or so.  It’s also great if you know you wrote about a certain topic and want to revisit it… No paging through journals any more, just use the search function!

Privacy and Security

Your personal thoughts are secure from prying eyes.  At the very least your entries will be password protected, but many of them have full encryption so your private notes will stay just that – private.

Indestructible

Unlike a paper journal, they can't get destroyed – by fire or water or just getting lost.  All the online journals I have looked at can be hosted in the cloud, so even if you have issues with your computer… you still have your journal in tact.

Online Journals To Take A Look At...

I personally prefer the old fashioned notebook journal because I love to write and draw and just kind of free flow, which I find hard when typing … and for me there is a deeper connection if I’ve personally written the words.  But for those of you who you love technology and being able to access your journal on the go, I’ve listed a couple of options for you below. 

Please note - this is not designed as an exhaustive list or in depth review of the products, but more as place for you to start, so you can do some research yourself.  There are many more online journals out there…. but this will give you an idea of what’s available.

The Journal - DavidRM Software

I included this because it is really highly featured and has some great recommendations.  However be aware that there is software that has to be downloaded to your PC and there is no Mac version.  However, it can run on a Mac using Parallels or Virtual PC. 

You can still use it in the cloud by downloading to your cloud drive (like Dropbox or Skydrive) for availability on any windows computer.

The Journal has a full 30 day money back guarantee and the great thing about this online journal is that you can try it before you buy it – with a 45 day trial period.  This gives you more than enough time to decide if it works for you or not.

The main features are:

  • Easy to use and get started.  If you can use Microsoft Word, you will be able to use The Journal.
  • Review past entries easily by using a powerful collection of search tools, by date, topic, phrases the calendar to search for a date, or search for a topic.
  • Add photo’s, spreadsheets and documents.
  • Post specific pages to a blog whilst keeping the rest private.
  • State-of-the-art encryption and password protection.

Runs on nearly all versions of Windows: Windows 7 (including 64-bit), Windows Vista (including 64-bit), Windows XP, and Windows NT/2000. There is no native Mac version, but the PC version can be run on a Mac with a Windows emulator such as Virtual PC or Parallels.

To take advantage of the 45 day free trial go here

For more product info go here

And to order click on the image:

Penzu

Penzu has a free version and a Pro version. This online journal has an intuitive layout and is really easy to start using – you don’t even have to sign in – just start typing. 

The main features of each are:

Penzu (Free)

  • Privacy – password protected and each entry can have it’s own password as well – so a double level of password protection
  • Get access to your journal from almost any smart phone – iPhone, iPad, BlackBerry and Android.  Download the free apps and log in with your Penzu account.
  • Add photos from your computer and from Flickr
  • Saves as you type… even if you’re not logged in!
  • You can search entries by time, date, topic, size, image and whether it was shared or locked.

Penzu Pro

Has all the above plus these features and more…

  • Privacy on another level – military-grade encryption!
  • Multiple journals – if you want to keep a secret journal and an open journal for example… or a travel journal and a work journal.  Not that I recommend this - but if you want it, it's there!
  • Customise each entry with a unique background and pad style
  • Tag each entry to easily search for them later
  • Super Rich Text for some great fonts to personalise your entries

To take a look for yourself click here.

Day One

Only for Mac and iOS users, this is a very popular online journal with Mac users, and has a nice clean, simple interface to work with, as well as many other features...

  • Many style and font choices to personalize your entries
  • Privacy – you can use optional passcodes to keep your journal private
  • Keep forgetting to journal?  You can set a reminder.
  • Your location is automatically added to each post as well as the local weather.
  • You can add photos to your entries
  • Search by tag, date or words and/or phrases
  • Should you want to you can export all or some entries to PDF.

To take a more in depth look or to buy go here.

Whatever you do – whether you choose the old fashioned paper journal (like me!) or the high tech online journal – don’t wait!  Start enjoying the benefits of journaling now!


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