Diary 2007: How To Journal Life On Your Mac.

Encore Review: I marvel at those who have journaled their journey in life. Not in a Blogspot blog, but a real live, handwritten journal.

What? You forgot how to write longhand? Let your Mac help you with a journal.

It’s one thing to keep thousands of photographs in a shoebox. That’s a photo journal of part of your life.

It’s something else again to write about the journey (probably more complex to do both in the traditional photo journalistic way).

Carol and I have reached a part of our lives where we want to journal more, but put out less effort.

Photography, through digital cameras and storage applications such as iPhoto, have made it possible to chronicle the photographic moments of life.

We haven’t bought film in years. These days we can make slides shows, movies, CDs and DVD very easily on our Macs. It takes seconds to produce an attractive photo album.

Maintaining an old fashioned, detailed, hand-written journal has remained an impossibly dauntingly difficult task. Until now.

As we age and our children mature (we’re still waiting for that part to begin) started looking at a way to chronicle our thoughts, not just our photos and movies, of events and times of our life.

In the age of online web logs, there remain plenty of ways to gather your thoughts into a journal using the tool you favor the most. Your Mac.

Dream Diary is one that lets you quickly write down your-- you guessed it-- dreams.

Simple and free. Of course, I have some dreams I’d rather not have written down somewhere.

There’s a bucket full of Mac applications that use the term journal, though they’re often much more; outliners, notetakers, etc. Not journals of daily life.

These are all well and good, and most have the Swiss Army Knife approach and want to do everything-- except keep a nice, neat, secure journal of personal thoughts and experiences.

INtex Daily vX 2 is one such application. Loads of features, but if you’re after a simple, straightforward, personal journaling utility app, you’ll keep looking.

If you’re an adventurous journaler, Wabbit Wanch Design has Journal Express. One of the features is a personal diary.

After that, it’s everything on the ranch, including the stable, the range, the kitchen sink. No update in a year keeps this off my list Try This Soon.

Getting closer to the task of chronicling your day-to-day tasks is Journler, highly recommended by a few alert Mac360 users.

Journaling Journler does. Not only is it a place to store your thoughts and notes, it’s also a place to store everything else; nearly every file you can make on your Mac.

Not to worry. The price is worth the extra learning curve. Free.

One of the more popular journaling tools, and pricey relative to others, is MacJournal. This is the Mac application made for journaling.

MacJournal has multiple levels of security using password protection and encryption.

It’s flexible enough to record daily ideas, to-do lists, even record audio of an event.

Mr. Diary does what you’d expect. It’s a diary, a calendar, handles notes, does different languages, sports a clock and calendar, and does not Julienne fries or let you super size anything.

One way to appreciate the many Mac utilities that do things the Mac way is to try those that don’t, such as SimpleJournal, an obvious Windows-like journal utility.

We’ve been pouring through Mac app after Mac app to find one we both like, does what we want (record daily journal), yet give us some flexibility.

viJournal Lite and viJournal are pretty close to meeting that objective. It’s diary-like in layout, and looks like a Mac journal.

Write your entries under a header, and save by day, month, year; eve keep multiple journals. There’s password protection, and a simple notepad that follows your journal entries.

Moving toward journal scrapbook, viJournal also allows for dropping in images to match a journal entry. Other than the outdated brushed aluminum holdover look, viJournal is sweet.

Choices, choices, and more choices. We’re leaning to MacJournal or viJournal, but haven’t made the choice, as we know we’ll need to live with it for awhile.

What’s your choice? Do you journal? Do you diary? Can you explain the difference? What tools, beside pencil and paper, do you use? How many years have you kept a journal?

Check out the daily list of our 9 Word mini-Reviews at NoodleMac, and Kate's daily in-depth Mac software reviews at PixoBebo.

Off Topic #58 - Do politicians use personal computers? Of course. We’ve heard Barack Obama prefers a Mac, while Hillary Clinton uses a Dell, though, apparently neither of the candidates can bowl. Does Obama’s potential vice president use a Mac? Even Clinton acknowledges Apple’s brand power but says she can’t afford a Mac. Maybe she’d win if she used a Mac.

Off Topic #23 & #18 - Want to speed up your Mac? Try Kate MacKenzie’s approach to the $7.99 speed increase. Do you have a back up system for your Mac? Kate’s PixoBebo shows you how to use Time Machine with SuperDuper! for the ultimate Mac back up. And she doesn’t even charge Mac360 readers to visit her site.