Is Your Life Worth Keeping A Digital Journal On A Mac?

Who could have predicted that when they invented the internet’s information highway as we know it, that it would be grid locked with opinions.

Everyone has a way to publish an opinion on anything and everything and they do. What of personal publishing? You know, a diary, a journal, a personal blog? Is your life worth keeping a digital record? Does anyone really care?

First, let it be known that desktop publishing is passe, and micro blogging is in. What? Didn’t you get the memo? Actually, what’s happening in the digital world is rapid change in the ways we communicate with one another.

Second, there are more ways to communicate with one another than ever before, and our communication is likely to become even more complex, convoluted, and crowded in the future.

Sure, desktop publishing was all the rage a couple of decades ago, way back in the last century. That was then. This is now. The internet has changed how we gather information, how we develop and distribute information, and, importantly, how we communicate.

There’s the ubiquity of email and web pages, the trend of Twitter and micro blogging. In between was blogging which seems so antiquated these days. Speaking of antiquated, have you ever kept or read a diary or a scrapbook?

Amazingly, many of the components which make up a diary; personal thoughts and perspectives—and a scrapbook; photos and snippets of life, have their counterpart in today’s blogs—daily postings with photos and images.

A diary, a daily journal of what interests us, is a major challenge. Until the digital age, a diary was both personal and handwritten, not to be shared but to be savored over time.

Today’s journals are digital. Take MacJournal, for example. How is it not a digital version of the diaries and scrapbooks of yesteryear (you, know, back in the last century)?

MacJournal is what you think it is. A journal, a diary, a chronicle of your life—with all the digital tools of our Mac life. Unlike paper diaries and journals, MacJournal is fully digital, and stores digital photos, digital documents, digital sounds and movies and music.

Any good Mac software is good at storing and organizing. A hand written diary is about as linear as you can get. From start to finish, the directions are always the same; forward or backward. Alright, there’s random, too. Grab a page and start reading.

A digital journal goes far beyond the physical. Use it to create journals for personal life, for children, for your profession, or organizations. Digital images are drag and drop, as are movies, music, and sound.

Each entry in MacJournal may contain a mix of media, too. Resize images. Add a movie annotation with your iSight camera and attach to any entry. Got a movie clip of your most recent birthday party (you still count birthdays, don’t you?)? Drag and drop and save.

What I like about MacJournal and Mac software in general these days is that the intuitive interface history of the Mac is retained. MacJournal is familiar right away, with a gentle learning curve.

It’s easy to begin keeping not one journal, but multiples. Topics, dates, status, flags, blogging, are clicks away, faster than handwriting, though perhaps less memorable. Reading my handwriting would take digital computer analysis anyway.

I like MacJournal. It’s elegant, effective Mac software, one of the many packages from Mariner Software who’ve been doing Macs for ages. I keep a digital journal. I blog. I micro blog, text message, and chat.

My only concern with such digital tools in the age of change is longevity. Paper, while fragile, also can last hundreds of years. Photos? We don’t really know yet, but certainly since the 1800s. So, what about digital journals which mix photos, documents, text, movies, music, and everything else?

Will we still have the capability to display our digital journals a decade from now? What about in 100 years? Regardless, if your life is worth living it is also worth recording in one way or another. MacJournal is one way. What’s yours?