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March 23, 2007

Journler Mini Review & Icon Design

I've been using Journler a great Mac OS X journaling, tidbit-capturing, swiss army knife application for the past several months, and it's high time I share it here on the weblog.

On Thursday, Journler 2.5 was released, a major milestone for the app, including many new features, a new look and feel and an icon I designed with the developer, Phil Dow.

I love this multi-purpose capture tool, as I can store all sorts of useful information in one place. I can keep track of logo projects here, standard templates for emails, references to recipes and even links to external files.

I feel like I'm barely scratching the surface of Journler's capabilities. It integrates to iLife, I can capture images, video and audio, it uses of the 'Services" menu to capture information from other applications, and has a 'Journler Drop Box' folder for an easy way of importing or linking files to Journler.

Like NetNewsWire (another favorite app), Journler features a built-in webkit-based web browser, so I don't need to leave Journler to check out a weblink.

Here's a screenshot of how I have Journler setup:

Phil has a nice approach to purchasing Journler, with a donation option for personal use, and a $24.95 if you use Journler for business purposes. Not bad.

If you're a Mac OS X user, interested in finding a tool to capture the snippets of your life, a place to write journal entries, and more, check out Journler.

It's highly recommend, even if I'm a little biased about the icon design. :-)

March 23, 2007 8:44 AM | Macintosh | add to del.icio.us

Comments

You even managed to get your Faber-Castell e-Motion in there! Cool! Every icon you design makes me want to reach through the screen and touch it.

I've had to handle e-Motion pencils a few times recently at work, and finally gave in yesterday and bought myself one in the black wood finish. Very nice.

Posted by: Michael Randall at March 23, 2007 11:20 AM

Michael, thanks for your kind words on the icon. I wondered if/who would notice my Faber-Castell in there. You win! :-)

Posted by: Mike Rohde at March 23, 2007 12:25 PM

What is the difference between this app and, say, Yojimbo?

//k

Posted by: macfixer at March 23, 2007 2:11 PM

Ironcially I found your Twitter post on TwitterMap! Journler is a great app. I'm using MacJournal right now for blogging, etc. I love looking for the lesser-known unboxed Mac Apps you don't find in the store! Great post!

Posted by: bbrowne74 at March 23, 2007 3:54 PM

Kyle — Journler and Yojimbo are very similar apps, though I suspect they differ in features and maybe even their approach to the problem of capturing and storing info. I've not used Yojimbo, so I can't compare, but I suspect there are some comparisons out on the web somewhere.

Brad — Twittermap? Wow, that's very cool! I scanned that the other day and it was an interesting thing to watch. Now I'm glad I mentioned my post on Twitter. :-)

As for Journler, it's a very nice app which has a great developer behind it in Phil Dow. Every time I play with the app I find a new use for it, so I hope you'll find it useful as well.

Posted by: Mike Rohde at March 24, 2007 8:23 AM

Very nice icon, Mike, indeed!
Stefano

Posted by: Stefano at March 26, 2007 3:50 PM

Thanks Stefano!

Posted by: Mike Rohde at March 28, 2007 6:45 AM

Mike,

The first thing I thought when I downloaded Journler was "great icon." I wish all icons were this inviting.

In fact, it's practically the polar opposite of the Yojimbo icon, which I just don't like at all.

The one thing I'm trying/wishing for Journler to do is to grab offline archives of web pages. The program seems to indicate that it does this, but, so far, I'm getting only an online archive (that is, a link which loads the page inside of Journler).

Am I barking up the wrong tree on this? This is a capability that Yojimbo has.

Posted by: Tim Windsor at March 28, 2007 6:39 PM

Tim, thanks for your kind words about the icon. I suspect that since I used the app before designing the icon, I had a feel for what I wanted in the design. I think that makes it a little more personal.

The icon did take several iterations to nail down though, working closely with Phillip, so it was some effort to get it just right.

As for web archives — Journler has webkit I believe, but I don't know for sure if it actually saves HTML, CSS and images as an "archive" in the database (I think that's what you are talking about, correct?).

Thanks for your comment!

Posted by: Mike Rohde at March 28, 2007 9:53 PM

Thanks Mike. I did hear from Phil, the developer of Journler, and he writes:

Journler can do webarchives for
dragged urls no problem. Depending on how you're getting the url into
Journler you have a couple options. If you're dragging the url to
Journler's dock icon, make sure to enable the "create web archives
from url drags" or Journler's media preferences. If you're dragging
the url to an already existing entry, use the standard alt/option and
command keyboard modifiers to control whether the url is linked as a
url or copied as a web archive.

I still couldn't get it to work until I launched Safari and tried it there. Everything worked as advertised in Safari, so it appears that the browser I'm using, Camino, may have some problems with Journler's archive function.

I've asked Phil for clarification on this.

Posted by: Tim Windsor at March 29, 2007 7:25 AM

I guess I can blame OS X's stability as much as I can blame myself.

It had been ages since I'd restarted my system. Journler requires a restart for the Services to start working.

After a restart, Camino and Journler now play well together.

And thus ends the tech-support hijacking of Mike's blog (though, to be fair, he did suggest it himself....)

Posted by: Tim Windsor at March 29, 2007 11:51 AM

Tim, thanks for the info and the final update. Glad it got working!

I don't mind at all being a place for this kind of technical support to take place — I'm bet it will help someone else along the way.

I'm happy that I've just found out about another nice Journler feature! :-)

Posted by: Mike Rohde at March 29, 2007 1:22 PM