Many people like to keep a diary or journal to record their lives, their thoughts, or whatever interests them. Consider these great diary keepers: Kurt Cobain, Anne Frank, and Che Guevara. Now in the real world physical diaries can be lost by their owners or, worse still, found by others who may not care about the author’s privacy.
Many people like to keep a diary or journal to record their lives, their thoughts, or whatever interests them. Consider these great diary keepers: Kurt Cobain, Anne Frank and Che Guevara. Now in the real world physical diaries can be lost by their owners or, worse still, found by others who may not care about the author’s privacy.
Diary of a deliberately spammed housewife
This being the 21st Century, any of the digerati who wish to keep a diary will, of course, want an electronic version and, if it is available on a hosted service, then all the better.
For people such as these there is, in fact, an online solution that will meet their exacting standards: Penzu.
Penzu is a hosted service that provides a really good looking editing interface with a slick diary metaphor (no Flash; all HTML and AJAX). The service is published as either free for basic functionality or paid for for advanced features.
Penzu argue that diaries are good for a number of reasons including “expressive writing is an extremely cathartic process, helping you to relax and release stress” and “keeping a journal or diary can not only boost your ‘working memory’ but your grades too.”
With both versions of Penzu you can add pictures to your diary, search the contents, and, should you be so inclined, share your diary with others. With the Pro version ($19 per year) you also get encryption (256-bit AES), themes, support for larger images, tagging support, the ability to import from sources such as blogs and RSS feeds, diary content exporting in multiple formats, and enhanced formatting.
This is, I suspect, a niche market and one that could well be taken over by a simple tweak to something like Google Docs. That said, Google has little incentive to engage this market so Penzu is probably safe for some time to come.
Like scrapbooking, which, in the real world, is a multi-multi-million-dollar business online diaries may get some traction particularly if schools push them to fulfill course requirements.
I like Penzu for its design and elegance. It will be interesting to see how the service evolves and how the company capitalizes upon their niche.
