Diary dear
By Meg Rivera
THIS week’s article is inspired by a movie I saw. It was a rare Saturday at home, and I was channel surfing with my cat sitting on the couch beside me. HBO was doing a “Greatest Hits” thing, and that night it happened to be the Notebook.
We know the story: an old man is reading to his wife, who has Alzheimer’s. He reads from a diary she wrote, recounting their love story so she wouldn’t forget.
This movie, though responsible for hundreds of discouraged males everywhere, has lots of things we can learn about documentation from a personal point of view. Memories leap off the page, and become more tactile, since we committed them to pen and ink.
Of course, the diaries I kept when I was younger had none of Allie’s talent for such elegant prose. I had more pressing matters like school and boys to write about.
But just because pen and ink are on their way to obsolescence, doesn’t mean that diaries have to be. In fact, I think that this generation has the tools to preserve their memories in richer detail with the technology available.
So go on kids, keep those memories alive with these three apps. You’ll have a grand time revisiting them.
App name: Diary Mobile
App developer: diary.com
Available on: iTunes, Google Play
Easy to use: Yes, even if you don’t go through the tutorial at the beginning.
Overall comment: You need an account on diary.com for you to be able to take advantage of all this app’s features. This is a diary that takes photos; sometimes you need a picture so you don’t have to write a thousand words. This is what was missing, when I wrote my diary. You get an account on the website, which syncs all your text and photo entries across your devices. Not bad for the new age chronicler, but I imagine that the more techie-savvy would find this too minimalist. Three clicks out of five.
App name: Penzu
App developer: penzu.com
Available on: iTunes, Google Play
Easy to use: Extremely minimalist; this is the Web 2.0 equivalent of writing on a torn out piece of notebook paper.
Overall comment: For the no-frills diary writer. I was a little disappointed with this particular one, because it looked rather flashy on the iTunes download page. But if you’re not looking for something fancy, then this isn’t too bad. You can have several diaries going at once, but they are not always backed up on a cloud server. The Pro version affords you that. Again, you get photos with this, but not very much else. Two clicks out of five.
App name: Moleskine Journal
App developer: Moleskine Srl
Available on: iTunes, Google Play
Easy to use: There is a tutorial that pops up when you first open it, and little reminders come up whenever you tap an icon. You can dismiss them permanently once you get the hang of them.
Overall comment: I’m going to be keeping this one. The stylish UI gives you the same smug, scholarly feeling as when you write in a real Moleskine. There is a toolbar for little drawings and scribblings, photos and videos you can take to integrate into your text, and several “paper styles” or formats for your notes. Five clicks out of five.
