Surprised How Useful MacJournal Is to Me

I've used paper notebooks for years to jot down information from phone calls, bits of source code, semi-detailed to-do items, project notes, and all kinds of other miscellaneous pieces of text information and a diagram or two now and then. I've also spent years trying to find good ways to electronically capture this information. I've tried products like Microsoft OneNote for Windows, FileMaker Bento, Evernote's incredible web service (which I still use), and even spreadsheets. My very first method was a simple ASCII text file that I used to edit with vi and use grep to search for key words on UNIX mini-computers back in the 1980s. This actually worked quite well and may be the only electronic notetaking method I've used that insures I will always be able to read that information.

I've been thinking about trying Mariner Software's MacJournal ($34.95) for many months but never got around to doing so until this past weekend when I took a look at the apps included with the recent MacUpdates Promo Bundle. One of the reasons it interested me is that one of its features is to post to a variety of popular blog engines including ones I use. And, while it is not the end of my search for the ultimate notetaking tool, I think it may become of my toolbox of information organization tools.

The first thing that impressed me was its clean uncluttered main window. Its basic function is to create an entry and record your notes using text, audio, video, or pasting in media. You can add visual complexity by bringing up the Inspector window which provides detailed meta-data about each entry or a text ruler. You can also reduce visual complexity even further by removing the toolbar, recording bar, and other items. Because of its visual simplicity I began to think that this is one of those pieces of software that only requires you to learn 10% of its features to get 90% of your work done. And, so far, that seems to be the case.

However, one of the features I wanted to use was the post-to-blog features. So, I downloaded the PDF manual from Mariner Software's website (this requires registration but is a free download). The manual is a lot like the application it documents. Its layout is simple and easy to read. The documentation style is also simple and easy to understand.

The instructions for using MacJournal with one of my personal blogs and I successfully tested posting a blog entry within minutes of reading the documentation.

I found that MacJournal supported features like Wordpress categories as you can see from the dialog window it showed me as part of the process to upload a journal entry to my blog. I have not tried to see if MacJournal can send embedded images along with the text to my blog. But, that's on my list of things to try soon.

So, OK, this is great. But, what do you do if you, like me, prefer working on a desktop (iMac in my case) when at home or in the office and a MacBook when on the move? I asked Mariner software to make sure I understood their license. They said that their license allows you to install MacJournal on two of your devices (usually a desktop and MacBook). This works perfectly for me and probably is a reasonable licensing situation for most people.

I also asked about syncing between two Macs. MacJournal does not have such a syncing mechanism. But Mariner Software suggests MobileMe could perform the task. I'm not a MobileMe subscriber. So, I'll need to think about this a bit more and work out some other solution.