The World Doesn't Need More Journal Apps (wired.com) 37
We're seeing a boom in journaling apps as safer, easier ways to ease us back into posting everything online. From a report: Last year, Apple released a journal app with iOS 17. Former Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer just unveiled a photo app called Shine, which is made to share photos and memories with a select group of people. Today, Retro -- a startup that we called "the new Instagram" -- is launching a feature called Journals within the app, which lets you record both photos and notes for a select group of people.
As a lifelong journaler, it's hard to forget that I already have an intimate, safe space to record my life and share memories. It is a notebook. I don't have to worry about marketers selling my information, because it's not accessible. What if creating a safe space all of your own means just getting off the internet altogether? Most of these apps are based on the central premise that most of us would rather talk to family or close friends than with a pretty stranger shilling snack boxes. As we reported previously, Retro has a few standout features. Once you join the app, you're prompted to select a few pictures to post per week. In order to see your friends' and family's photos, you have to share photos of your own. That keeps people actively participating instead of lurking.
As a lifelong journaler, it's hard to forget that I already have an intimate, safe space to record my life and share memories. It is a notebook. I don't have to worry about marketers selling my information, because it's not accessible. What if creating a safe space all of your own means just getting off the internet altogether? Most of these apps are based on the central premise that most of us would rather talk to family or close friends than with a pretty stranger shilling snack boxes. As we reported previously, Retro has a few standout features. Once you join the app, you're prompted to select a few pictures to post per week. In order to see your friends' and family's photos, you have to share photos of your own. That keeps people actively participating instead of lurking.
Apple's Journal (Score:4, Informative)
Apple's take on this uses end-to-end encryption and is a tad bit more secure than the paper journal/diary that can be pawed through by anyone from a noisy partner to law enforcement. I'm skeptical journaling on an iPhone is going to get you the same mental health benefits as journaling on paper and the last thing modern day society needs is MORE screen time, but still, there are reasons why some people might prefer a digital solution to a physical one.
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Agree about paper, but voice to text functionality is a bonus. Verbalizing your thoughts and feelings has certain benefits that writing them down does not. Sometimes, it's helpful to hear yourself say something.
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Verbalizing your thoughts and feelings has certain benefits that writing them down does not. Sometimes, it's helpful to hear yourself say something.
And the reverse is also true.
Writing about something means having to think about it before you do (in most cases), which means that you have to organize your thoughts more clearly. This often results in you seeing something you didn't before.
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Verbalizing your thoughts and feelings has certain benefits that writing them down does not. Sometimes, it's helpful to hear yourself say something.
And the reverse is also true.
Writing about something means having to think about it before you do (in most cases), which means that you have to organize your thoughts more clearly. This often results in you seeing something you didn't before.
I believe Slashdot comments over the years proves you don't need to organize anything if you don't want to.
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I can't speak for others, but writing stuff down helps me a lot. When I was in school, I never studied before exams because I took copious notes, and the mere act of taking those notes made something click in my head to push that info into long-term memory and make it quickly available for later recall without ever having to look at the notes again. You're absolutely right about writing forcing you to organize your thoughts, but I suspect there are also other, possibly more subtle, benefits to be gained i
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Ah, but the great thing is that it doesn't need to be an either/or when you use an app. Using paper eliminates one option.
Yeah (Score:1)
I don't know if the world needs more journal apps (Score:3, Funny)
Any of you math guys have a formula for how journaly my journal apps will get is it approaches the limit of infinity? I think that's a calculus problem right?
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But now I have an overwhelming desire to write a journal app. I don't even have a journal I just want to thumb my nose at somebody. Take that. I'm going to write a million journal apps. Each one more journaly than the next!
Cool. How can I unsubscribe or otherwise filter you out?
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Click on their user profile, then click on "friend this user," and then click on "foe."
In your setup I think there's a way to mod foes down, but it's been more than a decade since I looked and I don't want to look now and fuck I wish I hadn't clicked reply at this point, but I guess I already posted a few sentences and I might as well.
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But I'm making a special journaling app to keep track of all the AI hype. In fact, it will run on AI. In fact skip the journaling, and add blackjack...
What we don't need (Score:2)
What we don't need is people telling us what we don't need.
Fuck the fuck off already.
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But it's a blogger mainstay!
Actually, now that I think about it - what we really COULD benefit from is fewer bloggers...
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But bloggers, like you and me, are the product. Your posts sell. Your profile is important-- people must market to you! Buy something, idiot! We have the DATA ON YOU. WE KNOW WHAT YOU WANT, NOW BUY, DAMMIT!!!!!
Or not.
Like others, I'm tempted to feed such tools with foam, goo, and nonsense blather, just to throw sand into the AI engines. I might be happy that. Yeah, go ahead. Bring 'em on.
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I don't understand the objection to targeted advertising.
Honestly, I would fill out a 1000 question survey and tell someone everything they wanted to know, if it guaranteed I never saw a completely irrelevant ad again....which....by the way, is virtually every ad I see.
You know what I never see? Ads for Dewalt tools. Why is that? And yet, I buy plenty of them. Imagine how many more I might buy it they advertised to me.
What ads do I see? Plenty of crap for HIV positive people, Medicare Advantage, term life i
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I guess: Ignorance is bliss.
The portfolio of who you are online is extensive, all garnered by various targeted advertising profiles. Your privacy, whatever you had left, is gone.
The profiling information about who you are, the sites you visit, the clicks you make, where your cursor hovers. this and much much more is in a myriad dbs, waiting to be assessed.
You might believe they assess you for targeted ads. Yes, they do this, too. Instead, many others are looking at the purchased data to influence everything
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I don't vote anymore. It's a waste of time.
Insurers...I've had the same for years. I won't switch unless they drop me.
I'd prefer the ads that target left-handed, freedom-minded people who, while wealthy, live well below their means, drive a Jeep, drive a scooter, don't give a shit about music or sports, picky eater, likes the outdoors, thinks the govt sucks, just generally doesn't give a shit anymore, has an eight year old boy, has terminal cancer and will probably be dead within 6-12 months.
What can you do
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This. We don't need fewer journal apps, we need fewer journals.
Quite frankly, we have arrived at the point where everyone thinks they got something worthwhile to say when they don't. And hell, now I have joined the crowd!
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Quite frankly, we have arrived at the point where everyone thinks they got something worthwhile to say when they don't. And hell, now I have joined the crowd!
recording any life experiences is likely worthwhile to anyone's self. writing your thoughts and experiences down can be a good tool for self reflection, as is revisiting them after some time has passed, having a mail exchange with your past and future selves can indeed be very interesting plus it can assist in memory keeping.
this ofc is best kept as a private exercise, it has nothing to do with the urge to "share with friends" which is usually either narcissism, insecurity, a desperate pursuit of social acc
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There's blogger and there's Blogger.
(And LiveJournal is still chugging away!)
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Livejournal is now owned and hosted in Russia and is being used to track political dissidents there. If you'd rather not spend your time boosting the visibility and ad revenue of a fascist tool, go to Dreamwidth.
Safe space for journal (Score:1)
“Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street building has been renamed, every date has been altered.”
“And the process is continuing day by day and minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party is always right.”
Let people decide (Score:2)
what they need.
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How are people going to know what they need when they don't get told? You're aware you're dealing with a generation that has been told since birth what they need, what they crave, what they want and what they just can't live without, right?
we have finally arrived... (Score:4, Insightful)
So yeah, sure "Journal". Tell me everything. Our terms of service ensure we only share your information with our (millions) of "trusted" partners, PRISM via API, and our advertisers OF COURSE.. uh, be sure to read the fine print....how the fxck do you think we pay for all this?
Retro's approach seems like a stupid idea (Score:2)
"Most of these apps are based on the central premise that most of us would rather talk to family or close friends than with a pretty stranger shilling snack boxes. As we reported previously, Retro has a few standout features. Once you join the app, you're prompted to select a few pictures to post per week. In order to see your friends' and family's photos, you have to share photos of your own. That keeps people actively participating instead of lurking."
So 85-year-old Grandma Jones can't see the pictures of
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This is about making the app work for its real audience. If Grandma Jones isn't posting, how are they supposed to build a profile on her to sell to advertisers?
Re: Retro's approach seems like a stupid idea (Score:1)
It's trivial to start posting photos on their behalf if you're already logged in.
The new new instagram? (Score:1)
Jian-Ya~~~~~~~~ang!
Apple has a journaling app? (Score:2)
It would be nice to get Xcode on an iOS device, though. And I don't mean Playgrounds.
Yeah we do need another journaling app (Score:2)
We need a journaling app to document our experiences with journaling apps.