I’ve been feeling lately that I really need to get back into the habit of journaling. Since I’ve been called as a bishop, it seems there is never enough time to do all I need to do, let alone keep a diary of it. However, I really feel I need to record some of the great life experiences I’m having, both for myself and my posterity.
Today I found LDS Journal, a simple way to keep your journal online. It’s still in beta, so some features are still under development. They also have a YouTube site with information and user testimonials. Impressive.
I signed up for the free account and my initial reaction is that the site looks promising. I’d be intersted in your experiences with this site or others like it.
Aren’t you a little concerned about longevity of the company? Anytime a company seeks to make money off an activity which is usually private, I get concerned.
I have the same concern about posting my family tree on something like Ancestry.com. These are for-profit businesses that could be gone overnight and they could take your journal with you.
I use ldsjournal.com. I really have enjoyed it. I can just copy paste my blog entries, or add more personal entries when I want. I’m always on the computer so it’s very convenient. You can go back and post date your entries and you can add “afterthoughts.” I like the look and feel of the site. I like that you can add pictures & scripture references. The only thing I’d change would be to make it so you can create multiple entries a day (like blog posts) so you can keep subjects separate. 🙂 I’m looking forward to when they add the publishing feature so I can get a bound copy of each year of my journal (or multiple years).
I’m concerned about the picture of the woman on their home page. While some might feel that she is dressed modestly, she isn’t, at least according to the standards in the For the Strength of Youth. Some might say it’s no big deal but it’s the first thing I noticed when going to their site. I don’t need to see that on LDS web sites.
My concern would also be with the longevity of the company but mostly with the security of the information. I have a journal I use on my computer and it encrypts the data as well. I also have an offsite upload method for backing it up offsite so I never lose it, not to mention my whole machine is backed up automatically every hour. But, again, I would be concerned with posting my private thoughts and personal experiences on someone else’s server. Your information will mean more to you than it ever will to some strangers in a data center.
It’s always nice to see open dialogue about journaling, especially when it is about our site. 🙂
Erika, thank you for your kind words. We’re certainly changing how daily entries work in LDSJournal.com and hope to have that implemented before the end of the year or very early in 2009.
Larry, you’ll be happy to know that our photo of the young women on the front page is now gone. You must have been the person that wrote into our support desk. You’ll be happy to know your comments did not fall on deaf ears since we openly discussed your opinion in our weekly team meeting.
And lastly, to Dan. I can certainly appreciate your point. I have had a web company for 10 years and LDSJournal is a personal goal of mine that I’ve had for almost 7 years. I can assure you that we’ve built this site for the long-term and built it in such a way that it can be ran with very little cost. That said, we’re always going to run into skeptics and most people find it hard to believe that we’d actually build something to help people. That’s okay, because we have time on our side and we’ll keep doing our best to build a better journal.
I’m sure I can speak for all of my team when I say that we hope you all have a wonderful holiday season and record your memories, no matter what medium you use.
Regards,
Nick Jones
Founder, LDSJournal
Where did the LDS Journal go to