This week's App Smart column introduced to you some journal writing apps for iOS and Android. Compared to the fuss of pen and paper, and the fact we tend to carry our smartphones and tablets more or less everywhere these days, these apps are very convenient. A good journal app may actually tempt you to write a diary even if you've never done so before.
The apps I described were fairly simple, mainly dedicated to letting you record daily dairy entries such as text and images. As such they're the digital equivalent of a paper diary, with the added benefit that you can append things like mood icons and colors and even audio recordings.
But if you're a serious journal keeper, you may find your needs are better served by an app like Evernote (free on iOS, Android, Windows Phone 7 and Blackberry). Technically this sophisticated app is much more than a journal app, because you can use it as a kind of digital scrap book to store ideas, images, files and even scanned documents in an organized way. It even syncs between your mobile devices and your computer. But you can also bypass these complex features, and use the app's powerful text-editing tools to write short note entries that you can organize as a journalâ€"it can even automatically date-stamp each one for you. If you use a journal to track ideas and events at work, this might suit you.
Meanwhile if you're more the type of person who spends their life online, then the $2.99 iOS app Momento may be right up your street. At heart it's a journalling app much like many others, although it seems to have had more time devoted to making it easy on the eye. But its secret super power goes beyond the standard text-and-photo jo urnal entry. It can collate your online activity from sites like Twitter, Flickr, Instagram and Facebook and append them to each day's entry. As such it forms a kind of long-term storage box for your casual interactions on these social networks.
