Journler, written by Phillip Dow, is the Superman of digital diaries. With it you can jot down notes about your day, your wishes, your fears, your predictions. Years from now when you’re pulling in seven figures, you can look back and chuckle at how bent out of shape you were about that Property exam back in ‘07.

Journler screen showing day entry

You can also make audio notes. Your Macintosh laptop has a built-in microphone. Fire up Journler and record your notes. Journler saves them in MP3 format and automatically drops them into iTunes. Sounds fantastic, you say. But wait. There’s more.

Journler ties in with iTunes, so you can associate a song with the events of a particular day. I’ve heard the song “I Fought the Law” many times, sung by several different bands. But now whenever I go back to my Journler entry for December 6, 2006, I’ll be able to relive that moment when I came back from a blistering final, fired up my iPod Shuffle, and heard the Green Day version mocking me. Hmm… I’m not sure I really want to remember that.

Journler iTunes integration example

Journler thoughtfully also makes embedded images from iPhoto a snap. If you feel like conjuring up thoughts of activities unrelated to law school, this can be a pleasant diversion.

Journler's iPhoto integration is very smooth

If you’re like many law students, you blog in some fashion. Maybe it’s MySpace. Maybe it’s your .Mac account. Perhaps you use your real name. Perhaps you take on a pseudonym and write snarky things about your professors. Whatever your fancy, Journler is a great blogging companion. Take notes for later use in a blog post, or use Journler as your primary writing tool, and export directly to your blog.

Journler even gives you the ability to embed video in your journal. Not only can you add an existing video file to an entry, if you have an iSight or other digital video camera, you can record from within Journler. It’s so easy, even a cat can do it.

Journler's video capture is easy enough for a cat to use

The organizing and searching features of Journler are excellent. You can find entries by date, tags, or text search.

This is a smooth, well-designed application, and it shows in the extra little goodies. For example, you can email an entry to a friend with one-click ease. Spell-check is built-in. You can get a word count. Exporting entries to your iPod is dead simple. Details like this abound. Journler takes full advantage of iTunes, iPhoto, iMovie, iWeb, Address Book, and Mail, without that bloated feeling you get from apps that are trying to do too much.

On top of all this, there’s an active Journler community and Phil is an active participant, answering support questions, explaining future plans for the product, and so on. Journler is donationware, which means that if you like it, you can send a few bucks Phil’s way.

I admit that I am not as dilligent a journal writer as I could be, but I have been using Journler on and off for over a year. Looking back on some of my entries, I realize that there really is some value in occasionally chronicling the law school experience, even if it is just for my own reading. There are doubtless other uses for Journler. Its multimedia capabilities, facility with text, and AppleScript support make it a very flexible tool.

Journler - donationware/$24.95 for institutional or for-profit use - requires Mac OS X 10.4