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It was over four years ago while I was living in Austria that I began working on Journler. I had recently broken up with my girlfriend and had waxed nostalgic about our relationship on my blog. A post inadvertently offended her. The event deeply upset me and I forswore blogging, but I still wanted to write in a digital format. I researched the available private journaling software for the Mac and wasn’t pleased with the options, so I decided to try my hand at creating one of my own.

Those of you who have been with Journler so long will recall the breakneck pace at which early development took place. At the time I was a teaching assistant in the Austrian school system. I worked twelve hours to a week and was able to dedicate a great deal of time to the program. I reckon I worked more than forty hours a week on Journler for a couple of years even as I held my regular job. It was as though teaching were a hobby and programming my work.

I did not charge for Journler. My teaching position, though requiring so few hours of my day, paid quite well, and I did not need the money. I was just excited to be writing a program and to be sharing it with others. I was excited to receive thanks and suggestions and to know that the program was useful to so many. I was excited to see a community flourishing around an application I had envisioned and executed. And I was an active member of that community, regularly contributing to the forum, fielding questions and posting updates. I accepted only donations for the work, not of the monetary kind, but books and movies.

Journler grew. It was a feature download at Apple. Macworld gave it an excellent review and it was discussed in a number of US and international publications. The program was translated into five or six languages. The user base grew exponentially, almost all of it by word of mouth. I participated in Google Adwords for a short time but otherwise I never advertised. Folks loved Journler and told their friends, family and colleagues.

I attribute the downfall of Journler to its success. As the number of users grew so too did the problems. In response to feature requests the program’s code became exceedingly complex. Bloat crept in. The volume of emails increased to a level I was not able to manage. The forum exploded with activity and I was no longer able to read let alone address every post. The support requirements were becoming too much. I would spend hours helping a user with damaged data. It would take me days to track down an esoteric bug a single user was experiencing which I could not reproduce. I could easily spend all my time on support alone. I needed to hire extra help but was in something of a bind. I was still not charging for the application. I had in fact promised that I would never charge for Journler. But as my job ended I broke that promise and began explicitly to request that users purchase the program.

For the past two years I have struggled to live on those volunteer purchases while working on the next major iteration of the program. I have made enough to live a relatively frugal life but never enough to hire help, and even after I had decided to take the next step and begin charging for Journler, I couldn’t do it without releasing the next major upgrade in which I would implement the shareware lock and so enforce the licensing policy. Help wouldn’t come until I reached that point, but I needed help to get there. I have not been able to figure out a way out of this problem. The difficulties have overwhelmed and depressed me. Consequently everything about the application has suffered, in turn re-enforcing those difficulties. Something had to change.

Emotionally I have been exhausted for many months now, but only in the last few months have I reached a financial breaking point. I am no longer able to live on income from Journler. Purchases have fallen below a sustainable level. I have borrowed from friends and family to keep going and have still not made enough progress. Were I a business I would be on the verge of declaring bankruptcy. I had hoped to push through, recently announcing that I would open source a substantial portion of Journler’s code. It is now apparent to me that I am not able to continue with that effort.

Unhappily I must announce that I am ending work on Journler, effective immediately. All development has ceased. I will not be releasing any further updates, and it is unlikely I will release updates to the already open sourced segments of the code.

I will continue to support Journler users indefinitely, that is, I do not have a timeframe for ending that support, although I imagine it will come eventually. I have hundreds of unanswered emails many of them months old to address as well as a still active online community with which to work. In fact, all of my Journler related energy will be focused here. I will make time as I am able, necessarily working around the regular employment which I am now in search of.

I would like to thank everyone who has been involved in Journler for the past four years, especially a number of unnamed individuals who contributed more than their fare share: translators, web masters, apple script geniuses, designers, editors, nanotechnologists, beta testers, friends, family and the many volunteers who took to the forums to help others in my absence. Journler has an awesome community of users and that has certainly brought the most pleasure to my work. There are tens of thousands of you. I never thought something like that could be possible. Thank you.

Finally, I would like to hold out a last hope that Journler will continue in one form or another. If you or someone you know may be interested in picking up Journler where I have left off, please contact me. I would love to see Journler once again thrive in the hands of a capable developer or team.

~Philip Dow
Sprouted, Journler, 2005-2009

Journler 2.5.4 beta is the pre-release version of Journler’s next incremental update. Journler 2.5.4 includes a number of changes, but most important for early Leopard adopters, it ensures compatibility with the new OS.

Although 2.5.4 is still in the beta stage, it is strongly advised that Leopard users update their copies of Journler. The current version of Journler sports a number of compatibility issues which 2.5.4 addresses. Of course, Mac OS Tigers users may update to the beta as well, but it is not necessary.

Download Journler 2.5.4 beta

Please note that it may be necessary to reset your password with this update. You’ll find the instructions at the Journler wiki: Resetting your Password. All beta users should enable auto-updating in Journler’s preferences and monitor the beta forum for announcements.

Journler Drops Support For Blogging
I have decided to drop blogging from Journler. I originally added blogging because it was a popular request, but I have never been able to fully realize the feature. Rather than continue to support a half-finished product which I feel reflects poorly on the overall quality of Journler, I chose to remove it. If you are a prolific or even causal blogger you will need to use another program such as MarsEdit or Ecto for that portion of your journaling.

Journler 2.5.4 is the Last Donationware Version of Journler
I intend to release the final version of Journler 2.5.4 by November 15th. This will be the last version of Journler to use donations or the dual license system. Slated for release in two to three months, Journler 2.6 will include a number of major improvements and fully take advantage of the new Leopard features. It will require a full license for all uses.

I have not come to this decision lightly. While there are many reasons why I have chosen to stop offering Journler as donationware, two stand out. First, Journler has grown too big. I am no longer capable of single handedly managing a project of this size. I require assistance and additional expertise, and both come at a price.

Second, I have come to the conclusion that the donationware model is not sustainable. Software development is what I do for a living, and while I have had some financial success, this is the second month I will not break even since Journler 2.5 was released. Software development is a cyclical business, I understand that, but I must be able to pay the bills consistently. And if I’m going to take on additional help, I’ll certainly need a steady income.

The pricing structure for Journler 2.6 will be announced at a later date. In the meantime, enjoy the 2.5.4 beta if you’re on Leopard, and keep an eye out for the final version in mid November if you’re not.

Download Journler 2.5.3 here

I have reached the bi-weekly bandwidth limit on my .Mac account and the spigot has been turned off. External access to the account has been suspended until the 16th. Because I host the Journler download on my .Mac account, direct links to the Journler download from any number of sites are not working. Up until about five minutes ago the auto-update feature was also not working.

It blows my mind that I can move 125GB of a 9.8MB download in two weeks, but it is the case. I guess that’s a good thing! A maxed out .Mac account offers 250GB of monthly bandwidth, roughly 26,000 Journler downloads, but it is split into two periods for the month. The one begins on the 1st and the other on the 16th. If you surpass half the total during the first period, as I have, the download stream is disabled until the start of the second. This isn’t terrible. My account is still active, I just have to wait until the 16th for downloads to resume.

Until then I have implemented a temporary workaround. I am now hosting the Journler download from journler.com itself. If you tried to auto-updated earlier today and it did not work, give it another go. If you are looking to download Journler directly, you may use this direct download link instead. Sites which insist on having a hard link to a fixed location, such as VersionTracker and MacUpdate, will not work with the Journler download until the 16th.

v2.5.3 is a maintenance release for the 2.5 series and is a recommend update for all Journler users. v2.5.3 features numerous improvements and a lot of behind the scenes work, including:

1. German localization - many thanks to Andreas Häne
2. Danish localization - many thanks to Preben Nielson
3. Crash fix related to Safari 3 beta
4. Fixed memory leak related to live word count
5. Punctuation now allowed in smart folders, no apostrophes or quotes though
6. Improved resource management
7. Attachment drags from Mail now work
8. Updated help files
9. Many, many more improvements and additions

If you are updating Journler using the direct link provided above, follow these steps to install the new version:

1. Quit Journler
2. Download the disk image. It will mount on your desktop
3. Drag the version of Journler on the disk image to your Applications folder or wherever you keep your Journler application. It is ok to replace the old version of Journler. Your journal data is stored elsewhere and will not be effected
4. Once you have copied Journler to your Applications folder, you may close the disk image and trash it
5. Run Journler 2.5.3. Journler may ask for access to your Keychain. This is normal and you should allow it

Be sure to check out the Journler Forums if you have any questions or run into any problems with the update. Enjoy!

I wanted a simple, friendly GUI to a database of thoughts and ideas that was also a writing tool; in essence an easily searched, easily edited journal that would allow me to attach images and other media. I wanted this note manager/snippet collector to be scriptable (what else, coming from the editor of these pages?). I didn’t need a powerful (and expensive) database manager like DEVONThink; but I did want an elegant, inexpensive ($25, fully-functional demo), middle-of-the-road application for storing virtually anything and recovering it with a simple search from either its user interface or from a script.

Adam found Journler to be the right tool for the job and recommends MacScripter readers to give it a try. Adam also points to MacScripter’s Journler category as a repository for Journler Apple Scripts and suggests that interested users have a look at Journler’s own AppleScript and Automator forum. Check out enough of the posts there and you’ll stumble across Adam’s own extensive contributions made under the username NovaScotian. Be sure to say hi!

Lex
Alongside Journler I am working on Lex. Lex picks up where Journler leaves off. If Journler is “entry based information” then Lex is project based documents. Journler was originally designed for journaling your life. Although the program benefits from recent features seen more commonly in information managers, Journler is not one by its nature. Lex is, and where Journler runs a single database, Lex is databases plural so that you can split projects up and deal with the relevant data in distinct groupings.

Development has, however, taken longer than expected. In a post two months ago I said I would need four weeks to produce a working version. It was a naïve enthusiasm. The coding itself isn’t so much the problem. My style is. I go about my work in an erratic way, jumping between features to see if they are all possible. I have reached a point where, although I am confident everything can be done, I am lost in a maze of half accomplished ideas.

Iterative Development
“Iterative” software development refers to a process which moves forward in short, repeated, independent phases. The steps involved in the development of a complete product — requirements analysis, design, coding, testing, and documentation — are compacted and micro-applied to every change made over a product’s lifetime. With each completed change an improved, fully functioning product is ready for release, even if it is not actually delivered.

I have decided to apply this approach to Lex. It is an opportunity to discipline my practice and ideally produce a better product faster. Hoping to add to iterative design theory, I will be adapting the process to fit the needs of this project. Rather than applying the iterative method to small changes built into the project as a single system, I am partitioning Lex into self contained, feature specific “proxy applications” and applying the iterative process there. The goal is to produce independent, fully functioning applications out of the many features that Lex brings together.

The Proxy Application
I am calling them proxy applications because during development they stand in for the corresponding features actually built into Lex. This differs from prototyping. I will not be developing models that demonstrate or test an idea. Instead, the process should produce applications, feature complete though highly focused on a single task. By isolating a subset of Lex’s functionality into a separate application, the proxy allows me to analyze, design, code and test that subset independent of every other. While one proxy undergoes real world testing I’ll be able to work on others without interfering with the first, and vice versa.

Lex is an extensible application from the ground up. Although I define the program’s core functionality at the outset, plugins are responsible for the actual implementation. Lex itself is tiny, a simple structure with hooks for the plugins. I believe that projects of this nature are especially suited to the use of proxy applications. Most of the proxies I have envisioned for Lex are simply wrappers for a feature expressed by one of the hooks.

Applying the Method to Lex
If this is all too abstract let me offer a concrete example. In addition to the regular and smart folders already familiar in Journler, Lex allows you to build spotlight folders which automatically collect documents on your computer. Support for executing this action is built into Lex, but the means by which you specify a folder’s criteria is implemented with plugins. This is the hook. Lex examines the document type targeted by the folder, e.g. PDF or Image, and loads the most appropriate plugin, permitting plugin developers to target files with custom metadata or taylor the existing set.

Spotlight folders concretely define one of Lex’s features. Following the proxy strategy, I isolate the relevant code and wrap it inside a proxy application. The proxy takes center stage during development. I do all my design, implementation, and testing on it. Furthermore, the proxy is a complete application in itself. In this case I’m calling it Smarts. As soon as Smarts reaches a mature stage I intend to release it as a standalone application. Real world testing will verify that the feature performs as expected, at which point I can integrate the code back into Lex itself.

Where It All Leads
From the user’s perspective it will look like I’m not working on Lex at all. Instead, you’ll see the release of a number of simple applications with strongly defined feature sets. But behind the scenes I am actually combining each verified proxy into a single, whole application: Lex. The method should allow me to establish the code for each feature more quickly as well as more efficiently test and debug it. Ideally, before a beta of Lex is even made available, most of its functionality will have been tested and verified. The end product is one of higher quality that is produced more efficiently.

That’s the hope. Lex has just become an experiment in software development. It’ll be interesting to see how this works out.

Had a good conversation today with Chris Messina of Citizen Agency fame. Chris is one of the Agency’s co-founders and advises startups and other firms on their web presence. He is steeped in Web 2.0 goodness and is enthusiastic about the iPhone’s potential as a device which supports web standards. Our conversation brought into perspective my recent diatribes against the iPhone and has given me the chance to ask, is it really that bad?

Let’s take it by way of the WWDC’s OS X Graphics and Media State of the Union. I can’t go into details because of an NDA that was signed by my presence, but let me say that the session offered a convincing argument for the unification of the web, desktop and mobile experience, especially by way of “rich” — read media rich — content.

Since the desktop PC became a consumer product we’ve seen it increasingly decentralized. What traditionally belonged on the desktop is now appearing on other platforms. The transformation has given rise to a “device ecosystem.” Consumers work on their desktops, give presentations with their laptops, play on their portables, listen to their iPods, stream movies to their Apple TV and surf the internet on their mobiles. At the same time two other trends have developed. Rich content has become more prevalent, and individuals expect a single, unified experience.

The circumstances have led to a bit of a conundrum: how do you deliver the same experience when every year the experience becomes more complex and the devices which deliver that experience more varied? Take a movie for example. Alongside that movie are a website, a soundtrack, games for your desktop and portable, downloadable trailers and eventually the movie itself as a download. Heck, you might even throw in email stationary. Not to mention that presentation you put together on your desktop but can’t access from your laptop because of a bad USB stick, but which should be available from your homepage, usable on your phone and editable on your co-worker’s Vaio. What’s the solution?

Standards, and it is here that the iPhone may offer something truly revolutionary. It’s not an area I am well versed in, so I missed it the first time around when I said in my keynote post:

“Instead of announcing an SDK Jobs announced that developers would be able to write AJAX Web 2.0 applications that could be run directly in Safari on the iPhone. This was even billed as an advantage — developers wouldn’t need an SDK, how great is that? But the phone has a standards compliant browser. Of course it can run web apps based on dhtml, css and javascript. Nothing new here.”

Ok, nothing new because we knew the iPhone runs Safari and Safari is standards compliant. But that the iPhone is a phone with a standards compliant browser in the first place is huge! The sessions zeroed in on this with examples of how web pages render on the iPhone verses other web enabled devices. Correct me if I’m wrong but I believe Apple Inc. is the first company to fully support web standards on a mobile device so that a site’s content appears exactly how it appears on your desktop or laptop.

With that we reach the point of this article: the platform is becoming irrelevant. At the end of the day does it really matter what kind of computer or device you use as long as it enables you to do what you want and in the manner you expect? The western consumer is about to enter an age of ubiquitous computing. I love that word, ubiquitous. Your Mac better play nice with the PC at the office and they both better work with your printer and your phone, render web content uniformly and allow you to access your data from anywhere at anytime.

I’m sure you’ll forgive the developer if he or she is upset about this. When Steve Jobs takes advantage of his Keynote to flip 6000 Macintosh developers the bird, hand delivering instructions to start writing web apps, he is negating tens of thousands of years worth of career and experience. I’ve only been doing the Cocoa/Obj-C gig for a few years now, but there are developers out there who have been doing this for a lifetime. Asking them to consider a whole other programming language with its syntax, style, libraries and quirks is like telling a Manhattan taxi driver to do his job in LA starting eighteen days from now. You’re gonna hear a few choice words.

Chris is hopeful this is a step in the right direction and our conversation really opened my eyes. It’s going to be a lot of work for Mac developers to make this transition but it certainly looks like a necessary one if they want to be relevant in the approaching age of ubiquitous computing, platform irrelevancy and content supremacy.

Rock Star Programs
The Delicious Generation has a style, and it is Rock Star Programming. I’m not talking about a methodology here like “cowboy coding” or a paradigm shift made possible by new features in the latest, baddest cat on the block. I mean an attitude both personal and technical. It is a way of doing things and having things done which has developed in and around the programmers and the applications they create. These guys — and it is mostly guys — are rock stars of the Macintosh world. They rock, their apps rock, and they know it.

Rock is an ambiguous word but the metaphor is entirely appropriate. On the application side, rock star programs “do it because they can.” In a word it is show; rock star programs put on a helluva show. They may not be all that incredible, sometimes just a three chord progression, but rock star programs know where to play the extra rift, hit the impecable triplet or hammer on and off, and all with perfect timing. Rock star programs take the most mundane data management tasks and make them gorgeous and exciting.

Rock Star Programmers
Rock star programmers throw a concert you want to see in the next town and then again, and indeed rock star programmers have their groupies. The fans gather online, hanging out at Digg, de.licio.us, twitter and flickr, but they get together for parties too, private rock star parties. WWDC featured the one or the other. You see, rock star programmers know they’re good, and when you’re good you’re exclusive. It can’t be helped.

Don’t get me wrong. I met a few of the rock stars this week at WWDC and they’re good folk. Sure, there’s the über rock star who takes the mic at Q&A, introduces himself with “Hi my name is so and so from so and so, you may have heard of it,” and then talks for five minutes to the applause of his fellow developers (!). But most of these guys are cool, down to earth rock stars, smart guys writing killer code for awesome apps. Props. On stage these guys rock, but back stage they just want to chill, drink a beer and talk.

Rock Star Leopard
Rock star programming is nothing new. The programming community has always had its personalities, coders with style and code on the edge. But Leopard heralds a new era. Leopard is the rock star’s OS, enabling a heretofore unseen level of visual appeal and interface excellence. We’re talking some serious snaz here. Apple has given developers a whole new toolset, a repertoire that coders and designers will take advantage of to deliver an immersive computing experience that is dynamic, fluid and potentially ubiquitous. Folks, your Mac is about to get a whole lot better. “Wow” doesn’t cover it. The volume has been jacked up and the set is gonna blow your mind.

This time around we are talking about a paradigm shift, and as is often the case with paradigm shifts there will be those who try but for whatever reason are unable to hit the mark. I can think of two. Put the power chord and effects box in the hands of a noob and you’ll get a cool sound now and then but also a lot of noise. Leopard enables but with that enabling come the results of inexperience and excess. Both new and longtime Mac developers will be trying new things with the interface and, failed by Human Interface Guidelines (the HIG) that are long out of date, much of what they produce will be ugly. As I’m sure you know, a lot of rock is shit.

Another problem is the level of knowledge and talent required. Rocks stars form bands for a reason. The dude on the piano singing into a mic has a good sound and sells a lot of records, but he doesn’t rock. If you want to rock you need a drummer, a guitarist and singer, your buddy on the ukulele and someone else on sax. Putting on a show with substance requires personnel. The Mac OS already offers a plethora of technologies. Leopard adds to the list. The lone developer might be an expert in one or two areas but he or she can’t be an expert in all of them. While new technologies like CoreAnimation do make it easier for that lone developer to rock, the most rocking apps will likely be written by teams of talented individuals, however loosely associated they are.

Rock star programming and the delicious generation are already underway in full force. If you’re impressed now, wait and see what October produces.

It really couldn’t be better. The location is incredible, near China Town in the North Beach area. Very central but without the highrises and the madness of absolute inner city. There’s a small park nearby, cafes all around, and you can see the bay and Alcatraz from the kitchen. Absolutely beautiful!

The apartment itself is great: spacious, large, big living room and kitchen area, tall ceilings, places for the bikes. Really just perfect. And if you can believe it, my flatmates are German natives. I’ll be able to continue practicing my German! Could it possible get any better? Yes! All for a really good price, utilities included and importantly wireless access.

Ideal!

Tons more going on this week and I’ve been wanting to write about it but I’ve just been too busy. I’ve done a lot of journaling though, so I’ll be putting together some blog posts as things calm down a bit. Man, Journler is the perfect tool for this kind of stuff.

Journler 2.5.2, by Philip Dow, may change the way you use your computer to write… Journler allows you to link all of the resources you need for writing—photos, Web links, e-mails, video, audio, other text documents, and even people—and lets you organize them around your written entries, which Journler then indexes for quick and easy searching… Journler 2.5.2 turns the basic word processor into a tool you can use to connect and organize your thoughts and ideas. Whether you need a tool to keep a daily blog, record project notes, or write a novel, if you own a Mac and use it to write, you should try Journler.

So if you haven’t done so already, be sure to give Journler a whirl. One bit of errata. Journler is not actually free for personal use as is stated in the article. I explicity request a donation. If you use and enjoy Journler for personal use please consider making that donation. It is how I make my living.