What's up with Journler (from the creator)

[phildow]

There has been quite a bit of concern recently about my absence on the forum and the lull in updates and announcements. There is discussion here and I have also received many emails. Is Journler still being developed? Where have I been for the past four months?

The past
The past four months I slowed down Journler development. I needed a break from what had largely become tedious work and I found relief by enrolling in classes at UC Berkeley. I was only taking courses by extension but I did spend most of my time on school related activities. More on this below.

Keeping in contact
Classes or otherwise I have intentionally stayed away from the forum. Folks who've been part of the community for a while will recall a time when I was an active participant. This tapered off. I have often tried to rehabilitate my involvement but I've decided it's just not possible. It is too overwhelming to try to maintain an active role in the forum, answer emails, generally run the business, fix bugs, work on new development and other related activities. I fail at all these when I spread myself too thinly amongst them.

I will likely continue to maintain a passive forum role. If you have problems email me directly. Unfortunately I am massively behind in emails. My experience with emails for the past two years has been horrible. It is the worst form of communication yet developed. Nevertheless I do continue to try to answer emails and I am working my way through the backlog.

The near term future
I continue to develop Journler 2.6 but at a slower pace. I don't know when it will be finished. I had originally hoped for the beginning of this year. I'm not offering any estimates because they will be wrong.

My goals for Journler 2.6 remain the same. The most significant change is the development of a plugin framework. I am also going through literally every line of code, cleaning everything up and commenting as much as I can on the functionality of the individual components. This is painful work and time consuming but it will get done.

Journler in the long term
Both of these efforts are directed towards a single goal: ensuring the long term viability of the program. The work will improve the stability of the application and also guarantee that others will be able to develop it further.

I have set a deadline for the end of my involvement in the project. Taking classes at UC Berkeley was a revelation, and I intend to apply to grad school in (continental) philosophy or a related interdisciplinary field in the fall of this year. This means I will likely be entering grad school in the fall of 2010, at which time my relationship to the project will radically change. I imagine I'll be answering emails for some time afterwards, but I do not intend to continue developing the application.

This means my involvement in Journler as a developer is limited to 1 to 2 additional years. By that time I would like to hand off Journler to another group of developers, hell sooner if it is to everyone's advantage as it seems I am currently failing myself as well as my users. If it does not appear another group of developers will take on Journler I plan to open source the code. Either way a portion of Journler will go open source to enable plugin development.

The point of my current work on Journler is to make sure users can get data in and out of the program and continue using it for as long as it is useful to them. With the deployment of the plugin framework development on the application will ideally never really come to an end. Folks will be able to extend the application in a number of directions without changes to the core. If another group takes on Journler, it may have many more years of fruitful development beyond 2010, hopefully the same if it goes open source.

[BLUEFROG]

Well said, Phil.

I (and I'm sure many of us in here) are sad but behind you 100%. You have to do what's right for yourself. Follow your heart and see where it leads you.

All the best,
Jim Neumann
BLUEFROG

[NovaScotian]

Jim has stated it nicely, Phil, and I agree with him. When you have created something that gathers such an avid following, it is difficult to avoid feeling obliged for life to the endless service and maintenance required; almost a doctor/patient or pastor/flock relationship. But you have a life of your own. We understand that (with regrets that it isn't going to be Journler and Lex).

In the meantime, those of us who are fond users of Journler and frequenters of its forums have tried within our abilities to contribute answers when we could. I'm sure we'll all continue to do that. Further, I'd be willing to help you field some of your email questions if you can think of a way to sort them into the kinds of UI problems I can help with and retain only the license and crash/freeze reports for yourself.

Be well;

Adam

[skromta]

Phil, wise decision. NovaScotian said it better that me.

[Douger]

Continental Philosophy at Berkley, huh?

Come on out East to the New School for Social Research and you can study phenomenology with the big boys. (jk, folks... don't flame me)

When you are at Berkley look up Jose Casanova, he’s an NSSR’er “in exile” (he’ll get the “in exile” joke)

But enough of this foolishness. The real question is...

Did you use Journler to take your notes?

[madbrit]

Best wishes Phil for your endeavors ... hopefully as you transition to grad. school we (you and the community of Journler users) can work out a way
to keep this valuable app alive and well... it's too good a product/application
to see it fizzle out. For all the millions going into Evernote and the Devon*
mob I still find myself back in Journler appreciating it as a great home for
my data.

mb

[sarahmichelef]

Thanks for the update, Phil! Good luck with grad school and I'm sure you'll figure out a solution that works for both you & us (the users)!

[pmccarvalho]

Hi Phil,

I am quite happy for you! Change is good!

But I am sad that we are for what can happen to Journler... Journler is the best of its kind and I am sure it will be for quite a while.

When I started using Journler, it was free, for me it was a revelation: "the best journal application free!". I immediately made a review for the Mac ReviewCast and a little money contribution (it was the first I ever did). I was also very successful convincing my mac friends to use Journler.
I am still an everyday Journler user, maybe 60% of my research is done using it and all my PhD notes were done in Journler. I would really love to use it forever!

I hope Journler does not die!
I am anxious for the Journler 2.6 release!

Good Look Phil and congratulations, Journler is a really good application, I am just sorry that not everyone realizes that. Other journal applications near Journler are like a joke.

Cheers

Pedro

PS - I would be quite happy to help you with anything Journler related.

[surfmonkey89]

First of all, Phil - congratulations on finding a new calling. It's not an easy thing to do, especially when you are fairly obviously beloved by this community.

Second, I'm extremely relieved that your goal "is to make sure users can get data into and out of the program and continue using it for as long as it is useful to them". Not only is that exactly the right thing to be focusing on (imo), but it also shows your consideration for your customers. Preventing customer lock-in is simply never done; kudos on that decision.

As for me personally, knowing that you are focusing on my core concern - above and beyond any UI issues I might have I was far more concerned with having my data locked into the program - is a relief, and will definitely result in my continuing to use the program.

Here's to hoping for a near-term release, but at the same time wishing you well in your future endeavors.

paul

[pks]

Good luck Phil with your new endeavour !
I really hope Journler doesn't die !!
If nothing else, would love to see this app go open source !

[bharley]

Journler is without doubt the most used third-party application on my computer. Personal journals (including my most intimate reflections and memories of meaningful experiences), research, keeping track of what I have done to my computer, as a way to select materials to have automatically downloaded to my iPhone (thanks to your brilliant support for Applescript) . . . . It turns out to be immensely valuable. And every time I have a new 'need' for how to use Journler - it turns out you had already thought of it. (I just discovered that if you select multiple entries, you can see all of their resources grouped together - but what's more, if you then select all of the resources, you can email them all as attachments to one email - may sound esoteric, but let me tell you this saves lots of headaches, and proves once again that Journler is GENIUS.) This application is so well thought out, so intricately and functionally designed. It looks really clever, and it is actually even smarter under the hood.

So, even though I've contributed before, I bought a license today. Thank you for being so considerate about the needs of your users. I will soon be surpassing the 1,000 entry mark. Wishing you success and fulfillment in all your future endeavors.

[bluloo]

Just wanted to wish you an early "good luck", whatever happens.

:)

[metasailor]

Thought I'd mention that, and also mention it as a possibility for when you fully want to step off Journler entirely. : )

They're already open-source, have a great app and it's already multi-platform and web-integrated. Email-integrated even, which is something I'm sure you've been pestered a lot to add. : )

http://chandlerproject.org/

I just signed up here to tell you this, and also thank you for a great product that I use quite often.

[Amafortas]

Metasailor,

I've looked at chandler and can see using it as a project manager. However, I'm a bit fuzzy about how it would fill the niche of a journaling program. Can you elaborate?

~A

[metasailor]

My thought was just that Chandler's *components* could complement Journler's feature set really well.

So, I guess I'm really just saying - Chandler has these cool tools, that match pretty exacty with things I wish Journler had. Maybe they can just be integrated into Journler.

For example, what I really wish Journler could do is:

- accept emails - I'm not always at my Mac when I have an insight or a thought. So I'll tend to capture this in Gmail or via a verbal note on my iPhone.

I'd love to just forward these messages to Journler, and have Journler integrate them and be my central source. Journler can't currently do this - Chandler can.

- let me add a journal entry or note via iPhone. Journler can't do this - Chandler specifically has a free iPhone app that'll let you add an event from anywhere. Could possibly just be used as a template to do the same thing for Journler - if web access for Journler was possible. Which brings me to...

- having a web-accessible server back-up. Journler doens't do this - Chandler can. This'd be a pain for soemone to maintain for Journler - but if the functionality was there, I'd be happy to set up my own server, just to save and back up my own stuff and have it accessible to me via web.

- send specific emails, and integrate them into Journler too. Emails are a record of my life. Love to integrate them with my journaling to get a fuller picture.

Etc. etc. You see what I'm saying? It's like chocolate and peanut butter.