14 DAY TRIAL // There is no such thing as the perfect software application. You can't even identify the best existing software program, because there are so many and so variate that you can't even think of making a general hierarchy. Looking upon office tools and organizers, so many programs come to mind, each and everyone unique in its way, that I can't point a finger to which I believe to be the best.
It's time for me to present to you another application in the Office Tools category, a diary keeper: Diary, created by Anarchysoft. Diary is a very small program that safely stores your thoughts, your audio and video recordings in a timeline. This way, you will always be able to find exactly the entries from a specific date.
The Looks
Diary's timeline interface is extremely simple and easy to use. You have the toolbar that gives you access to the program's entire functionality and the actual timeline where you can visualize your entries and their corresponding types. At the bottom of Diary's main window, you can see the scroll bar that helps you navigate through the diary's dates and records.
By showing different icons for different types of diary entries, it's easier for you to identify a specific entry. For example, if you want to find an audio recording that you created, let's say a month ago, you could quickly eliminate the video and text entries just by taking a glance over them.
Each day is represented on the display as a bar divided into 6 time intervals, helping you better identify the exact moment of the record's creation. Since very few people, as far as I know, write their diary entries exactly in the day that the events happen, I think that it would have been more appropriate to let the user choose the date and time of the entry. For example, if I want to write or speak about the two-weeks vacation I had and tell the events of each day, all the entries would be saved at the current time and not at the time when they actually took place.
The Works
I think that the most important feature of a diary is the fact that it contains private information about its owner. This is why the first thing that you expect to see in a software application of this type is the possibility to protect and encrypt your data. Unfortunately, Diary doesn't offer any type of protection or encryption for your entries.
Diary allows you to create three types of entries: text entries, audio recordings and video recordings. Using drag & drop, you can also insert images both in the text entries and in the audio/video descriptions of the recordings. If you want to use existing media files for your diary entry, you can import video or audio files. Diary exports your files using MPEG4 compression for video and the 128-bit AAC format for audio records.
Although Diary lets you save and export your diary and also load a different one, I could not find a way to create a new diary without having to delete all the current entries and save the current one under a different name.
Diary gives you the possibility to modify the font and the background color of your entries from the 'Diary Info' window. Here, you can also specify the author's name, write some notes regarding the diary and view the current number of entries in your journal.
The Good
Diary offers a very easy-to-use and intuitive interface, it looks good and gives you the possibility to store different types of files in the same place, as a part of the same project which you can then save or export.
The Bad
A thing that bothered me while using Diary was the fact that if you create more types of entries in a short period of time, in a matter of minutes I mean, it will be difficult to retrieve exactly the one you want. Having created 3 diary entries in a time interval of 5 minutes, the figures overlapped and I could easily access only two of them. You can, of course, use the navigation arrows in the toolbar to find the record you want, but it would have been better to view all the entries separately.
The Truth
Anarchysoft's Diary is a very simple program that even children can learn to use easily. It has a pretty interface, but it doesn't offer any protection for your information. In conclusion, if you don't have anything to hide and you need an easy way to store your memories, you're welcome to give it a try! Diary comes with a demo version that has a 10-minute time limit per session and a general limitation of 100 entries in your diary, but for $25 you can receive the full, unlimited version.
Here are some snapshots of the application in action:
