Journaler review

Since the inception of the Internet and the realization of its connective capabilities, blogging has fairly exploded into the scene (as have its younger cousins, Twitter and Tumblr). Jotting your thoughts down virtually and having someone halfway across the globe respond and commiserate, support, critique–that’s a powerful tool to have. There’s a blog for every subject you can think of: music, movies, reviews, photography…the list is never-ending. LiveJournal was one of the first blogging platforms, and it remains one of the most popular with over 16 million LiveJournals since 1999; it only makes sense that there be something to connect to it from handheld devices.

A25 Ltd. has developed a LiveJournal client for Apple devices called Journaler, just for that purpose; there is also basic support for those who have LJ clones like InsaneJournal. It is designed especially for skimming and reading your Friend’s LiveJournals, and supports multiple accounts. Just log in with your username and password, and the app will take you directly to a list of quick previews of your Friends’ LiveJournals. Tap on a post to fully expand it. If you want to make a new post on your own LJ, tap on the second tab on the bottom and start typing. Once you do, the Options button in the top left will become available, and through it you can set the security level for your post and choose a Community to post in. If you happen to exit the app during your drafting stage, don’t worry–Journaler saves it automatically. Landscape mode exists both for viewing and posting.

Journaler focuses more on functionality than appearance. It’s not very pretty or intricately designed (think Echofon’s bare-bones interface), but it gets the most basic jobs done. This may be a crushing blow to those who spend hours on designing their LJs, or those who like to look at the layouts/headers of others’ LJs…but perfect for those who spend a lot of time reading their Friends page (commenting will take you to the LJ mobile site). Journaler is great for simple tasks, but LJ is often so feature-heavy that you’ll definitely be missing out on something if you confine your LJ use to just Journaler.

AppSafari Rating: 4/5

AppSafari review of Journaler was written by Julie Guan on April 25th, 2010 and categorized under App Store, Developers, Reading, Social. Page viewed 4707 times, 1 so far today. Need help on using these apps? Please read the Help Page.