CNET Editors' review
Keeping a diary was once something that all educated people were expected to do, but these days diaries are most often seen as small, ornate books with locking covers that are solely the possession of tween girls (and, occasionally, their little brothers). That's a shame, because there are a lot of reasons to keep a diary, both personal and for posterity. Owning a PC makes keeping a diary too easy, especially with excellent free diary programs like iDailyDiary from Splinterware.
The program's main page bears a strong resemblance to a word processor or a full-featured e-mail client such as Outlook, with selectable toolbars for navigation, cutting and pasting, searching, fonts, bullets, and other text effects. A calendar bar runs along the bottom of the page; days with entries are highlighted in colors as a quick visual aid. You can browse through weeks, months, and years of entries, or use handy navigation arrows, and instantly return to today's entry. You can easily insert and remove pictures and hyperlinks from your diary pages. An especially handy feature is the ability to embed links to previous diary entries, so you can instantly go to the relevant page without having to search. You can change themes, too.
As we've noted, iDailyDiary is freeware, which means no excuses for the would-be diarist. There's an upgraded version, iDailyDiary Pro, that's $30; it adds features like a spell checker, thesaurus, sticky notes, and many more themes. If you like the freeware, you'll probably like the pro version's extra features too.
Publisher's Description
From Splinterware:
iDailyDiary has been designed around a simple page-for-a-day diary. Your diary can contain a mixture of pictures and formatted text. Image files of various types are supported including bitmaps, jpegs, icons, and animated GIFs. Add new page tabs and rename them to whatever you wish to help get your life organized. In addition to the calendar on the top toolbar, you have a month-view calendar bar at the bottom of your diary. iDailyDiary supports multiple themes, multiple diaries can be opened simultaneously and has an excellent search facility.
What's new in this version: Version 3.81 includes improvements and bug fixes.
More Popular Calendar & Time Management Software downloads
- Microsoft Office Outlook 2007
5,084 downloads
- WinCalendar for Windows, Word & Excel
4,175 downloads
- iDailyDiary Free
1,147 downloads
- VueMinder Lite
958 downloads
- Daisho
701 downloads
-
All versions:
4.4 starsout of 162 votes
-
Current version:
3.0 starsout of 2 votes
-
My rating:
Write review
Results 1-2 of 2
-
"Excellent -Better than a Real Diary Kitchen sink incl"
Version: iDailyDiary Free 3.81
Pros
Like a real diary, only better
Accommodates very flexible organization
Custom formatting, include images and links, etc
Many different ways to manage information, not only by time, but also with tabs and stickies - allows for complex journallingCons
None to speak of
Summary
I am not affiliated with the company or author. I am a computer engineer and have used several types of programs for diary-ing / journalling.
I have a community that has been invested in iDailyDiary for years - to say we are quite happy with it is an understatement.
In a particular community interest I am affiliated with, we had requirement to have the students and teachers journalling. The requirement for each individual included managing several disciplines, personally and in groups (group projects, personal projects, discussions, and various discovery scenarios including individual and collective focus.
We tried a lot of different tools for accommodating individuals to journal daily, and on several levels. At first this included using books. Many chose to use writing apps (like Word, Pages, Claris, etc).
Of course, I created a forum, and eventually two forums for running two schools, however, even a good forum or blogging platform can fall a bit short for structural complexity requirement in this particular regard.
Anyway, at length, and after going thru many diary/journalling -like- apps, we stumbled on this one, and it just stuck. It offers so much, and the developer keeps it up pretty nicely.
I am sorry I do not have time to write a complete review (there are many features to celebrate here). I am writing this out of gratitude to the author for creating such a wonderful product. iDailyDiary is hands down the best, if not only, product in this field that actually addresses the full scope of what a diary is, and needs to be.
If you are looking for diary/journaling software, its imperative you try this out. iDiary will not disappoint. I have been in the computing/software business for years. We took on iDailyDiary back in, jeez, I'm looking it up now - it was 2005. This software has stood the test of time.
I cannot believe no one else has written a review worthy of mention here. I could not pass by, see that, and not say something ;^) -
"Poor. Locks computer when using help button."
Version: iDailyDiary Free 3.81
Pros
None, never got to use it.
Cons
Locks computer when using help button.
Results 1-2 of 2
Add Your Review
Submit your reply
E-mail this review
Report offensive content
See more CNET content tagged:
Previous Versions:
