Cheryl recently commented about pyxlin on Blooking Central. She posed this question:

Since pyxlin makes a very big deal about keeping private journals private AND they want you to start and end with pyxlin, they charge you for it. It’s only $30 a year [It is actually $20], but still … why would you?

I also responded to this comment about an ad based system in an earlier journal entry:

“…Rather than a monthly fee, some ad content may be acceptable as a way to generate revenue. If I live for 80 years, an annual fee over that timeframe is a big commitment, so less likely to commit to it.”

I suppose that if pyxlin were a blog this would make a great deal of sence. But pyxlin is nothing like a blog.

Personal journals or diaries contain the MOST personal information that any of us have. BBC just reported that proper ad based systems, like Google’s, are not so private at all.

There is the possibility that pyxlin could be more profitable if it would let spiders comb through your journal and then sell it for advertising purposes. But we care most about your security. Security is part of why pyxlin is has OpenID.

We are going to be offering you a very secure, encrypted, option that will not include ads. We want you to know that your journal is yours.

After a lot of privacy and security concerns we added this question to our survey:

What kind of security would you need to feel comfortable keeping your private journal online?

Here is the response (note: of the 1200+ people surveyed over 65% of them are bloggers!):

So our answer is easy. We must make pyxlin secure.

There seems to be some confusion about pyxlin and blogging. Here are some examples:

“If you charge too much for the actual journal service (which is, essentially, a blog) you won’t get any members because the service is available free elsewhere.”

“A very interesting concept that I had never though of before. (IE the ability to have a hard copy of your online journal/blog)”

“good idea, but sell the book - not the blog.”

“The only real difference between this and the LJ [LiveJournal is a blog] I use now is the drag and drop pictures and the ability to print it hardbound- but Im cheap and probably would pay for it and would stick with LJ. I also dont feel like I really blog/journal enough to make it worth my while- if I want something to keep private and on paper, I’ll write it in my journal notebook by hand (which I prefer anyway).”

“I consider my written personal journal a completely different animal than my blog. What makes my written journal unique is the fact that it’s handwritten and unproofed, which makes it most personal to me. I would never want it to be electronic, it would lose the qualities that make it special.”

It is apparent that some think that pyxlin is another form of a blog. Today, I will dispel this myth by showing you that although pyxlin is as cool as any blog, it is a far different animal.

Lets take a look at some screen shots of a blog and then pyxlin:

This is a screen shot of me editing this pyxlin blog:

As you can see the WordPress editor is pretty technical. It would scare my mom right away. As you read this you can see what it looks like published. It is all in web form.

This is a screen shot of my own pyxlin journal:

As you can see pyxlin is far different from my blog. I showed it to my mom on Sunday and she said, “Wow, this is so easy to use. ” Tell me the last time your mom said that about blogging.

Pyxlin is bookmaking application. Pyxlin will be able to import blog entries. Pyxlin will be able to import MS Word docs. Pyxlin can import photos from Flickr. Pyxlin is a typesetting system. Pyxlin takes all the good bits of self-publishing and traditional journals and mixes them with the even better bits of the web.