Neal wrote an excellent blog entry: Why I Switched from Handwritten to an Online Personal Journal. Take a look.

In the 2000 surveys we have conducted between Turk users and BYU students, the only concern has been whether or not pyxlin will be secure enough to keep a personal journal online. Here are the comments (My responses are below):

…HOWEVER I find it very interesting that your survey did not address one of the most likely concerns of its users - namely, that of online security. Journals are private, intimate things and it will be paramount to completely convince users that their private writings, photos and data are not going to be plastered all over the internet by an ex-employee with a grudge.

I would not want an online journal, because if someone found out my password, they could break in and read my journal. I would literally rather die!

The way I feel about it, it sound like a good idea but won’t other people who would remain nameless (government) want to have access to this; and if so how personal is this personal journal?

I would like my personal journal to be personal, hence would not want to archive it online. I guess a lot of people would share my view.

A journal for me is very private. I would not be comfortable if it were on the net.

Anything I would put in a journal would be too personal and computers are too public - that’s why I’m not interested.

Slightly worried about hackers being able to obtain personal details with this system

Keeping a paper journal private may be difficult, but I rarely worry that some technical error will make it public to millions of people! This would terrify me unless I was writing for the purpose of having other people read it.

Journals are private. I’m sorry, but in this day and age of cross-site-scripting, SQL injections, identity thievery, and other malfeasance on the Internet, I wouldn’t trust my deepest, darkest, personal secrets, to a third party. …Then there’s the topic of security. How can you guarantee that your geeks and DBAs won’t read my journal?

Interesting for people who want to share their journals. I prefer to keep mine to myself.

Good luck in your venture. It sounds like a neat idea. The only thing I’d be worried about is how people would feel about privacy concerns. Either way, good luck.

Main reason for not digitizing - privacy. Nothing stays private once on internet. Old Deep Blog is more likely your audience. Those entries are generally unconcerned with privacy.

Service sounds great. But for me to use it, it would need to be secure. I don’t keep an online journal currently due to privacy. Still, sounds interesting.

Please get in touch by email on intro of this service. Sounds good. But you must offer guarantee of sorts on confidentiality of information from these journals.

Neat idea saving a journal online. How private would it be though? Would be worried that the hosts of the service are reading my journal and laughing

One thing to keep in mind is the personal nature of a journal. Some things are too private to be put on the internet, or printed out where one’s child might read them 10 years in the future. If the journal only includes happy, non-private things, what is the point?

You say that one of the advantages of the site is that it allows you to keep things completely private. Isn’t that lost when it is printed out?

I would never put such private information where others could potentially read it.

It sounds like a nice service, but I would be very concerned about privacy. Being able to access my journal from anywhere in the world with an internet connection is great, but I wouldn’t want anyone else to be able to access my journal… the idea that my journal is out there on some server somewhere is a bit scary.

I would be interested in a free trial of this product with security measures in place so others couldn’t read my journal.

How would it be completely private? Would there ever be any way that someone else could read it? How would it be organized if there weren’t specific topics like ‘Trips’? It sounds like a really cool idea though!

As I previously mentioned I would be concerned about the public access and safety of my journal online. Otherwise it sounds like a great service.

What are the chance of someone hacking into the system? It may happen!

I would be concerned about the privacy. My journal isn’t something I want the whole world to have internet access to.

pyxlin - the security YOU want

These are all excellent concerns. Security for your journal has been the topic of many water cooler conversations at FamilyLearn (parent company of pyxlin).

Due to these concerns, a couple of days ago we added a new question to our survey. Interestingly enough, we have not had a single comment about security sense we added this question. Here it is:

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

• I don’t keep a personal journal.

• O encryption - As public as your blog, the whole world can read it.

• 128 MB encryption on login - as secure as your email.

• 128 MB encryption all-the-time - as secure as your online banking.

• 256 MB encryption all-the-time - more secure than most banks (highest possible level of security)

• I will never keep my journal online.

It is important that YOU decide what kind of security pyxlin will offer. So YOU vote here and we will listen.

funny security stuff

Your comments reminded me of a classic story about my grandpa in Burley, Idaho. I was visiting his house for a family gathering and I asked him if I could use the Internet. He passionately declared that he had no Internet and no plans to ever get it.

Grandpa, who had never used the Internet in his life, proceeded educate me on his superior Internet conspiracy knowledge. One: anyone with Internet can be spied on in their house by government agents. Two: if you have the Internet, technology pirates will come and take the money out of your bank accounts.

Moving On.

Here is comment on the survey that made me think:

“Keeping a paper journal private may be difficult, but I rarely worry that some technical error will make it public to millions of people! This would terrify me unless I was writing for the purpose of having other people read it.”

Last Fall I was inspired to start a blog by Paul Allen’s Internet marketing class at BYU. Two weeks into class Phil Windley, an early blogger, visited the class as a guest speaker. Phil was asked, “I can’t get anyone to come and read my blog. How do I get people to come to my blog?”

Phil first pointed out that it takes time to build “Google Juice” for your blog. He suggested that for the present we send our blog URL to our moms. Your mom will always read your blog.

In my enthusiasm I went home and emailed every family member I knew a link to my blog, including my mom. I posted regularly as I imagined that moment when the traffic would just flow like magic from Google. That moment never came. When you are competing with over 76 million other blogs it can be difficult to stand out. I can’t even get my mom to read my blog!

This reminds of the above t-shirt:

If I can’t get anyone to care about my blog, I can’t imagine that anyone would really care about my personal journal. Even if I did post my personal journal to the public I would never get “millions” of readers.

pyxlin - more secure than your traditional journal

Considering that 37% of journalers have had a journal lost or destroyed. Your private journal is probably more secure with pyxlin than your standard handwritten journal buried at the bottom of your dresser. Let me give you a comparison:

The Standard Journal		Your Private Online Journal
Only as private as the place you put it. Drawer, backpack, under your pillow. Your only security is your bad handwriting.		128 MB Encrypted Password Protected.
Easy to lose, forget, or misplace.		Impossible to lose, forget, or misplace anywhere in the world.
Erodes, fades, and can be damaged over time.		We upload and preserve your journal perpetually. Your kids, grandkids, and great grandkids will enjoy this forever.
Your journal can be destroyed by: Housefires, Earthquakes, Hurricanes, Floods, Tornadoes, Landslides, Terrorist Attacks, Avalanches, Volcanos, your kids, siblings, or friends.		Multiple servers in multiple countries back up your every file. If your home town ges destroyed by an earthquake you can feel safe that your journal is secure.

26 percent of journal (or diary) keepers use a Mac or PC. We are safe to assume that the vast majority of computer diaries and journals are kept on Microsoft Word, considering that Macs have only 5 percent of the market share.

Aside from computer crashes and other dangers we have previously discussed, typesetting is the greatest difference between MS Word and pyxlin which is powered by TeX.

Example 1 - Common Ligatures

Example 2 - Real Small Caps

Example 3 - Real World Example

TeX (professionally typeset) Microsoft Word (many errors)

When typesetting just one small example of words in Alice in Wonderland, note three major differences between professional typesetting, powered by TeX, and Microsoft Word. First, look carefully how TeX uses contextual intelligence to determine that a ligature is needed to combine the “f” and “i” in the word “finishing.” Second, TeX avoids placing “So” on its own line, making the sentence easier to read. Finally, TeX also produces a more balanced text block by extending the last sentence out on the final line, instead of leaving “been” hanging. Professional books are built upon this attention to balance and detail. If MS Word makes this many mistakes in a simple 86 word excerpt of Alice and Wonderland, how many mistakes are their going to be in your whole journal?

Pyxlin not only looks more professional but it will also be much easier to use as a journal tool than MS Word.

Related Post: History of TeX

Related Post: pyxlin - powered by TeX

Last I counted there were over 40 photo book companies on the web. A simple search for “photo book” on Google will bring up dozens of results. They range in quality and cost.

Photo books are basically the modern day photo album. Per photo, they are much less expensive than the traditional photo album. Most photo books allow you to add captions or small sections of text to your photos.

Why can’t I create my journal on a photo book?

Great as photo books are, they are still just photo books, not journals. In a photo book, short captions or stories revolve around your photos. In pyxlin, your photos revolve around beautifully typeset journal entries. Pyxlin is all about your life’s stories. It is the story behind the photo.

Writing is my brother’s passion. In the past few months he has written his journal on our first version of pyxlin. Out of a 120 page journal, he only added four photos to his journal. If you don’t want photos in your pyxlin journal, you don’t have to add them. Your journal, or diary, can be all text or it can be mostly photos, it is up to you.

Here are some other interesting stats on how many of these journals are lost:

• 21 percent of journalers have lost a journal by misplacing it (these are probably mostly handwritten).
• 13 percent have lost their journal to a computer crash.
• 2 percent have been destroyed in an accident (e.g. House fire, water)
• 0.5 percent have been lost in a natural disaster (e.g. tornado, flood, hurricane, earthquake)

This is a total of 36.5 percent! Wow, who would have thought this many people have experienced losing their journal?

Could your personal journal/diary survive this? pyxlin can.

We have now surveyed 1000 plus Amazon Mechanical Turk users about personal journals. Here are some interesting about those who keep a personal journal:

• 48 percent of personal journals are still written by hand.
• 26 percent are kept on a Mac or PC.
• 24 percent are now kept online (mostly blogs).
• 1.6 percent are kept in other ways (calendar, on PDAs…)

The Amazon Turk crowd is a fairly tech savvy group of people. Anyone who spends their day going through and answering turk questions understands the Internet very well.

I would assume that the number of handwritten and PC/Mac journals would go up if we had a more broad survey demographic, but I was still surprised that almost half of personal journals are still kept by hand.

Of the 900+ Mechanical Turk users that we have surveyed, 1 out of 4 personal diaries/journals (26%) are kept on a Mac or PC.

pyxlin vs Mac or PC

Last week I spoke with Debbi, a lady while promoting pyxlin at BYU Womens Conference. Womens Conference is about 18,000 women (mostly moms) from all over the world gathered on BYU campus.

When Debbi saw pyxlin, she could hardly contain her excitement. Debbi explained that she kept a regular journal on her home computer for 4 years; diligently recording family memories, photos, lessons she had learned, and everyday life events. Unfortunately she never backed anything up. Debbi was devastated when her computer crashed just a few months ago. She lost everything!

Apparently Debbi’s situation is not unusual. According to our survey, 13 percent of those who keep a personal journal said that they have lost a journal due to a computer crash. Another 3 percent said they have lost their journal to an accident (i.e. house fire, flood…) or natural disaster.

Personally, having lost one of my own journals, I believe that their are very few things more important to keep safe in this life than our personal journals.

Pyxlin will solve this problem faced by 16 of 100 journalers. Pyxlin will be secure & private with a permanent archive online to keep it safe from house-fires, floods, natural disasters, computer crashes, terrorists, tsunamis, kids, spouses, and even siblings.

Here is the Turk comment of the day, this one made me laugh:

“good survey except question was not professional where an option was something like not a chance in #$%^ or something like that. That would never be an option on a professional survey. Other than that it was well done”

I am flattered that you think our survey even remotely resembles professionalism. Thank you. It was written by a couple of us business students at BYU.

When I got to this question, I was bored. I knew that if I was only getting paid a nickel to take this survey I would feel like cussing at this point. I thought I would throw in something to spice it up—even give you a chance to let out your frustration.

In my class, I learned that a “likert scale” question on a professional survey would have been worded something like this:

If you do keep a blog?, would you be interested in automatically importing and printing your blog (personal journal) into a hardbound journal with photos?

• = strongly disagree
• = disagree
• = neither agree nor disagree
• = agree
• = strongly agree

I could be wrong, but I thought this was much more entertaining:

If you do keep a blog?, would you be interested in automatically importing and printing your blog (personal journal) into a hardbound journal with photos? *

• I don’t keep a blog
• I would for sure!
• likely
• maybe
• maybe not
• not likely
  
• Not a chance in *%$^#@!
  

I personally don’t really swear. On the way home from church, one of my roommates (who also took the survey) pointed out to me that no cuss words fit into “*%$^#@!”. Most swear words are just 4 letters. Who would have thought? But, it made for an educational conversation about swear words on the way home from church
Here are some other comments on the quality of our survey:

Very good survey, simple to take.

Thanks for the survey opportunity.

Beautifully designed!

The survey was excellent.

It’s “I couldn’t care less,” not “I could care less.” (We fixed this, thanks!)

Maybe a brief paragraph at the beginning could bring some perspective over the entire survey. At the beginning, I didn’t think of journaling and blogging as so closely related, but towards the end I started to see value in keeping a hard-copy of a personal blog.

The casual answers to questions (like, “I could not care less”) seemed unprofessional. (My response: I could not care less)

Thanks!!

This has been a very easy to use survey system. Thank you.

Pretty good survey!

very nicely put together, plus it loads rather quickly as compared to other mturks

this is a very good survey, keep surveying people! XD

pretty decent survey

Thank you for providing many options, especially differentiating “would not use” vs “i would use, but only if it was free” when asking how much we would pay. It is frustrating as a survey taker to not be able to answer a question accurately.ok survey

thanks

Glad to here you like our survey! We are mostly happy to see the incredible response we have received about pyxlin. Thanks!

Publishing your journal into a hardbound book is a great idea. Naturally, many of you have immediately thought, “I could do all kinds of things other than journals with this!” Here are a few comments from that Turk survey so far about this:

“Have you considered marketing this as something that could be handed down to children or as something to catalog specific life events (i.e. pregnancy, wedding planning, etc)?”

“I would use this service only on specific occasions, to record those events. Examples: specials trips/vacations, weddings and surrounding events, other big family events, etc.”

“This service would be good for other self-publishing purposes: Family recipe books, Writing down family oral traditions , travelogues, photojounals, personalized guest books…”

“You should reverse your questions because all the interesting questions are at the end. By the way, this is like a personal publishing site. I would not be very likely to journal online (i would just use my mac). But I might be interested in publishing little private books for christmas presents that have photos and other text. So although I *said* I would only use the service it were free, I might have answered differently if your questions had been asked in a different order. Ask for demographics last for heavens sake…. Good luck. Might turn into something cool.”

“I almost feel that I’d be more likely to use this service to see some of my work published- stories and poems that haven’t made their way into literary journals but that I still would like to see in print, even if it is just for me.”

“interesting concept. might be interesting if presented it as a special events type service/book, such as an alternative to yearbooks, where multiple individuals can contribute.”

There is no reason why pyxlin couldn’t be used for these personal-publishing purposes. But you would probably be better using iMemoryBook BETA (soon to be MemoryPress.com).

MemoryPress is literally the world’s first online typesetting system. There is nothing to download because it is completely online. MemoryPress is collaborative (kind of like Google Docs mixed with Adobe InDesign) letting you get together with your family online to publish your own family library.

Just like pyxlin, MemoryPress will also have a blog import for family history blogs and such.

In March we created a wedding memory book for my younger sister using iMemoryBook BETA. She wrote her story of how they met and how they got engaged, then she got her future husband to write his story. Then we invited all of his family in and our family to come and write memories, add photos, and give marriage advice for the wedding. Everyone was able to read, and add to the book online, before the book was published. The wedding book is beautiful.

MemoryPress is still being developed, which means it is FREE to use right now. It will also give you a kind of preview for pyxlin (both systems will be using the same core typesetting system). Let us know what you think. Thanks for all the comments! Keep them coming.

Here is a great comment:

“I also submit poetry to online websites and would incorporate those into a hardbound book. But I would want it to be something people could buy.”

My Response: if you are thinking to resell your books, pyxlin is probably not the best option for you. Not that pyxlin books don’t look good enough, in fact they are probably too high of quality for retail. I would recommend that you publish your poetry through our friends at LuLu. They do cheaper perfect bound books that are made for reselling. They even help you sell your books.

Even though we will probably offer a less expensive journal option (softbound books), the majority of pyxlin books will be built to last for your posterity. Pyxlin is personal-publishing. Pyxlin will be far higher quality than any cheap booking company or photobook company out there. I will be posting more on our book quality later. Stay tunned.