Design Principles FAQ

We hope that this app is very simple and obvious. Enter thoughts as a Stream, organize them as tags and/or docs. Archive when you're done. No file save, no files to open and keep organized.

If It's Simple Enough, Why Do I Need An FAQ?

Darn. You're right, it should be so obvious you wouldn't even need that.

My Data Seems To Be In Multiple Places!

Ha! It's not. And also, it is.

Neuroscience tells us that we don't always know where our brain is going when it goes somewhere. So the first job of JournalBetter is to just let you go there.

But later, you feel all crazy because"Hey, that one thought seems to be going in multiple directions". Maybe it goes on your library list, maybe it goes on your talk it over with your sister list, maybe it goes on the life plan, maybe it goes in your end of semester term paper. It's hard to tell. I just thought about it now, so how would I know?

What JournalBetter lets you do is put the data in, and then reference it from as many tags or docs as you need to. They're just references, so you don't need to worry about duplicating data, JB takes care of that for you.

But my thoughts don't LOOK presentation quality with JournalBetter!

That's by design. Export the ideas you wish to present to your favorite word processor or mind map. That's what they were designed for. No sense in re-inventing that wheel.

Thinking and presentation can be different processes in the brain, and JournalBetter's first responsibility is to help you think, especially over a longer period of time. First we think, then we present our thoughts. JournalBetter exports to other media when you are writing for presentation purposes. Open Office, Google Apps, Microsoft Word, Xmind or FreeMind, all offer great opportunities to fancy up your thoughts, [and most are free - or paid for by our employer!]

JournalBetter might be an easier place to gather your thoughts initially. In coming releases we're hoping to add moderate visual editing features such as fonts and styles, but we have no idea how hard or easy this will come, so we're not sure when it will happen.

There really doesn't seem to be much here that isn't in other applications.

Gosh, we hope not! This stuff is quite universal, not much to it. If we can make it a bit more fluid, a bit easier to use, then we've done our job.

Hopefully we can also dodge the patent trolls along the way...

Why A Desktop App? That's so 1980s...

"Dude where's your IPhone app?" Yeah well, gotta start somewhere."Can't I at least hit it from my browser?". Some day.

Desktop apps are easier to develop, make our first design mistakes on, and get things cooking. As a consolation only, they are much more powerful for the user because so much of the user's own computer can be used to do the processing locally.

We'll get the kinks worked out first, then make a move to the browser, then after that we can also move to the IPhone and Android, and some other related moves that will go with it. We'll get there, eventually.