Journella » 2011

Take a Tour of Journella

May 292011

Journella™ is a web application dedicated to your personal history. It offers both direct writing features and the ability to collect items from outside sources such as Facebook, Twitter, and blogs.

There are four main page views in Journella – accessed by tabs in the top right screen.

BLOG
QUICK MENU
MY JOURNELLA
STORY BOARD

1. First lets talk about “MY JOURNELLA”.

MY JOURNELLA is the private side of Journella. Only Journella Members can access “My Journella” and their own private Journal entries. You will find your “My Journella” by clicking on the tab that says “My Journella.” (see image below.)

Using the “VIEW” menu bar (see image above), Journella™ members can quickly navigate between views which include: Read, Write, Day, Week, Month, Year, and Decade. * Users can also choose search and collect.

WRITE VIEW

Clicking on WRITE (updated on June 4, 2012) will take you to a screen for writing entries in Journella™. (See related article “Adding Photos to Journella.“)

Learn More about WRITE view on our post “Write a Journal Entry.”

CALENDAR VIEWS

Clicking on WEEK or MONTH will show your items on a calendar style view in the form of icons. When you mouse over the icons a pop up screen will appear with information about the item. (see “Month” view sample image below.)

DAY VIEW:

Clicking on DAY will take you to a screen that allows you to view items collected or written on that day – by the hour. There is a button to expand or condense each entry to view. (Condensed view shown below)

MY JOURNELLA - CATEGORIES:

The Content Menu column, (see image to the left) shows your Journal Categories and Sources. This customizable menu will help you organize all the items entered or collected into your Journella™ account.

VIEW JOURNALS

When you first open your Journella™ account, you will see a few “default” categories (Travel, Holidays, Family) as well as a few sub-categories under Family (Dad, Mom, Brother, Sister.) These can be easily changed or deleted by clicking on “Manage Journals.” (See related article: Journal Categories.) The Primary Category is your “safe” category. You can change the name, and the icon; however, this category cannot be deleted and will always appear at the top of your journal category list. Once you have set up Journal Categories, you will be able to filter the content shown in your views (Read, Day, Week, Month, Year, and Decade) to show only the items in that category, by clicking on the category name. Items may be saved to multiple journal categories if desired. When an item is saved to multiple journals a “display icon” must be selected. The display icon is the icon that will be seen on the calendar views.

VIEW SOURCES

View sources will filter all of your items by their original source. Clicking on “My Entries” will filter your view to show only the items that you created in Journella™. You can collect items from outside sources by clicking on “Manage Sources.” Journella™ will currently collect items from: Facebook, Twitter, and blogs via RSS feeds. After you connect to your outside sources they will be listed under “View Sources.” (See related articles: “Save Facebook” and “Save Blogs via RSS feeds.”)

You can create your own icons and set up categories to meet your personal needs. (See related articles: Icons and Journella™ Categories).

READ

Clicking on READ will take you to a view that allows you to read the items written or collected into Journella™. (see sample images below.)

2. BLOG

on our blog you will find helpful articles about Journella Features and Ideas for Journal writing but the best source for Journal Inspiration is the Journella “Story Board”.

3. STORY BOARD

THE STORY BOARD is filled with memories and experiences that Journella™ Members have chosen to Share. (click to view story boards.)

4. QUICK MENU

THE QUICK MENU is a page designed to help new users navigate the Journella Website. Only registered user will see the Quick Menu. (See image below.)

Happy Navigating!

Tami

Icons

How To, Icons Comments Off

May 262011

When you add a New Category (located in Manage Journals) you will also want to choose or create an icon for the category.

There are three options.

1. Choose an icon. Clicking on “choose icon” will open a menu of icons for you to choose from.

2. Upload Icon. This option gives you the opportunity to choose an image from your personal files – may be a picture of yourself, a family member, your dog… Just browse to grab any photo or image up to 2 MB.

3. External Icon URL. This option allows you to grab an image off of the internet via URL address.

SEE IMAGE BELOW

Here is an example:

Lets say you like Rabbits – so you do a google image search for rabbit or bunny. A page will come up similar to the image below.

Find one you like and click on it. In the right column you should see a link to the full size image. Click on the link. (See image below)

After you click on the link you should see a screen with only the image you selected. There will be a URL address that ends with jpg. (see image below)

Copy the URL address and add it to the Journella™ “fill in box” and click “GET IMAGE.” After the image loads you will see a “Success” message. (see image below)

You will need to scroll down (to view the image) and crop the image (just click on the image and drag to crop the image.)

When you are finished selecting the area you will see a small box showing the cropped image - Click on “Save Thumbnail” next to the image.

The last step is to Click on “SAVE” (Be sure you have a category name filled in.)

I love being able to create my own custom categories and icons. I hope you will enjoy customizing your Journella™ too.

Journella™ Categories

About Journella Categories Comments Off

May 212011

Our lives are multifaceted shouldn’t a journal, written about our lives, accommodate all of the different aspects of our lives?

Welcome to Journella™ Categories!

There are currently 2 Category Families (VIEW JOURNALS and VIEW SOURCES)

This is what my journal category list looks like in the left side screen menu:

Here is a peek at my list of sources:

When you click on either of these category family headings your view (READ, DAY, WEEK, MONTH, YEAR, or DECADE) will be filtered to show only the “category family” selected. (Example: click “Kevin” and “Week View” it will show only the Journal items related to “Kevin”.)

VIEW JOURNALS: A place to customize your memories. What subjects are important to you? Do you keep a gratitude Journal? Do you like to Travel? Do you need a place to write about good days or bad days? You can create a different category for each of the important subjects in your life.

Here is how I set up my categories:

I am sure I will add to my list of categories and possibly even change some of the names and icons I set up. I can do that anytime by going into “manage journals.”

Once you’ve set up your categories, and you begin writing, you will able be able to get a quick view of your day to day life on Journella’s Calendar views.

VIEW SOURCES: the second group in your category list. Under View Sources, you will find a list of “sources.” The first source listed is:

MY ENTRIES: These are the entries you’ve created in the Journella™ program.

FACEBOOK/TWITTER: If you have connected to Facebook or Twitter you will see them listed below “My Entries.”

RSS FEEDS: If you have connected to any RSS Feeds you will find them listed below “Sources” as well.

Here is a peek at my list of sources:

I have connected to facebook, twitter, and two RSS feeds (example above – “Happiness is a Choice” and “What was I thinkin?” are both blogs that feed into my Journella.

You can connect and disconnect to outside sources any time, just go to MANAGE SOURCES (or click on the “Connect” button.)

I’ve been saving my old wall calendars, for many years, to help me remember event dates, etc. Now I just add those items to my Journella® and they appear on my Journella® “Calendar View” for easy searching and finding.

Save Facebook

Connect to Web Sources, How To, collect facebook Comments Off

May 182011

What have you been sharing with friends on facebook? How might those bits of information be helpful to your memory writing process? If you knew that you were saving everything you wrote on facebook, would it encourage you to share more with your facebook friends?

Preserving memories is important to me, sharing with my friends and family is important as well. I love that I can combine the two by saving my status updates and assigning those items to an appropriate journal category.

HOW TO SAVE YOUR FACEBOOK: Click on “manage sources” (left menu column) or the COLLECT button. The “Manage Outside Source Connections” view will appear. (See example image below.)

Click on the arrow in the facebook row. You will see two options “A” for auto collect and a green check box – for connect and collect. If you choose “A” your facebook status will be automatically collected. If you do not want every facebook item to be collected simply choose the green check box.

A pop up box will appear asking you to verify and give permission for Journella™ to connect to your facebook account.

If you chose the green check box the words “View Collect” will appear. Click on “View Collect” and you will be able to choose only the status updates you wish to save into your Journella™ account.

I admit, I get a little bit of a rush going back to my calendar view and seeing all the little facebook icons appear. (Be sure you have selected View All or View Sources to see your facebook icons.)