Software has followed this up-down path for decades. The need to push out new features for no real reason and the inability to recognize when a product is actually finished destroys what could be great software or what once was great software.

It’s harder than you might think to leave features out, or to say no when a user is telling you your software would be better with feature X. When your competitors are proudly rolling out new versions chock full of features, all hanging off advanced or indecipherable menus, the temptation to join the race to unusablility is great.

That’s not going to happen with All My Journals. For a certain type of user, we’ve reached that Happy Peak – the emails I get every week are testimony to that. Adding more features would begin the slide back down the mountain, and I’d sooner that not happen.

And on those forums new feature requests are usually handled in one of two ways: enthusiastically adopted straight away, regardless of whether the feature would add value for most users, or quietly forgotten with a “We’ll consider it for an upcoming release” type of answer. Rarely do we see a true assessment of the value of the new feature for the product as a whole.

All My Journals does not have a user forum because there are few support issues and we’re not looking for feature requests.

I know that last flies in the face of the whole “listen to your customers” mantra we hear so often, but the truth is, if you want more features in All My Journals, then it’s not the product for you. Its primary appeal is its lack of features, and we’re ok with that.

As for all those support issues: we get an email every couple of weeks, but it’s usually along the lines of “My license key didn’t arrive.“

“But it does less than the competition”, I hear someone say. It doesn’t have that favorite pet feature that I absolutely must have in order to function. “I can’t embed images or export to HTML and CSS”, one person says. “It would be perfect if I could specify where my Journals were stored”, says another.

Trouble is, users who need that one more golden feature never seem to want the same feature. Pleasing them all would turn All My Journals into a complex, feature laden monstrosity.

Feature after feature, new version after new version, and each release worse than the last because it’s just so complicated.

Complexity and usability do not go together. I have a microwave oven that I struggle to use. I simply can’t work out what all the buttons and options are for, and as a result I hardly ever use it. I have a TV remote that contains buttons I have never clicked. The remote is three times bigger than it needs to be. I hate it, because it makes me frustrated and it makes me feel stupid.

You can’t please everyone, and you shouldn’t even try.

The addition of the spell checker to version 1.42 marks the line in the sand for All My Journals. It was the final feature required to make the software perfect for the majority of users. Old Pete with the goatee may not be happy because of that whole HTML / CSS thing, and the super users are (perpetually) unhappy because they can’t store journals on their X drive, but the 80% of users who don’t want any of these extras are happy – and that’s all that really matters.

Does that mean no new versions?

No, of course not. There will be bug fixes, and there will be minor changes as time passes, and there will be translations into other languages. But this will all happen slowly, one step at a time.

The only major new feature added so far has been the Journal Viewer, an oversight in the original release that quickly became apparent once users had written a few weeks of journal entries. I’ve deliberately kept new features to a minimum, as in the early days of new software, it’s easy to make mistakes and add features that would only benefit a small proportion of users.

What makes All My Journals unique is its simplicity – the lack of advanced features that serve only to clutter up a product for the majority of users – and I want to maintain that simplicity going forward.

New features will be added and changes will be made over time, but I expect this to happen very slowly and with great care. In the short to medium term, only one new feature is on the Must Have list, and that’s a bare bones spell checker. This is likely to appear in February and initially will only accommodate the English language.

I’d like to take this opportunity to thank all AMJ users for their feedback and support over the past few months, and to encourage you to tell your friends about it and spread the word.

I’ve tried to make writing your Journal entries as simple and straight forward as possible, and if feedback is anything to go by, appear to have succeeded. Where AMJ was weak was when it came to reading old entries.

This hadn’t yet become a problem, as the software is only 6 weeks old and most users do not have that many entries, but over time it would have become a thorny issue, which is why it has now been addressed with the new Reader.

The Reader is a simple dialog that allows you to read old entries on a month by month basis. It contains simple backwards and forwards links to allow you to browse the months and years, and it’s read only – no editing, no changing things, and no deleting embarrassing posts.

Why did we do this?

Many people say they want to keep a Journal or Diary – something they can refer back to years down the road so they know what they were thinking or doing back in 2011. Some of these people succeed, but most do not. They start off on the right track, make a few entries for that first week, then forget about it of simply drift away.

Those who fail often fail because organizing their Journal on their PC is too difficult. If they use MS Word or another word processor, they have to remember where they are storing their files, and they have to create new files each week or month.

Others worry about the security of their journal and what might happen if their husband or mother were to stumble across it. So they censor themselves or they give up after a few weeks, and if they do censor themselves, they quickly lose heart, as what use is a journal if you’re leaving out all the juicy bits.

This is where All My Journals comes in. It’s as simple as I could make it, contains only those features necessary for keeping a bare-bones journal, and addresses the issues outlined above so the user doesn’t have to.

There are no decisions to make regarding files and storage, as the software makes these for you. A single password can be set at the application level, meaning nobody can open the software or read your journals but you. All you have to concern yourself with is clicking the icon and writing.

Did you run the 5 kilometers you were supposed to, do all those sit ups and flexes, lift the weights you planned to? By writing all of this down in a dedicated Journal, you make it harder to lie to yourself about your true progress, and you can easily refer back to previous weeks and months to get an accurate portrayal of what you really did.

It would be great of we could all rely on our memories, but memory is notoriously unreliable when it comes to things like this, as we often assume we did more than we actually did.

So, if you want to keep an accurate exercise and fitness diary, download the latest version of All My Journals, and get started.

http://www.allmyjournals.com/download.html

The trial version runs for 45 days, so you have all that time to decide if it’s the right software for you.

It may be something simple like a one line entry under next Tuesday saying: “Call the gardener to come around and cut the grass”, or it could be an entry for Monday, typed out before I stopped work on Friday, outlining what needs to be done first thing Monday morning.

And when Monday or Tuesday roll around, and All My Journals opens on the current day, I’m faced with these messages I left myself days, weeks, or even months ago.

So in theory, I should never forget a birthday again!

And the best part is, because I have many different Journals in All My Journals, all  of these week ahead entries are kept completely separate from my other Journals.

Why is this?

Most computer users these days are more familiar using websites and web services than they are using desktop software. And web interfaces are all about links. People know exactly what to do when they see a blue link, whereas not everyone is that familiar with the menu/button approach that has dominated desktop software for the past 20 years.

Why no toolbar at the top of the software?

Because nowadays most computers run with widescreen monitors. And widescreen monitors tend to have a shortage of vertical space and an abundance of horizontal space. This is why the only toolbar in All My Journals is on the left, running top to bottom, and not at the top, taking up all the valuable screen real estate.

Software like MS Word does allow you to password protect an individual document, but messing around with all those documents can be time consuming. All My Journals makes this as simple as possible by allowing you to password protect all of your Journals with a single password.

This means that once a password is set, no one will be able to open All My Journals or read what you have written unless they know your password. Setting a password means you could even install All My Journals onto a thumb drive and carry it around with you without worrying about losing it and having somebody in the office read your journals.

As far as private journal software goes, it doesn’t get any more secure or private than All My Journals. Don’t believe me? Download the free 45 day trial version and try it out for yourself. You won’t be disappointed.

http://www.allmyjournals.com/download.html