journaling/technology

[Pickleodeon]

Hello, I'm wondering what the most efficient way of journaling is. That is, I don't want to write everything in my journal and then type it all up weeks later to my TrailJournal. Also, I dont want to have to burden my support person to type my journal for me, like send it home every few weeks, or read it to him over the phone. That seems like a pain.

So, how about PocketMail, or Peek.

www.pocketmail.com (http://www.pocketmail.com) $99 + $105/6 months = $204

www.getpeek.com (http://www.getpeek.com) $80 + $20/month = $200

I know Jan Liteshoe seemed pretty darn satisfied with her Pocketmail in her TJ.

The Peek seems a little smaller, and a tiny bit cheaper. I'd type in my journal and then send it when I have signal. Or maybe save em up for a week or so and then email them to be posted on my journal.

Any advice?

[KG4FAM]

I am cheap and don't say much. I have been looking at doing a postholer journal through my Net10 prepaid phone. If you do one journal entry a day by SMS for 5 cents each then for six months it cost 9 bucks. The downside is there is no qwerty keyboard and you have to put like 20 bucks more into a phone that can do email.

[Manwich]

Find a buddy like myself who'll receive your journals via snailmail and post it. cost = stamp.

[Slo-go'en]

You can get a used smart phone pretty cheap. Just get basic voice service (if you need the phone) and dump the data (journal and pictures) into a PC in town via USB cable.

[Smile]

Pocketmail is sweet, and at Postholer.com you can just email your journal entry and it automatically goes up, like that feature a lot! :)

[Frick Frack]

I put detailed journal entries into my Blackberry (Crackberry) Curve. It also takes good pictures, video, makes phone calls, has GPS, maps, email, internet, voice recorder, you can store books & music on it, etc.... I'm not a techie but it came in real handy on our trip. I got so used to using the keyboard that it was hard typing on a regular one when i got through. The phone stays charged for over a week+ with the phone service turned off. Excellent device!

[Tipi Walter]

Is there something that you can talk into and it reprints voice entries into typed pages?? You could take a small voice recorder and transfer all audio files into text with proper hookup/software. Just wondering.

[Manwich]

Is there something that you can talk into and it reprints voice entries into typed pages?? You could take a small voice recorder and transfer all audio files into text with proper hookup/software. Just wondering.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YozgvRvjCtI :D

never ever will there be such a device. voice recognition will always be a horrid experience for most.

[Johnny Swank]

Is there something that you can talk into and it reprints voice entries into typed pages?? You could take a small voice recorder and transfer all audio files into text with proper hookup/software. Just wondering.

I wish. I've got 20+ hours of journals from our Mississippi River trip that I've not got around to transcribing. I haven't found anything that works all that well.

[MediumRare]

Is there something that you can talk into and it reprints voice entries into typed pages?? You could take a small voice recorder and transfer all audio files into text with proper hookup/software. Just wondering.

Check out http://jott.com (http://jott.com/). Among other useful things, they translate voice / voice mail and SMS messages to e-mail or twitters.

I haven't journaled with this, but it's not a huge leap.

[garlic08]

This was discussed a while ago:

http://www.whiteblaze.net/forum/showthread.php?t=42613&highlight=paper+journal

[Sly]

Pocketmail is sweet, and at Postholer.com you can just email your journal entry and it automatically goes up, like that feature a lot! :)

Postholer also has codes where you can easily add waypoints, altitude, mileage, etc.

Seems to me with getpeek, Pocketmail may have reached the end of it's usefulness.

[Red Hat]

I loved using a Pocketmail in 05, but since then the number of pay phones has seriously diminished... My pocketmail does not work with a cell, only a large phone, like a payphone. So it is pretty outdated now. I used a pda last year and it was fine. My mistake was thinking it was a camera too. The camera part was terrible.

[Mags]

Carrier Pigeon.
http://news.cnet.com/2100-1001-257064.html

[Lucy Lulu]

I sent my daily entry with a picture, to www.postholer.com (http://www.postholer.com). It updated my journal automatically, including the attached picture, and nobody had to cut and paste for me. I used a Blackberry Curve.

Ellie

[The Old Fhart]

Tipi Walker-"Is there something that you can talk into and it reprints voice entries into typed pages?? You could take a small voice recorder and transfer all audio files into text with proper hookup/software. Just wondering."

Totem-"never ever will there be such a device. voice recognition will always be a horrid experience for most. "
Dragon Speak (http://www.1st-dragon.com/dragnatspeak1.html) has been available for years and works quite well. Years ago I saw an old version of it being used by someone where I worked who had carpal tunnel syndrome and the company bought this to help him out. That early version appeared to work well and they have improved it greatly since then. Suggested price is in the $150 range but Amazon (http://www.amazon.com/Nuance-Communications-Inc-A109A-G01-10-0-NaturallySpeaking/dp/B001B5J7LQ/?tag=satisfactiong144-20&gclid=CM--9cqyspgCFQw9GgodL2zSUQ) has it for $79. Here is a demo (http://www.nuance.com/naturallyspeaking/flash/GeneralDictation/GeneralDictation.htm) of it working. If you have something you recorded previously, you can always edit after inputting it to put in punctuation and format it.

Initially it takes a few minutes for you to calibrate it to your voice.

[Blissful]

A handwritten journal and access to a computer in town every 3-4 days where you can post (I used trailjournals). :) Worked good for me and saved weight.

[Pickleodeon]

I don't have a fancy phone. Mine is a Cingular, back when it was Cingular, from.. 4 years ago. pretty outdated in terms of phones, it doesnt even have a camera on it. I don't plan on getting a new one until I get back from the trail to save on expenses. Phone plus data plan is super expensive for me.

I'd like to get my journal up pretty quickly, and I don't want to burden my boyfriend with typing it for me, he has enough other "jobs" I've given him.

We'll see. Thanks for the advice. Any other ideas, feel free to post em.

[budforester]

I don't have a fancy phone. Mine is a Cingular, back when it was Cingular, from.. 4 years ago. pretty outdated in terms of phones, it doesnt even have a camera on it. I don't plan on getting a new one until I get back from the trail to save on expenses. Phone plus data plan is super expensive for me.

I'd like to get my journal up pretty quickly, and I don't want to burden my boyfriend with typing it for me, he has enough other "jobs" I've given him.

We'll see. Thanks for the advice. Any other ideas, feel free to post em.

Could you text- message to him or to his email? Cut and paste to your journal would be quick. Maybe you could upload pictures and edit some details into the post, when you access a computer.

I sometimes send text from my antique cellphone directly to my Blogger site.

[Tennessee Viking]

I would think if you look for a cell phone with a keyboard that you can type everything up in onc text message or email, and send it off all at once. Usually some your text messaging phones will only go up to about 150-200 characters per text.

You might want to look into a digital voice recorder with auto-dictation software. My Sony recorder said it transcribed but really it would play the audio files while you typed up everything. But you can get well over 10-20 hours of audio with some of the basic recorders.

Then there are these digital transcribing pens, it will digitize to text everything you write but it requires special paper.

[BrianLe]

A smartphone with a folding bluetooth keyboard was a great choice for me on the PCT this past (2008) year. It doesn't have to be too complicated, but a smartphone can present complexities. I wrote up some thoughts on this here:
http://postholer.com/smartPhone.html

[NCYankee]

I put detailed journal entries into my Blackberry (Crackberry) Curve. It also takes good pictures, video, makes phone calls, has GPS, maps, email, internet, voice recorder, you can store books & music on it, etc.... I'm not a techie but it came in real handy on our trip. I got so used to using the keyboard that it was hard typing on a regular one when i got through. The phone stays charged for over a week+ with the phone service turned off. Excellent device!

This is what I was planning to do but with my blackberry 8703e.

I was just going to keep it turned off constantly and then turn it on at night when I wanted to journal and email/call the wife. I was afraid of the phone searching for a signal though because I know how quickly that kills the battery... How do you turn the phone portion off?

[KG4FAM]

This is what I was planning to do but with my blackberry 8703e.

I was just going to keep it turned off constantly and then turn it on at night when I wanted to journal and email/call the wife. I was afraid of the phone searching for a signal though because I know how quickly that kills the battery... How do you turn the phone portion off?
Most phones these days have an airplane mode. That turns off the radios and lets you use everything else.

[Frick Frack]

This is what I was planning to do but with my blackberry 8703e.

I was just going to keep it turned off constantly and then turn it on at night when I wanted to journal and email/call the wife. I was afraid of the phone searching for a signal though because I know how quickly that kills the battery... How do you turn the phone portion off?

My Curve has an icon that is a red dot with a little antenna on it that is labeled "Manage Conections". Use the track ball to locate it and click it. Then you have the ability to turn all conections off. I had it off most of the time & the battery would last about a week or week and a half. I would turn it on briefly to allow email to send/receive then turn off the connection again to read new mail. I used the "MemoPad" to do journal entries (as well as pics/videos) which you can email out. The Verizon service further north was sketchy (ATT was better) but got MUCH better about PA and further south.

[WritinginCT]

I wish true little "pocket pc's" were still around. I would love one gadget to be able to type up emails and plain text documents as well as being able to read ebooks/pdfs/.txts (I read a lot of fanfiction and it would be awesome to be able to pull a couple gig worth of stuff to read from the web)

[catfishrivers]

I'm bringing my iPhone which I am putting together a mintyboost kit to be able to recharge it 2.5 times (or so) from 2 AA batteries. I have a Wordpress blog and will be able to post to it whenever I have reception, text and pictures. I'll also be putting several pdfs of books I want to read or might need (like my mushroom, plant, and tree identification books and maps) on it, a bunch of albums, and I have recording ability if I get inspired with any ideas but don't want to stop to write them down. I am hoping it works out as well as I hope, but I will be bringing a pen and notebook just in case!

[windex]

A handwritten journal and access to a computer in town every 3-4 days where you can post (I used trailjournals). :) Worked good for me and saved weight.

I did this too... but I only made little notes on the paper. When I got to a computer, I filled in the blanks with my map and guidebook pages to remember everything from the past days. There were only a few stretches where I had to handwrite and then send pages to a friend to type. If I did it again, I would definitely just take notes and plan on about 2 hours of computer time in towns. It was worth every minute I spent typing..... those memories are preserved forever now.

[postholer.com]

...what the most efficient way of journaling is. That is, I don't want to write everything in my journal and then type it all up weeks later to my TrailJournal. Also, I dont want to have to burden my support person to type my journal for me...

Definitely a candidate for a postholer.com journal! :sun

As Smile, Ellie and Sly have so kindly mentioned, you can update your journal with anything that is capable of sending email. Check out the demo (http://postholer.com/demo).

There is also a mobile version (http://postholer.com/mobi) of postholer journals. I believe Brian used this last year with his smartphone. It's a mobile friendly version of the journal web page.

Hope that helps!

[ovationcs257]

I just bought a Sony mylo which works on WIFI. I haven't used it for a journal yet but I am planning to on my 09 thru hike. I have been playing around with it for the last week and seem to have everything I need text editor, nice keyboard, no subscription fee plus an mp3 player, camera (cell phone still 1.3mp), skype phone, internet access and a card slot for memory stick cards. It is a bit heavy at almost 7 oz though. I picked up mine refurbished for $150.

[Frosty]

never ever will there be such a device. voice recognition will always be a horrid experience for most.nuance software sells a voice recognition software for about a hundred bucks that works swell. I dictate into a recorder and play it back to my computer and it gets most things right. A few blips, but still about a zillion times faster than typing from scratch.

They also make medical and legal versions with specialized vocabularies, so if those prefessions are using them, you know they are accurate (though those two programs are a lot more expensive).

But cost-efficient and efficacious voice recognition software has been around for years.

[Screech]

How long do the batteries last on the pocketmail?

[The Old Fhart]

Frosty-"nuance software sells a voice recognition software for about a hundred bucks that works swell."That is the 'Dragon Speak' software I described back in post #16. Check that post for details.

[postholer.com]

How long do the batteries last on the pocketmail?

For the TM-20 model it depends on how much you use it, especially the back light.

I replaced batteries once after 6 weeks with the meter at half full. (2 AA)

YMMV

-postholer

[Jonnycat]

Me, me, me!