Get your journal yet?

[postholer.com]

If you're seeking the ultimate in trail journals, take a look a postholer journals. Postholer journals is the most advanced hiker-centric journal/blog site to be found:

http://postholer.com/journal

The last 2 hiking seasons postholer journals have been the first choice of PCT hikers, and for good reason. Out AT cohorts should equally enjoy it! The ability to update your journal real-time from anywhere, integrated google map with trail trace and mileages, integrated SPOT/GPS, an exceptional experience for journal readers and tons more.

Journal Features
+ No advertisements. It's all about your hike.
+ Add journal entrys/photos by EMail, Smart phone, Kindle, whatever!
+ Google trail map of your entrys, same trace and waypoints as our printed maps.
+ Postholer Mobile optimized for smart phone users!
+ Integrate SPOT Personal Messenger into your journal map!
+ Photo Manager, 5 photos per entry, 1,250 per journal. Need more? Just ask.
+ Immediate, last 20 Twitter messages (tweet your map location, too!)
+ Gear List, spreadsheet like
+ Trip Planner, spreadsheet like
+ Training Log, spreadsheet like
+ Extended journal information, min/max temps, high/low elevation, etc, etc.
+ Embed your journal in your website!
+ Option to make your journal private, does not appear in searches
+ Multiple journal handling that will blow your mind!
+ Download your entire journal in xml format
+ Optional guest book for your visitors, with your comments
+ Integrated journal & forum accounts
+ Automatic bookmarks for readers - up to 200 journals
+ RSS support for timely notification of journal updates

With 4 hiking seasons under our belt I'd like to thank all postholer journalists for making the site a huge success!

-postholer

[BrianLe]

The ability to update/upload from the trail is something that works so much better with Postholer, that's what made me switch over. Another thing that made me feel good about the switch is the ability to download the entire journal as text --- it's just very comforting to me to have my own copy of this stuff on my own hard drive. It's not as if I expect any of the journal sites to fold up shop and go away, but --- things happen, and I really really like the ability to have my own permanent copy of this body of text that's important to me.

I expect to use the SPOT feature on the CDT this coming year (never used one before). And in general I find that site navigation is more logical and faster.

The one downside is that perhaps less people will find your journal there, and that just boils down to "inertia". I.e., people are used to talking about journals on the trailjournals.com site, it's been around longer, more people look there who want to follow along with journals. I'm thinking that over time this will change, but presumeably that's why postholer is posting this --- just to make folks aware of this option.

In any event, I recommend it. It really has caught on with PCT hikers, and it worked great for me (http://postholer.com/journal/viewJournal.php?entry_id=11657) this past year on the AT. Particularly for anyone considering a PCT hike, look on the postholer site for some really helpful tools, even if you don't end up putting your journal there. I liked the mobile-device-friendly weather report (http://postholer.com/mobi/wx.php) tool on the AT as well (don't need to journal at postholer to use that).