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By Tara Jayant
Staff writer
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A traditional diary comes equipped with a lock for a reason: it is considered a refuge
for all your innermost thoughts, and something that is not often shared with even your closest friends.
Yet the concept of the diary has changed as the Internet has drastically reshaped
communication. The exchange of thoughts and ideas is increasingly facilitated by technology and computers. Almost any information you could des ire is available at the click of a mouse.
It should come as no surprise, then, that the most personal form of writing-the self-expression contained in a diary-appears
publicly online. The trend of online journaling, along with a totally new format, weblogging (or blogging for short), is proving to be
more than a fad but actually a revolution in the way we organize our thoughts and present them to others.
Few people would dream of showing their pen-and-paper diaries to strangers, but the
majority of online diaries are “open.” That is, anyone who logs on to that specific URL will
be able to view the contents. However, for those times when you feel the need to keep
your thoughts completely private, many sites allow you to select specific entries to”lock”
which can be opened only with a password. Diary-x.com and xanga.com are ideal places to start your journal if you’re interested in that option.
However, many journalers are surprisingly relaxed about the issue of privacy. Ben
Todd, a college student and longtime d-x user, explains, “It was kind of shocking at first to
know that people were reading what I was thinking and writing, but it doesn’t mess with my head anymore.... Eighty people knowing how I felt on any given day isn’t going to
change my life. If anything, I want to amuse people with my life.” Check out “My Life from the Passenger’s Seat” at slipeightyfour.diary-x.com.
Online journals are not just typed up versions of diaries to show your curious friends;
they are amazingly versatile with the help of computer formatting, and they have even
paved the way for the totally new system of journaling: weblogging.Weblogs are a version
of online journals with one major difference: they are forum-style, divided into short
segments for each day. There is a header that lists the time the entry was written, and
some people personalize it with the mood and song of the day. These are usually less
personal than diaries, and sometimes friends will share the same “blog” and start a forum,
posting at their whim. Two sites that cater to this type of journal are blogspot.com and blogger.com. The accessibility of weblogs has caught on to the extent that some
companies use them as an alternative to e-mail for business communication.
To decide which way you want to go, you should first consider your technological
capabilities. If you’re not well versed in the ways of html and other languages, it’s best to
stick to sites that offer attractive, pre-set templates, such as diary-x.com or diaryland.com.
However, the beauty of these sites is that even the most experienced techie can play around with program scripts to create personal diaries that are flashy and intricate, with
many extra features from guestbooks to links to graphics to headers.
The best thing about any online journal is that the content is completely yours to decide.
Censorship is minimal; most sites advise keeping the material R-rated instead of
X-rated but rarely moderate the journals. Like junior Claire Paffenhöfer, you might enjoy
the occasional brief entry to record random spurts of inspiration. “It’s there for all those
2:00 a.m. days where talking to a human just doesn’t seem feasable,” she confides. Or if
you’re like Todd, you might spend hours perfecting the format of your journal and update
almost daily. “Being a future designer, I feel that design is an important element of an
online journal. I don’t know if d-x helps to promote my writing abilities, but it does help
me hone my self-expression skills.” Any online journaler has the leisure to edit entries in a
way he could never experience with paper journals. In short, the possibilities are endless.
Great places to start journaling:
Diary Format:
Diary-x.com - optimum flexibility and allows the user to password individual entries Diaryland.com Teenopendiary.com - your friends can leave “notes” at the bottom of each entry and
there is also a calendar of all entries written for a month
Blog Format:
Blogspot.com - has a nifty forum option where multiple users can share the same url Livejournal.com - has an incredibly extensive listing of all users by interest Xanga.com - you can blog on “safe” mode for privacy and choose different layouts
(called skins) at the click of a mouse.
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