Online Diaries That Feel Like the Real Thing-Penzu

Name: Penzu

Quick Pitch: Penzu is a free online diary and personal journal with a focus on privacy. Securely record your thoughts and ideas with the ease of writing on a pad of paper.

Genius Idea: A big part of blogging has always been about sharing your thoughts with others, but sometimes, you really just want to record your thoughts and keep them private — like you would in a traditional paper journal. Penzu brings the paper-journal experience (and aesthetic) to the web and offers private-entry by default and the ability to protect your entries with a password or high-level encryption.

Although most blogging or journaling platforms will let you make an entry private or select who it is shared with, the process isn’t always easy to manage. Plus, if someone has access to your account, they can still access your journal entries.

Because Penzu entries are private by default, the chances of your personal thoughts being seen by the wrong person are considerably lower. Also, because you can password protect or encrypt entries, even if someone breaks into your account (or you forget to log out or something), there can still be one more barrier protecting what you write from someone else’s eyes.

Penzu’s aesthetic looks like a piece of notebook paper — which is a pretty cute effect. If you do want to share an entry with someone, you can create a public entry for it and give it to whomever you choose. Unlike other journal or blogging services, there isn’t a main index of all entries – so only the links you share publicly are accessible.

Penzu is incredibly easy to use – if you’ve used Tumblr or any other instant-write platform, you’ll be comfortable. Penzu also recently introduced the ability to attach photos from Flickr — or your computer — to your journal entries.

For users who want more control, Penzu offers Penzu Pro. Penzu Pro is $19 a year and it offers the ability to customize your Penzu backgrounds, format text, control the date for your entries (so you can backdate old entries), import entries from LiveJournal and export entries as text or PDF files. Penzu Pro also offers 256-bit AES encryption in addition to the standard password-lock option available on free accounts.

If you want to keep a record of your thoughts, but you don’t want to share them with the world (or with Google), you might want to give Penzu a try. What tools do you use for recording your private thoughts?

http://penzu.com/content/why

http://penzu.com/content/aboutus

http://blog.penzu.com/

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http://penzu.com/content/products

FREE

• Privacy First Penzu was designed to focus on privacy. Unlike blogging, your entries are private by default! More →
• A Picture is Worth a Thousand…Insert your own photos (now with flickr) and bring your entries to life! More →
• Share if You Want To You can share your individual entries via email or create a public link and share with the world. More →
• Autosaving Write as much as you want for as long as you want and your work is saved as you type! More →
• Instant Search Find long-lost entries quickly with our filtered search. Start typing and your results appear instantly. More →

PRO

• Go Mobile! Use Penzu on your iPhone,iPad, Blackberry, and Android device. Instantly save, sync, and access offline.More →
• Ultimate Privacy With Penzu Pro, you can protect your entries with military-grade 256-bit AES encryption. More →
• Express Yourself Customize your entry backgrounds, pad style, and text formatting to suit your mood. More →
• You Own Your Data Your entries can be exported to multiple formats giving you more control over your private data. More →
• Penzu Post Send entries to your Penzu journal from any email address any time. Email setup@post.penzu.com to get started. More →

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