Blogging Robots

Happy macOS Sonoma release day!

We are glad to report that our Mac apps are compatible with the new version of macOS.

We have released Mémoires 5.0.1.

It’s a minor update that includes the following improvements:

• Fixed an issue with the alignment of printed pages.
• Fixed issues related to embedding files.
• Updated the scrypt key derivation function code.

Mémoires will notify you automatically about the update. If you use the App Store version, it will be installed automatically if you have such option enabled.

We published a new article:

How to Write a Journal: A Comprehensive Guide.

It’s a guide to journaling, with tips and tricks to get you started.

Here’s the table of contents:

1. Make a Commitment to Write Regularly
2. Choose Tools That Are Convenient and Inspiring
3. Just Write: Overcoming the Initial Hurdles and Embracing the Process
4. Add Photos and AI-Generated Images to Your Journal
5. Experiment with Different Styles
6. Review Your Journal Regularly: The Key to Growth and Self-Reflection

Read the complete guide »

We also published The Complete Journaling FAQ that answers many of the questions you might have about the practice of journaling.

Recently AI has become a hot topic, with many tools appearing to help us with our daily tasks. While I don’t think it’s useful to use text-generating AI for writing a journal, since the point of journaling is to write about your own experiences, I found that AI image generation is a great way to enhance my journaling.

At the end of the day, after finishing writing my journal entry, I think of a sentence that represents my day and let AI imagine what it looks like, in a style of a painting or a photo. I feed this sentence as a prompt to the image generating program and save the output to my journal in Mémoires. (I also type the original sentence as a caption under it.)

Examples

Camping near a mountain, enjoying the beautiful scenery, realistic painting.

Three people meeting at a cafe under a tree, black and white pencil drawing.

Here’s how to do it

If you want to try it yourself, I recommend one of the following tools that use Stable Diffusion to generate images on your Mac without sending anything to the cloud, for ultimate privacy:

• DiffusionBee
• Amazing AI

Download and launch the app, then type out your sentence as a prompt, and click “Generate”. If you don’t like the result, try generating again with the same prompt or, perhaps, try a slightly different prompt.

If you use DiffusionBee, click on the burger menu next to the image and select “Upscale Image” to make it larger.

Save the image somewhere and then drag it into your entry in Mémoires. (Since Mémoires can store multiple entries per day, I prefer to save images under a separate entry called “Pic of the day”.)

That’s it! Happy journaling… with AI!

We are happy to report that all our Mac apps — Mémoires, Video Mémoires, and I Write Like — are fully compatible with the newly released macOS Ventura.

We’re happy to announce the release of Video Mémoires 3, our easy-to-use Mac video diary app!

What’s New

• 🍎 Apple Silicon support.
• 👁 New recording flow: click + Add to see the preview and then click Record to record.
• 🎥 Camera selection.
• ⏰ Recording time: 🔴 00:01:23
• 💅 Updated user interface design.
• New icon.

How to upgrade

This update is free for all users of Video Mémoires.

If you purchased Video Mémoires from our website, you’ll get a notification about it when starting the app. If it’s already running, click “Video Mémoires > Check for Updates…”.

If you purchased Video Mémoires from the Mac App Store, you’ll get the upgrade automatically.

How to get it

Head to the product page to get it!

We are happy to announce that our writing style analyzer, I Write Like is now available for iPhone, iPad, and Mac!

The first version of I Write Like was released in 2010, and since then has been used by millions of people for inspiration and entertainment.

While we have ported the same algorithm to Apple devices, we also added a few features that we think are helpful for those who write:

• Text statistics and readability. Apps show character, word, and sentence counts, and analyze your text for readability to show you the readability score and how long would it would take for an average reader to read your text.

• Top rankings and probabilities. In addition to showing you the most similar author, you can view the top three likely candidates and the probabilities of their style matching yours.

• No limitation on the maximum text size. The web version is limited to about 30 kilobytes of text. The apps don’t have such limitations, so you can process larger texts.

• Offline analysis. This means that you don’t have to have an Internet connection to analyze your texts and you don’t have to send your writings to our server for processing.

• Save texts and sync them across your devices with iCloud. The web version just processes your text and discards it, while the app version stores it on your devices and syncs them via iCloud. For example, every text that you write on your iPhone will be available on your Mac, and vice versa.

• Share your results via Messages, Twitter, or any other app that supports sharing.

• The macOS version can import your existing text files.

You can get the apps from the App Store by tapping this link:

We’d like to announce the release of Mémoires 5, the newest version of our journaling app.

This year we are celebrating the 15th anniversary of Mémoires. The latest version is our biggest update ever: it comes with new useful features, modernized user interface, and full support for Macs with Apple Silicon. Rest assured that we will never betray our initial goal: the easiest to use simple journaling app for Mac that you can rely on for a long time.

Highlights of this release

• Awesome dark mode. It even automatically adapts text and drawings (created by the improved Quick Drawing feature) to the right color.
  
  

• Color labels for your entries. Group what you write with color labels and then easily browse enteries by label.
  
  

• Redesigned Quick Drawing. Now featuring eraser, Touch Bar support, and better colors that work well both on white and dark background.
  
  

• Insert from iPhone or iPad. Use your iPhone or iPad to add photo, draw a sketch or scan a document right into Mémoires on your Mac.
  
  

• Improved performance. We rewrote a lot of code and improved performance of switching between entries and saving journals.

• Apple Silicon support. Now a Universal app for both Apple Silicon (M1) chips and Intel processors, so that it runs as fast as possible, natively.

• Improved tabs. Turn on the dedicated tabbed mode in the app preferences and enjoy multiple journals in a single window.

• Full macOS 12 Monterey support. Fresh new icons for the app and journals, redesigned user interface, and other nits and bits.

• Better Touch Bar support. Touch Bar is going away, but we still support it and improve how Mémoires works with it. Now you can easily create entries and switch between views using the Touch Bar.

• Automatic File Format Conversion. To accomodate for new features, Mémoires 5 has an enhanced file format for journals. Once your journals are opened in Mémoires 5, they are automatically converted to the new version, and cannot be opened in older versions of Mémoires. Please make sure to use the latest version on all computers if you share your journals between them.

How to upgrade

Mémoires 5 is the major version, and thus requires a new license. As always, we provide the discounted update pricing for our existing users. Additionally, for a limited time we provide the upgrade price for everyone. Unlike many software companies, we are not switching to the subscription model — you pay for the major version once, receive minior updates for free, and can keep using it forever without paying. As old-school and honest as it gets.

You can learn more about this version and how to upgrade by visiting the What’s New page.

If you’re new to Mémoires, please visit its product page to learn more about the app, and download a trial version or buy the full version.

Coding Robots condemns Russian invasion on Ukraine and calls for peace.

We stand with the people of Ukraine and those in Russia and Belarus who are against the war.

If you’re wondering when Mémoires and Video Mémoires are going to be updated to run natively on Apple Silicon, we have good news: we are working on modernizing the apps with a new user interface design, new icons, great new features, and of course, full support for Apple Silicon. Meanwhile, the current versions of our apps work perfectly on the M1 Macs with Rosetta, so you can continue using them even if you have an Apple chip inside your computer.

We don’t share release dates, but you can follow us on Twitter — @codingrobots — to get updates on our progress. Thank you for your support, and we can’t wait to show you what’s coming!