My Business Journ

Journ is a great tool for journaling and sharing expenses when traveling with friends. Journ’s usefulness, however, does not end there.  This app is also ideal for tracking business expenses and creating a daily business journal.  For example, Jason owns a small web design company.  Much of his client communications can be accomplished via email or phone.  Jason, nevertheless, finds occasional face to face meetings improve client relations and satisfaction.  When Jason starts out on his customer visits, he creates a trip within Journ. Voila, the tracking of his business travel, mileage, expenses, meetings, etc., begins. First stop is the fuel station and a purchase of fuel for the car and coffee for Jason.  Both expenses can be entered in Journ and a photo taken of the receipts.  Next stop, a toll booth – another expense to track with Journ.  The first client meeting is at the client’s office. Journ records this location and offers a Note field to add information about the meeting purpose, attendees, objectives and outcomes. Next stop, lunch with a contract web designer where the cost of the lunch is split. Easy to do in Journ. Simply add the contractor, enter the meal cost, who paid and select yourself and the contractor as the splitters. From here, Jason travels to an office supply store to pick up new company cards and brochures. Journ is tracking all of the way.  The supply expenses can be entered into Journ.  Jason wraps up the business day at a networking social. Drink and food expenses can be entered into Journ along with notes on new business leads.  With Journ, Jason now has a record of his business day.  This record makes it simple for Jason to track expenses, follow up on meetings or business leads.  The Journ record can also be used to generate and easily share daily, weekly or monthly reports. Thus, whether traveling for pleasure or for business, Journ is the tracking, organizing and journaling app to have.

Journ - Enhancements in the Works

Some really great enhancements are in the works for Journ*. The most exciting enhancements are improvements to the user interface.

Improved User Interface - Journ 1.0.3 will guide the user through new trip or item entries. For example, to add an expense to a trip, simply press the prominent new "+" button. An amount field will appear. As the amount is entered, "Select Who Paid" and then "Select Who Split" prompts will be present. As these are selected, the Item Type will pop up, followed by Item Name. We've done away with the More/Less approach and now have just a scrollable screen to show all the data about an expense. Less important data is still positioned at the end. And we've made scrolling safer by depicting the date/time as a button so you can't accidentally change the date of an expense with a scrolling gesture.

Additionally, most screens now also work in landscape orientation.

The main menu button has been moved to a more standard position at the left of the top bar. Photos of users/splitters are now fully integrated into the payers and splitters specification process.

We've started allowing Event, Place and Notes items to also have expense amounts associated with them. So no need to create two items if you want to associated an expense amount with one of those journal type entries.

And the larger screen sizes of the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus are taken advantage of.


Other enhancements include:

• Item payment type (cash, credit card, etc) defaults to what you used on the previous item.
• Splitter’s full name, in addition to button name, included in financial emails.
• Setting added (Settings/Display) for a “Simpler User Interface”. For now, the only thing affected is the buttons bar at the bottom of the main view.
• Totals/Even up Screen is only brought up from the menu now (not from rotating the main view).
• There is a floating “Done” button to finish from anywhere when scrolling in an item screen.
• When editing individual amounts for uneven splits, once a person’s amount has been specified, the background is turned green to indicate that it cannot be changed until the whole set of usage amounts are reset.
• Moved the Even/Uneven split toggle button up to the Payers split area.
• Better layout and sizing of screens on the iPad.
• Touching a track item now brings up the map view of just the track, not including all the items created during the track timeframe (use the under item map button for that).
• Fixed bugs related to incorrect memory management.
• Performance improvements in scrolling the main list and in bringing up the item editing screen.
• Pointed to Trip Splitter Blog and Journ Blog from Settings/Help in all splitters.

Journ 1.0.3 is expected to be released in the next few months. We cannot wait to share this new and improved version with you!


*Journ has all of the expense tracking and sharing functionality of DC Software Arts' popular Trip Splitter app. Enhancements will apply to both apps, as well as Event Splitter, Divyit and Tailgate Splitter.

Journ's Quick Draw Camera

Never miss a special photo on your travels with Journ's "Take Photo on Launch" camera setting.  In this setting, Journ will take a photo each time the app is activated.  Just turn Journ on, point and shoot. 

To activate the Take Photo on Launch setting, get the Journ camera going by touching any of the camera buttons (e.g. the camera icon of the under-item buttons on the main screen or from the item details screen). Touch the middle icon on the bottom row of the camera screen (it looks like an on/off button pointing to a photograph). If the on/off image is gray, the mode is off, if it is black, then Journ is in the "Take Photo on Launch" mode and you can exit Journ or turn off your phone. When you turn back on your phone, Journ will take the first photo that it can after focusing.

Now, you will never miss an opportunity to photograph a special moment of your journey.

Journ – Use it a Little or a Lot

Journ users vary from the minimalist (track and shoot) to the avid journaler (Full Journal) to somewhere in between. Read on to determine which level of use fits your needs.

Track and Shoot – Use Journ to record your daily walk, bike ride or run. The Track and Shoot user creates a track and sets out.  Along the way, this user stops to take photos. At the end of the track, the user has a map of the track, distance traversed and photos taken along the way.

Track, Split and Shoot – This user could be anyone who travels and has a need to document the trip and expenses. For example, Journ allows a businessman to focus on business and not tracking expenses, mileage or accumulating piles of receipts. Journ can also be used to take photographs at meetings, record notes of meeting attendees, accomplishments or action items. If you are traveling with others and sharing expenses - not a problem. Journ is a master at expense management and sharing.  A photo of the receipt can be taken and saved with your trip information. In addition, a trip report can be quickly created complete with photos and emailed to interested parties. Journ can be similarly useful to those traveling for enjoyment.

Full Journal – This level of user takes advantage of each and every feature of Journ.  Their life is the journey and they wish to document every moment of it.  Journ can record the occurrences of each day – tracks, events, dining, entertainment, photos or other items. At the end of the day, Journ creates a complete recap of your day.

Regardless of your level of usage of Journ, the outcome is the same – a memorialization of your life. Journ creates a map of your travel complete with photos, expense reports, notes, etc.  Further, Journ makes sharing of any portion of your trip quite simple via social media, email or archive your memories to Evernote.

Journ's Super Enhanced Camera

Journ  is an travel app which simplifies trip photo taking, management and sharing. This app offers a super enhanced camera to ensure the best shots. In addition, Journ uncomplicates the culling, captioning and managing of photos.  Finally, Journ facilitates sharing your trip tracks, photos, captions and notes with others via email, social media, PicasaWeb and Evernote.

Camera Features - To memorialize a trip, one must have a good camera.  Journ fulfills that need and then some.   In addition to normal shoot and self-timer photos, Journ offers a “Guest Taker” mode. This mode allows someone outside the group to take a photo and even thanks the Guest Taker. In the “Clean Screen” mode, all the buttons disappear and touching the screen anywhere takes a photo.  If a lit screen could bother others, activate the Journ “Stealth” mode and touch anywhere on the screen to take a photo.  The “Take Photo on Launch” mode is perfect for the tired traveler. In this mode, a photo is taken each time Journ is launched.  Further, the number of exposures can be set to 2 or 3. Photos are taken one second apart and which ensures a  greater chance at the perfect shot.

Managing Photos - Often on a trip, many photos are taken. Some good, some not so much.  Journ includes a photo rating feature which allows the user to quickly rate each photo none, 1 or  2 (best) stars.  The starring facilitates the selection of which photos to use in slide shows, social emails, posting to social media and archiving to PicasaWeb, Flickr and Evernote.  

Photo Captions - Journ allows captions to be added to photos and even does some of the work for you. Journ tags photos with time taken and GPS location. Further, Journ contains an interface with Google Places which will suggest the name of the photo location.  The GPS interface allows a map of your trip to be created with points of interest and accompanying photos.

Sharing - Not only does Journ create a detailed trip journal, Journ makes sharing the trip with others quite simple.  Any part or all of a trip map and photo journal can be easily shared via emails, social postings, slide shows, PicasaWeb or by posting a  nicely prepared journal entry to Evernote.  

If you are a person who not only loves to travel, but loves to share and remember travels, Journ is the app for you.  With Journ, the trip is never over. It can be relived through your travel maps, item descriptions, events, notes, photos, captions and slide shows.

Life is a journey. Capture yours with Journ.

Camera Icon Key and Functions

Understanding the Journ 1.0.2 Trip Main Screen

Advantages of Using Journ Social Emails to Share Your Trip Adventures

If you are going on a big adventure and you are going to want to be sending back email reports of your days, then Journ can be used to overcome a few big problems you would have otherwise.

First, sending photos in emails makes the emails very large and you will quickly run into your email provider's size limits. Sending photos in emails with Journ takes almost no space because of how Journ processes photos.

Second, without Journ, sending photos in emails requires you to go to your camera roll and select the photos you want to send - a cumbersome, time consuming process.

And third, iPhones don't have a way to define a "distribution list" of contacts that you want to send your email.  Journ provides a way to define one BCC list and use it when sending Journ's social emails.

There are two sets of instructions for accomplishing this.
1. Configuring Journ before your trip, for sending these emails: instructions here
2. Using Journ on your trip daily to take the photos and send the email each evening: instructions here

Instructions for Using Tracks to Record your Daily Adventures and Sending Social Emails at the End of the Day

1. Creating a Track - Each morning launch Journ.  Then from the main screen, touch the menu button, then the Add Item button and then touch the menu item titled "Track". A Track item should appear in the current day's section. A Track is a Journ entry that records your location continuously for your later reference. You can view tracks, see a set of track statistics, email them, see the photos your took while the track was active, etc.

2. Name the Track and Bring up the Journ Camera - Carefully touch the very left edge of the new Track line and then touch the "i" button - the first of all the buttons that appeared.  That will open up the item details view for the Track item. Touch the word Track beneath the row of item type icons. Enter a name for the day's adventure - "Walk around Paris", "London Day 8", etc. Then touch the Camera icon in the bar of buttons. This will bring up the Journ camera which has many travel-ready features. You can now take a photo, or turn off your iPhone or hit the home button to exit Journ. But when you want to take a photo, run Journ instead of the Camera app. Don't worry, all the photos you take will also be stored into the camera roll as if you had taken them with the Apple Camera app. When done taking photos, exit Journ, or just turn your phone off. Basically, every time you come back to Journ, it will be in the Camera mode and you can keep adding photos to the Track item that you created for that day. (In Journ, it is like you have a mini-camera-roll associated with each item.)

The Journ camera has many unique features. Touch the "?" button and watch the short video that describes all the features.

3. Managing the Day's Photos - At the end of the day, open Journ and exit the camera by touching the thumbnail of the last photo that you took (in the bottom left corner). This will place you into the Journ "Slide show" for the track. Tap anywhere first, to bring up the buttons that allow you to manage the photos from the slide show. Touch the "?" button to see a help video about that. For now though, you can just swipe back and forth to look at all the photos and you might want to delete any bad ones. You can also add a caption to any photo if you want to make it stand out in the social email. Then touch the "Return" button in the bottom left corner and then touch the "Done" button from the item details screen and that will exit you to the Journ main screen.

4. Stopping the Track - VERY IMPORTANT - you must manually stop the track recording or else it will go on into the next day. Touch the track line from the main view and a map of the track should come into view. TO STOP THE TRACK - touch the word "Active" at the top center of the map. That will "Pause" the track, stopping recording. You can touch the 6 line button in the upper right to see parameters about the track.  Continuously touch that button to see more information. You can move, scroll and zoom around the map to see where all you went. Be sure to reposition the map to the whole track before you exit, because, on exit, an image of the track is captured and attached as a photo for email use.

5. Sharing your Day - Back at the main view, watch for the trip name to stop flashing, indicating that all photos have been uploaded to your Google Drive.  (See instructions for Configuring Journ for Sending Social Emails) Touch the very left edge of the Track line again, and then touch the Social Email button (email icon with two person figures).  This will compose your email and you should be able to just touch Send. If the BCC field is not set up with all your addresses, exit the email, go to Menu/Settings/Social Emails and turn on "Use The Following Bcc List".

Instructions for Configuring Journ in Preparation for Sending Social Emails

1. The first step to use Journ's social emails is to make sure that you have enabled Journ to use Google Drive for your photos. Touch the menu button, then touch Settings, then touch Social Emails. Now turn on "Use Google Drive For Photos". When you turn this setting on, a dialog will popup to allow you to give Journ permission to access your Google Drive.

2. Once you've given the above permission, Journ will start sending photos to your Google Drive. This will happen when you have Journ running in the foreground (the trip name in the title bar will slowly flash if there are still photos to be uploaded).  It will also happen if you have a track active, even if Journ is not in the foreground. This is a good reason to have a track going each day.  However, this upload uses your cell service, so if you are in a foreign country and have turned off data over cell, then the upload will only happen when you are at a wifi hotspot like back at your lodging at night.

3. The social emails you send will be pointing to your photos in your Google Drive. So you must make that folder open to the Internet. You should do this from a computer before you go on your trip because it is much easier from a computer browser than from a iPad or iPhone. If you don't know how to do this, the instructions for doing this are in another Journ Blog entry - click here.

Configuring Access to your Google Drive Public Folder

In order to optimize social emails (to include photos not as attachments, but as inline images), Journ social emails link to those photos in your Google Drive where Journ uploads them. For this to work, the folder in your Google Drive named "Journ Public Folder" must be configured to be open to the web. Here are the instructions for doing that if you do not know how.

First get your google drive showing in a web browser. You can get there from your gmail, or just go directly to drive.google.com. Log in with your gmail account and password.

Select the folder titled:  "Journ Public Folder" and right click on it. Then click on the "Share" menu item.  This is what it should look like.

Now click on the Advanced link in the bottom right.

Now click on the "Change" link over to the right of "Private..."

Now click on "On - Public on the web".

Now your emails should work in the optimized way.

Manageable and Memorable Spring Break with the Journ App

Journ is a multifunctional travel app, perfect to take along on spring break.  So add “download Journ” to your spring break prep to-do list.

Using Journ will ensure your spring break is not only manageable, but well documented.  Journ allows users to journal their spring break through maps, daily events, photos, slideshows and notes. In addition, Journ allows easy sharing of your trip map, photos, slideshows and notes via email, Facebook, Twitter, Picasa web album or Evernote.  With only a few touches, your spring break adventures can be shared with others! And importantly, Journ has all the expense sharing and "evening up" features of our popular Trip Splitter app.

The next best thing to the actual spring break experience is reliving and sharing the memory. There is certainly no better way to memorialize spring break than with photos.   Managing those photos, however, can be tedious and time consuming. Thus, the problem is, if the photos are not organized and captions added during or soon after the trip, the spring break memory may fade. With Journ, however, the captioning and managing of photos is as simple as a few touches and taps, right there when you take the photos and can most easily capture the details.  Further, Journ offers a super enhanced camera to ensure all your spring break photos are the best shots.

Journ is also a great app for spring breakers traveling together and sharing expenses.  Journ can be used to track expenses along with who paid, how much and who owes – in any currencies.  At any time during the trip, an expense or “settle up” report can be generated and emailed.

In summary, Journ is travel photography/expense sharing/management app which will create a map of your spring break trip and allows documentation of the trip with photos, captions, notes and slide shows.  Journ additionally simplifies sharing of trip reports and photos via email, social media, email and other venues. Click here to visit the iTunes store today and download Journ! 

What's new in 1.0.2

The following features and fixes are in release 1.0.2:

- Plays nice with iOS 8, stopped support for iOS 6.

- For Tracks in Social emails, a Google Map link shows the track and photos by day.

- “Where am I” feature added to Main Menu - turns GPS location into address.

- Full trip archiving to your Google Drive (Settings/Options). Runs from 2am to 5am. You must leave Journ running in the foreground. Then enable Google Drive Sync on your PC or MAC to see the results in “Journ Private Folder”.

- “Finish Trip” added to My Trips menu - stops Google Drive archiving for the trip.

Explanation of Journ Settings

Explanation of Journ Settings

Journ is a highly customizable app.  Throught the Settings, a user can select an archive destination, the display characteristics, communication content and sharing options.  The user may even enter their height and weight to allow Journ to estimate calories burned on a trek! The Journ Settings are defined below.

Setting	Default	Purpose
General		Green = Yes = On. White = No = Off.
Options
Use Current Users On Create	No	If Yes, current trip participants will be participants in new trip. If participants in either trip are edited, the edit will impact all trips.
Photos to Camera Roll	Yes	Pictures are saved to phone's camera roll.
Allow Undeleting Trips	No	If Yes, deleted trips can be restored.
Only Real Splitters Get Emails	No	Participants who are not payers or splitters do not receive email.
Archive to Google Drive	No	If Yes, trip, including photos, are archived to Google drive. Answer questions to allow archiving. Journ must be open to archive. Archiving occurs between 2 - 5 am local time.
Display
Fonts	Helevetica	Select fonts to use for header, row, label, currency, footer and quick guide.
Place Totals on Headers	Yes	Displays total expense for the day on the day header.
Show Person Usage Icons	Yes	Displays icons for persons that split and payed.
Show Payment Type	Yes	Identifies mode of payment - credit card, cash, check, gift. On iPhone, touch More to view.
Show Time Zones		Displays time zone beneath calendar. On iPhone, touch More to view.
Present Item Types by Usage	Yes	If yes, when adding an item, item types will be presented in an order that reflects previous usage. For example, if most expenses are of the type Dining Out, that type would be the first option to select in the type selection.
Order View Sections	Reverse	Select Forward or Reverse. This setting controls the day ordering of the main item list. Reverse will show the current day first and oldest day last. Forward will show the oldest day first and the current day at the end of the list.
Number the Sections	No	If yes, the sections (day, week, month, quarter, year) to be numbered. On a trip, the days will be numbered. The numbering may be helpful when comparing to other itineraries.
Section Items By	Day	Select from day, week, month, quarter or year.
Financial Emails
To CC, BCC		Establish the To (up to 3), CC (up to 2) and BCC (up to 2) for trip social emails.
Subject		Enter the subject for email.
Include Csv and Text Files	Yes	If Yes, expense files will be included.
Include Html Files	Yes	If Yes, an HTML representation of the email body and inline photos will be attached to email.
Include Location Info	Yes	If Yes, includes a places file which maps the location of every item in the trip. Also includes a KML file which depicts the path of the trip.
Include Photos	No	If Yes, includes a places file which maps the location of every item in the trip. Also includes a KML file which depicts the path of the trip.
Sharing and Archiving
Social Emails
To, CC,BCC		Establish the To (up to 3), CC (up to 2) and BCC (up to 2) for trip social emails.
Use the Following BCC List	Off	Touch to open keyboard. Can enter BCC emails via keyboard. Keyboard will stay open. Scroll to next field. Alternatively, can create distribution from email address book, select all copy. Long touch on the Journ setting BCC llist, touch paste. Slide to green to use, slide to white to turn off.
Subject		Enter subject, such as trip name.
Use Google Drive Photos	No	If Yes, photos are archived to Google drive. This allows photos to be inserted in line in emails versus as attachments.
Inline Photo Size	400 pixels	Size of photos in emails.
Photos	2 stars	Select if all photos, 2 star or 1 and 2 star photos will be included in email.
Include Day Track	No	If set to Yes, a link to the track will be included in email.
Included Csv and Text Files	No	Files which contain only expense data (which are generally not included in social emails).
Attach Html File	No	If Yes, an HTML representation of the email body and inline photos will be attached to email.
Attach Location Info	No	If Yes, attaches GPS map information on items in trip.
Attach Photos in Item Emails.	No	If Yes, includes a places file which maps the location of every item in the trip. Also includes a KML file which depicts the path of the trip.
Slide Show
Photos	All	Select if all photos, 2 star or 1 and 2 star photos will be included in email.
Captions	Yes	If Yes to enable photo captions.
Slide Duration (Seconds)	3	Select the time each photo will appear during slide show.
Start Slide Show on Map	No	Slide shows displayed with the trip or track map as background. Photo icons appear at location taken.
Social Postings
Photos	2 star	Select if 2 or 1 and 2 star photos will be included in social posting.
Include Map Links	No	If Yes, trip location links via Google maps will be included.
Social Postings		Set to Yes posting destinations. Can post to Facebook, Twitter, Sina Weibo or Tencent Weibo.
Evernote Archiving		To archive trip journal to Evernote, enter Evernote email account. Select which photos to share - only 2 star or 1 and 2 star photos. Slide Google Docs/Drive for Photos to on (green). In addition, to archive to Evernote, the user must create an Evernote Journ trip folder.The name of the Journ trip is included after an @ at the end of the folder name.
Web Albums		Options to share journal with Picasa and Flickr. To share with Picasa, Picasa album name must be included in album name field. To share with Flickr, Album Name is optional. Can share both congruently. Option to select which photos will be shared - 2 star or 1 and 2 star.
Location Services
Display Units	English	Choose English or metric.
Optimize Power When Tracking	No	If Yes, the device to automatically power down the GPS when you haven't moved for a while (about 15 minutes).
Process Day Tracks	No	If Yes, a new Day Track begins every 24 hours. The Day Tracks feature tracks the iPhone location throughout the day.
Day Track Prefix	No	If Yes, entered text will precede track number and date. Pound sign # must be last character in string with a space before and after, e.g., Europe Trip #
Show Current Location	Yes	If Yes, current location is shown as a blue dot maps.
Track Colors to Show	Rainbow	Select from Rainbow - Track shown in a rainbow colors. Speed - depicts speed variation by color. Red - fastest, green - average, blue - slowest. Distance - Cycles through every color each mile of the track., Repeat of a color indicates travel of 1 mile. Altitude - Displays altitude variations by color. Red - highest, green - middle, blue - lowest.
Speed Alarm Sound	None	Select sound to be emitted if speed alarm is exceeded. Alarm will sound only if Journ is active.
Speed Alarm Limit	0	If 0, off. Enter MPH above which speed alarm sound would be emitted.
Show Trip Info on Top Bar	Yes	If Yes, the featured attributes of the current or last track interacted with are displayed at top of screen.
Start Slide Shows on Maps	No	If Yes, slide show will be initiated as map based. If No, slide show will consist of photos without map.
Height (inches) for Steps		Enter user's height to increase accurancy of step counting.
Weigth (pounds) for Calories		Enter user's weight to more accurately calcuate calories burned.
Help		Options to access DC Software Arts website, email for support, access the blog, rate the app, turn off or on the Help Popups.