Portable? Yes! This particular offering (the one you can download at giveaway) is NOT a portable edition. However, if you want portable you can go on the Programming Sunrise website as given at the top of the Giveaway page, download the portable medical edition as I did and the giveaway code WILL work. Very generous, thank you Programming Sunrise and Giveawayoftheday.

Overall this program is very nice as a free portable and as a free portable that doesn't clog the registry it seems very worth while to give it a go for awhile. It has lots of options. On the downside you can get lost in the options. The options aren't as adjustable as maybe I would like.

For example: There is a calendar on the suite. What I do with my portable thunderbird (with lightening installed) is I minimize to the calendar, use the Aquasnap portable shake to make it on top and transparent. Hence, I have a little calendar that is transparant and always on top that I can double-click to maximize. I tried that with Smart Diary Suite and it worked fine except the toolbar is like 3 lines and I couldn't figure out an easy way to make the toolbar smaller.

Another example is the emoticons. There is like the diary, schedule, task, notes. In the subset of diary there are life factors--body, mind, matter. In the mind subset there is mood, dream, motivation, agreeableness, agitation. In the mood category you find your emoticons. These are--excellent, very good, good, nuetral, not good, sad, depressed. I find I want more emoticons so I right click on the emoticons--and right clicking at least doesn't give me more options.

Likewise, when I go to matter--I want the program to AUTOMATICALLY put in my local weather, but there doesn't seem to be a way to automate that (matter has temperature, humidity, weather). Plus I'd like it to track my sleep patterns/mood verses time of day . . . but I haven't figured out if it will do that yet.

If you like to track stuff this program might be very nice indeed as it will track stuff and even show simple graphs. I'm going to keep the portable version and give it a fair go, try to find out if there's non-intuitive ways to tweak it (though I can already tell Firefox browser this is not). Still it seems worth keeping to try out over a period of time. I've tried some other alternatives that didn't seem as good/had other weaknesses.

Other free diary alternatives: Rednotebook portable, AM Notebook.
Other free calendar alternative: Thunderbird (or Thunderbird portable) (with lightening calendar installed).

c1oudrs  –  13 years ago  –  Vond je deze reactie nuttig? ja | nee (+146)

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While it's true that I don't use this type of software, I like Smart Diary Suite and I can see a number of uses for the information it tracks. While you could use separate applications, the integration is nice. It's not the greatest PIM, but it has useful features like notes, attachments, decent recurrence options, voice notes, some import/export abilities, etc. The installation mostly registered a bunch of stuff related to the sound recorder (doesn't damage your codecs), but none of it is available, just record/stop, you'll have to set the device and levels with Windows recording devices. Most of the other registry entries it adds are for window and panel positions. I ran into coding and stability issues when it thought that windows which I had closed were still open.

Some things which I mentioned last time haven't been fixed, like errors in the units converter and lack of a complete ingredient database (apparently, you have to install sample entries to get anything at all). You can add anything manually, but you have to look up everything yourself. Integration with Wolfram Alpha for conversions and ingredients would be nice, and as someone mentioned, it could also download the weather data. There are three ways to integrate with Wolfram Alpha--loosely by launching an external browser (can be your default), internally opening a browser window (that will be IE, tough), or using the Wolfram Alpha API (commercial use requires paid licensing, plus the data may come back graphically requiring manual copying, I haven't looked at the API options).

Fubar  –  13 years ago  –  Vond je deze reactie nuttig? ja | nee (+37)

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#4: "If you have enough time available to keep a comprehensive diary like this one, you probably do not have much to record in it :)"

I think in practice it's actually the reverse... the more you do, the more you have to remember & keep track of, & the more you [have to] write stuff down so you don't forget. :-) And measuring & tracking data, your results & what led to them, is also the only way to spot trends, letting you stop the bad ones early, repeat & build on success.

At the risk of sounding like some kind of coach [Please forgive], we're usually pretty bad at writing/taking notes, so we tend to skip it when very often we really shouldn't. Who hasn't forgotten, or had someone else forget something at the grocery store because they didn't make or bring a list? As a result it takes more time, walking every isle trying to remember or making a 2nd trip. Yet many people are repeat *offenders* :-) -- they hate writing stuff down...

Going beyond something simple like a grocery list, how many games don't track your high score, or the level you're on when saving the game? Not too many... it's something that makes a great deal of sense that we've come to expect & even demand. We like it when Amazon tracks our purchases [or they wouldn't tell us about it through their recommendations], & we depend on Google &/or Bing tracking users to give us what we're really after. However when it comes to you & your personal details, you're responsible for entering the data, & that's where most of us fall far short, relying on imperfect memory when we should know better -- maybe it's from being forced to take notes in school, I don't know, but we *really* hate writing stuff down.

The good news is I think that it's a learned hate, something that we can un-learn to our benefit. Many, many diabetics are able to control their diabetes, leading fully normal lives by monitoring/tracking their intake, activity, & results [blood sugar]. Runners can take advantage of electronic sensors to measure more data than anyone thought possible just a few years ago, becoming more motivated & better, perhaps healthier runners at the same time. For decades accurate record keeping [& tracking that data] has been a mainstay for athletes. Who hasn't heard of Weight Watchers -- they've always depended on tracking data.

Computers & today's electronics make record keeping & data tracking better, easier... Nike makes sensors for runners, Bayer makes a meter for checking blood sugar that's a USB stick etc. You can use a spreadsheet, a database, or something like Smart Diary Suite, whatever you personally prefer, whatever works for you. I would imagine that the portable version of today's GOTD might be perfect for some Diabetics, installed to the data storage of that Bayer meter I just mentioned. If there's an effect, tracking the data most often lets you repeat [& maybe even improve on] the good stuff, or stop the bad dead in it's tracks.

mike  –  13 years ago  –  Vond je deze reactie nuttig? ja | nee (+37)

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Really good one, installed perfectly in Win7 64 bit
Good features like Voice Recording , Graph

Bullets are not working in the Diary Entry and no in built templates included

Thanks to GOTD and to the Programmer

Saflin  –  13 years ago  –  Vond je deze reactie nuttig? ja | nee (+27)

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If you have enough time available to keep a comprehensive diary like this one, you probably do not have much to record in it :)

Knut Inge  –  13 years ago  –  Vond je deze reactie nuttig? ja | nee (+23)

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