Mini-Review: Penzu
If you take an old bottle of Italian dressing and throw in 3 oz. of end-user creativity, 2 oz. oil, and some ajax, RSS, and clean yet shiny wet graphics, you’re sure to come up with a killer Web 2.0 recipe every time.
Penzu is a new Read/Write, Web 2.0 tool (we’ve discussed the differences, before) that presents to you a lined piece of white notebook paper (sans holes) to… write on.
My colleauge Bea Cantor introduced me to this tool, telling me: “It’s about your own personal journal, instead of a blog…”
To me, Penzu seems both ahead, and behind the times, if that’s possible. Sure, it’s still in Beta, and they’ll likely still be adding features. But as it stands now, this is what you can do:
- Create different “dividers” or entries in your paper notebook.
- Write in what appears to be Arial on a sheet of virtual-lined paper in a web browser
- Save your writings
- Insert photos
- Share your writings with others
So, it’s like Writely/Google Docs, except you get lined paper, no spell check, and no real editing tools (copy, paste, highlight, underline, etc.). Oh, and they left-out the RSS.
It’s ahead of its time because to me it feels like a great mini-application if we all lived in a world that celebrated a Web-only operating system. Behind, because, it provides limited functionality when compared to other, more mature tools.
And the reason I’m writing this is because it advertises itself as a tool where you can pour-in your deepest thoughts, emotional state of mind, your inner secrets and personal reflections.
I wouldn’t recommend that anyone pour-in their deepest (wholesome or not) thoughts into a website owned and controlled by someone else. Instead, I’d recommend a password-protected personal organizer (a Yojimbo style application), or get yourself a Molkesine notebook.
I mean, I returned to their website, with my open Penzu entry, and in the sidebar, it says: If you are not John, please click here.. Yeah… Whoops, someone forgot to hit “log out.”
We’ll see how this one develops, but I’d caution any students out there who might feel this is a real safe environment for conducting mind-dumps.
June 4th, 2008 at 8:09 am
I thought it was cute to add the lined paper, but I didn’t see any real value to it. If I want my deepest thoughts somewhere, I want them where I control them, somewhere local, inside my home, probably. But, you were talking about the guy who wants unlined notebooks, and that reminded me of Penzu. Who needs lines when typing, anyway?
June 5th, 2008 at 10:14 am
Hi John (and Bea).
Thank you for covering our site, Penzu.com. We have been getting some great press lately from people who really love the service.
As you mentioned, we are in beta, so we are working hard on lots of features and fixes. We are accepting as much feedback as possible so that we can tweak the service and make it better.
I wanted to respond to your above post by saying: all this criticism, and no suggestions? We are 2 weeks old, so we are relying on people to give us some direction. We know what we are missing, it’s just a matter of prioritization.
So please, if you could, let us know how we can make Penzu better. And to your point about not keeping your thoughts on the web, do you keep your email in a moleskin? And are you not worried that someone will find your thoughts in your house while you aren’t there? Penzu allows you to lock entries with a second password if you are worried someone might get into your account.
Thank you again for taking the time to write this post and we hope to hear from you.
Cheers,
Alexander
June 5th, 2008 at 4:51 pm
Alexander,
Thanks for writing and helping to promote your new Web 2.0 tool.
I’m glad you’re getting some positive press. Whether or not people love your service is inconsequential to what I wrote about; I’m looking at your product through the lens of an educator. While someone like me might just love your service, it doesn’t mean it would work well in a school environment. And that’s my bias here on JohnHendron.net, to review services of interest to educators.
I realize you are a new service and getting feedback from new users is likely a great way to get the input to gain users in the long run, by adding functionality folks want.
But I also know that in a Web 2.0 world, you have to hit a homer on the first run to build community. My suggestion would be to differentiate yourself from other free, online services. I am not sure I see much differentiation save for a lack of “features.”
Frankly, I don’t know how to make Penzu better. I am not sure it fits into a paradigm of a 21st century classroom that’s using read/write tools. You’re likely focused on a mass audience; likely features I’d like to see are focused on a very small market, in comparison.
To answer your questions:
No, I do not keep my e-mail in my moleskine notebook. Also, my handwriting is very messy, I am not sure how many folks could actually read my notebook.
I am not worried that someone will find my thoughts in my house. I write 99% of things on the computer and they’re quite secure. I know because I control the encryption, the disk physical location, and the ssh keys used to move things between machines.
My concern with security isn’t so much that people might hack into my Penzu account; it’s that I’m giving Penzu my intellectual property that I deem private. My private thoughts, when put down, are as important to me as my social security number, my bank account #s, and things like that.
I hope that Penzu is successful and folks find it a tool that meets their needs. But kids who are 13 or 15 years who stumble upon your site may feel it’s a great place to dump their ideas, opinions, and thoughts. But these folks also give up passwords up quite easily sometimes. So I think that was my point here: this might be great for some uses, but just because you say it’s secure doesn’t mean it is. We as adults understand that. Kids sometimes don’t… it’s only secure as their password to outsiders and there’s nothing to say the purveyors of Penzu don’t have access to that same content.