myDiary Review (DSiWare)

Nnooo has seen a fair amount of success with DSiWare. Originally starting off with Pop+ Solo, the developer really began to make its mark on the DSi with the myLifeCollected series, a set of applications for the DSi that started with myNotebook. Since then, Nnooo has moved onto other applications such as myPostcards and myNotebook: Carbon, Pearl and Tan. Now we have myDiary, and it comes as a worthy addition to the series

myDiary is, as you may have guessed, a diary application for the DSi. It's rather similar in some aspects to previous apps in the series in that you can write out notes via the touchscreen to log any messages or doodles you wish. However, this time you can use 400 pages at a time, which can be deleted later on, although these are instead assigned to individual days across the calender and only one note can be saved for each day. Like the other games, it's pretty simple and rather intuitive, feeling right at home on the DS.

Just like before, the DSi is held on its side and, in this case, you're also given the option to flip myDiary to suit left and right handed users, by pressing either the DS face buttons or the D-Pad depending on which way it's set at the time. Nnooo has formatted the dates into a calender format with an option to scroll through the months by touchscreen or D-Pad, which makes finding a date to write a note for a particular day pretty simple. The game is definitely set for long-term use if the user wishes, as there are dates available all the way from the year 2000 to 2099. You can also set an alarm to go off for your notes on each day, which is useful to set yourself reminders. Naturally, this only works if you have myDiary running but it will still go off when the DSi is in sleep mode.

There's a variety of options available for writing your notes. You can write with three different levels of thickness between your virtual pens, with of course the ability to erase what you've written too. You also have the options to use graph, lined or blank paper for notes, which are all available to you from the start. You can also unlock different colour themes and ink to use, although when you change the Ink colour, it changes for every note you've written to said colour.

There's a large variety of colours available that can be obtained in several different ways. For example, you can unlock some colours by the number of times you use the application or how many notes you've written; others are obtained if you own other Nnooo titles on the DSi; and others are unlocked depending on the time of year. This is a good addition and a notable improvement over the myNotebook apps, in which both editions had three separate colours available on the DSiWare store instead of simply being able to switch colours.

Now, it's not uncommon that people with diaries often like to keep them as private as possible, to stop anyone invading their privacy. With this in mind, Nnooo included a feature that will allow you to keep your entries private with an option to lock each page so it can only be accessed through a 4-digit user-defined PIN. If someone tries to guess your PIN or you forget it, after three unsuccessful attempts, It will ask if you'd like to reset your PIN. Doing this however will delete all your locked pages as a measure to prevent people from ever seeing what you wrote, but there is also an option to change your PIN which doesn't involve deleting everything as well. This is quite a useful feature implemented here, and will help protect your private entries from prying eyes.