The Cozi Family Journal - A fun way to keep in touch with family and friends

I wanted to share a really neat FREE service that I found recently.  It is called Cozi.  You can sign up for an account for free.  Cozi has several different features:  a family journal, calendar, to do lists, grocery lists, etc.  But the one feature I want to talk about today is the family journal.  The calender feature looks neat too, but the journal is really what I am interested in using.

I have a lot of family that live a long ways away and we don't get to see them very often.  In the past I have tried to send out a newsletter in the mail with some pictures and updates on how we are all doing.  But this past year I did not do a very good of getting that done.  Well, now with the Cozi family journal I have an easier way to keep in touch with my family!

In the family journal you can type in entries, including a picture and text, just as you would in a journal.  Each journal entry is kept in date order.  You can share individual journal entries by email or post to your facebook account.  But the one feature that I am going to use is just totally awesome!  You can set up your family journal to email out a newsletter to your family and friends at the beginning of each month!  Yes!  I went in and entered the email addresses of my family that I wanted the journal to go to.  The first newsletter will go out November 1, and it will include all the journal entries for the previous month as well as the link to your family journal webpage (yes, Cozi also posts your journal to your very own webpage.  You can make it public or private too.)  So the people you send the newsletter out to can either view all the pictures and entries in the email, or go to your webpage to view them all.

There is also an option where you can download a Cozi screensaver that does a slideshow of all your pictures in your My Pictures folder.  This download also includes the Cozi Express desktop that puts an icon on your desktop that you can double-click and open up your journal in its own window.  I open this window up and keep it minimized on my computer.  That way when I want to do a quick journal entry it is already ready to go!

I can't even begin to tell you how excited I am about this service!  I can post entries to the journal each day if I want, jotting down memories and things I don't want to forget...including pictures I want to share with family and friends.  I don't have to worry about forgetting something later on when I would have been preparing a newsletter to mail out.  I simply enter things each day if I want, knowing that at the beginning of each month an email will automatically be sent out to my family.  Isn't that great?  I love it!

If this sounds interesting to you, click here to go to Cozi's home page where you can sign up for your own free account.