9 Helpful Ways to use Whrrl in Addition to Storytelling (+ Whrrl 2.2)

Have you used Whrrl yet? @Scobleizer describes Whrrl as “the next twitter.”

I have been using Whrrl for a few months now and I’ve fallen in love with it. It helps me pull all of my favorite activ­i­ties into one nice neat pack­age — dig­i­tal scrap­book­ing, blog­ging, gad­gets, iPhone, friends, pic­ture tak­ing and most impor­tantly, sto­ry­telling. I have had this post in the works for a few weeks now and I thought today was the per­fect day to fin­ish and post it since Whrrl just released ver­sion 2.2 for the iPhone. (Which I am in love with, espe­cially the con­tin­u­ous time­line of your stories.”)

Whrrl 2.2 iPhone App

I started using Whrrl to keep track of all the places and pic­ture I take along the way. It was a great way to jot down notes about activ­i­ties and the pic­tures that went along with that. Later, when I would go to scrap­book the pic­tures, I could go back to the Whrrl story and all my notes are in one place. Whrrl has become much more than a sto­ry­telling app for me. I keep a lot of very impor­tant infor­ma­tion in my Whrrl. Many of them are set to pri­vate so that only I can see the story which makes it the per­fect tool for me.

1. Track­ing my work­outs. I’ve started train­ing for a 5k in Octo­ber. I have the Nike+ app on my iPhone 3GS so every time I run, I set the Whrrl place to “Run­ning” and I take a pic­ture of my legs (just for fun) and a screen print of the final stats of my run. Every time I go to run again and set the place, my pre­vi­ous runs are eas­ily acces­si­ble and I can see what my stats were from my last run.

My Run­ning Whrrl Story

2. Birthday/Christmas/Any Occa­sion present list. When­ever we are at Tar­get, my kids always point out all the toys they want and I think I’m going to remem­ber. When I get to Tar­get to shop for their birth­day, I can’t remem­ber any­thing they showed me. This sum­mer, I cre­ated a pri­vate Whrrl story titled, Megan’s Birth­day List and the place was Tar­get and I took pic­tures of all of the things she showed me. When I went back to Tar­get to shop, I set my place as Tar­get and the list showed up in my pre­vi­ous sto­ries from that loca­tion. And the pic­tures were a huge help.

3. Remem­ber­ing where that per­fect shoe/dress is located. You are shop­ping at the mall for the per­fect lit­tle black dress. Sounds easy, right? Wrong! There are thou­sands of styles of the lit­tle black dress and after shop­ping for sev­eral hours they all look the same and you can’t remem­ber which ones you saw when you first got there. That is where Whrrl can help. Cre­ate a story with the mall as your loca­tion. For each dress that you find and you really like, take a pic­ture of the dress (and price tag) and in the cap­tion, write down the store and a quick note of the loca­tion in the store. At the end of your shop­ping trip, you have a slideshow of all the per­fect lit­tle black dresses and you can think about which one is really per­fect for you and you have a note of where it is located.

4. Help to locate your car in a park­ing lot. When we went to Orlando in June, I took my 4 kids with me and we met my hus­band who was already there for busi­ness. He is really good about remem­ber where the car is. I am not! So I took a pic­ture of the aisle with the loca­tion let­ter and floor and I took a pic­ture of where the car is. I used Dulles Park­ing Garage as the loca­tion. When we returned, I changed my loca­tion to Dulles Park­ing Garage and my last story was right there with the loca­tion of my car. Jason was even impressed that we didn’t have to search the garage for the car. I also added a note of where I put my ticket so I could eas­ily find it too.

5. Shop­ping list of items you always buy at a par­tic­u­lar store. When­ever I go to Tar­get for my monthly neces­si­ties shop­ping, I buy a lot of the same items. You can take pic­tures of all the items (add your part­ner to the story), and add a place such as “Tar­get — Month” and each month when you go shop­ping, you pull up the story and you have a list with pic­tures. Your sig­nif­i­cant other can do the shop­ping for you also.

6. Recipes. I’ve added “Kitchen” as a loca­tion for my Whrrl sto­ries. When I make some­thing that I’d like to remem­ber or that I’d like my hus­band to be able to make too, I make a step by step story of the recipe with pic­tures and notes. It also is good when you can’t remem­ber what was in that one recipe and you are at the gro­cery store. Just search on kitchen and pull it up.

7. Leave a lit­tle note for some­one. I haven’t tried this yet, but I think it would be fun. Imag­ine you have a place you like to hang out with a fel­low Whrrl friend. Add the place to Whrrl and the next time they are there, they will see the story come up with your note if they cre­ate a Whrrl story at the same loca­tion. You need to be sure they are a Whrrl mem­ber and they use it often. Get them addicted too!

8. Restau­rant reviews. When­ever we go to a restau­rant now, I like to add pic­tures of what we all ate and make notes of whether it was good or not. I have taken pic­tures of the item on the menu also. The next time I go to that same restau­rant I can check and see whether the food was good and what we all ate.

9. Keep track of your weight loss. Add a place titled “Scale” and take a pic­ture of your weight dur­ing your weekly/monthly/daily weigh-in. You will see the prior weight story. You can make this a pri­vate story so no one but you will see it.

There you have it. Nine more ways to use Whrrl. Whrrl is still the best tool for storytelling.

Tell me how you Whrrl!

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Tagged as: 3gs, Digital, digital scrapbooking, Gadget, iPhone, iPhone app, jot down, neat package, perfect day, picture taking, Scrapbooking, storytelling, target, training for a 5k, twitter, whrrl