Window to my Digital Soul

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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