Window to my Digital Soul

No, I didn’t make a mistake in my title. A Whrrl is an online storytelling tool that I recently found via my iPhone. At first, I wasn’t sure why I needed it or how I’d use it, but that has never stopped me from trying anything before.

(Note: I was not compensated in any way for this review. I found Whrrl on my own, started using it and I love it, so I wanted to share. Let me know what you think about Whrrl and be sure to add to my story that I created in this review.)

Whrrl

What is a Whrrl? It is an online story telling tool. You can create stories with pictures and notes along with your exact location, share it with friends and family and share it on Facebook and Twitter. What really excites me about Whrrl is that you can have your friends and family (who also have a Whrrl account) add their pictures and comments to the same story using an iPhone or SMS from any cell phone.

For example, let’s say your family has an annual family picnic where everyone gathers to eat, drink and be merry. We all know that everyone brings their camera and takes lots of pictures and we all promise to share the pictures with each other. A few people may go home and do that, but the majority of the pictures stay with the person who took them, only to be seen maybe in the annual holiday newsletter. But, with Whrrl, one person can create the Whrrl story, add their pictures and comments and then every family member (with a Whrrl account) can add their pictures to that story, write comments about any of the pictures that have been uploaded. Here are my Whrrl stories:

You can see my story from our outing this past Saturday night. There are 10 photos that I took of us at dinner. Below is what you see when you go to the story at the Whrrl site. This shows the location, who was there, the pictures and you can add comments here too. If you click on the “Tell Your Side of the Story,” you can add your pictures and notes to this story. Stories can be seen by only you, your trusted friends (you decide who is trusted and who is just a friend), friends and everyone. You decide who will see the story.

Whrrl also has an iPhone app which, in my opinion, makes this an outstanding tool because you can see what is going on as it’s happening from the viewpoint of many participants. A few weeks ago, EAS Active launched their new Wii Personal Trainer fitness game in New York City. I was able to follow some of the 30 day challengers on their adventures at the launch while it was happening. It was the next best thing to being there. This is a screenshot from Jessica Smith’s story, but you can see that 3 others who were there also added pictures and comments to her story. Click on the picture to go directly to the Whrrl story.

So, let’s give this a Whrrl (pun intended). I am going to create a Whrrl story on my iPhone right now following these steps:

• Be sure you have the Whrrl app (link to app store) installed on your iPhone. Search “whrrl” in the app store from your iPhone.
• Open up Whrrl app
• If you do not have an account, you will need to create one first.

• When you first open up the app, you’ll see two tabs at the very top. The left one says “Say where you are” and the right one has an icon of a camera and a circle with an exclamation mark in it. Click the “Say where you are” button.

• Click inside the “Say where you are” field and add your location. It will try to find locations of places around you, but you can add new ones by clicking the “+” at the top right. For me, I added one called Home and the location is Chantilly, VA. It did find my home address right away, but I didn’t want to post my home address. You may have to scroll down all the way to find the ones you’ve added.

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• In the “Can be Seen by…” field is where you decide who can see the story. If you just want to remember this event for yourself, choose You. Trusted Friends is a for Whrrl friends that you have decided can be ‘trusted.’ Friends is for any Whrrl member that you have listed in your friends (whether they are trusted or not). And The Public is anyone whether they are your friend or not.

• Now let’s add a picture. Click on the tab with the camera icon. Click on photo. Choose between Camera (take picture now) or Photo Library (find a picture you’ve already taken.) I chose camera. I am not taking a picture. Either Use Photo or Retake. It will upload the picture to your Whrrl story and take you back to the photo/post/share tab.

• Now I’d like to add a comment about this story. Click on Post. Type in some comments and click Save. It takes you back to the photo/post/share tab

• If you added your Facebook and Twitter accounts to your Whrrl account you can share this story (or any) with your Facebook and Twitter friends. I will do that right now. If you are a Twitter or Facebook friend of mine, you will be able to see it.

• You can click on the photo/exclamation mark tab to close it. That’s it! Pretty easy and now you can go to my story at Whrrl via the iPhone and add a picture and comment to my story. Be sure to add me as a friend to your account too.
• Go to my story and leave a comment

A few things I’d love to see on Whrrl:

• Ability to add video
• Ability to add to join in a story directly from the web page
• Be able to change the size of the widget for my blog. The current one they have is quite large and doesn’t fit well into my sidebar where I’d like to have it.
• Customizable profile pages.
• Availability on platforms other than iPhone (According to their website, they are working on this)

Whrrl has a few of their own tutorials and a blog with a lot of useful information.

Overall I’m giving this 4 out of 5 stars on my usefulness scale. I think once it is available on other platforms, it will be a 5 out of 5. Currently, Whrrl is still officially in beta, but I have not found anything buggy about it at all. It has been quite reliable and a whole lotta fun!

We are taking a trip to Orlando in 3 weeks and I plan to use Whrrl as a journal of our trip. We are going to be visiting with friends and family while down there and I’m hoping to get them on Whrrl and have them add their pictures. Whenever we travel, I always plan to take notes about our trip so I can refer to them when I go back and create a scrapbook or put the pictures to DVD, but I never remember to do it and it’s usually quite inconvenient. I think Whrrl is my solution to that problem.

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• Whrrl Brings Collective Location-Based Storytelling to Your iPhone (mashable.com)
• Whrrl’s geo-social network comes to the iPhone (news.cnet.com)
• Where 2.0 Preview – Pelago’s Jeff Holden on Creating Stories Out of Your Life (radar.oreilly.com)