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Tag Archive: storytelling

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

Written on August 21, 2009 by Michele in Geek Stuff, Social Media

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.

Michele McGraw's Monday Morning at Running - Whrrl

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!

Whrrl: the value of “I was there!” (talkitup.typepad.com)
Turn your status updates into a story (thaibrother.com)

Tags: iPhone, iPhone app, Scrapbooking, storytelling, whrrl

Give Your Life a whrrl Again v2.1

Written on June 19, 2009 by Michele in Everything Else, Reviews, Scrapbooking

3 Comments - Leave a comment!

Today, whrrl introduced v2.1 beta for the iPhone 3.0. There were some really big and exciting changes so I’m updating this post with new screen shots and my thoughts on the new features. I will be using whrrl extensively next week for our trip to Orlando so I will post a more thorough review of the new version when I get back. You can watch whrrl’s story about their new features for a complete list, but here are a few of my favorite:

Add people to your story from Facebook, Twitter, text message, whrrl friends, iPhone address book or email even if they do not have an iPhone. It is much easier to do in this new version.
If you are at a location, you can check to see if another whrrl story has been created at this location. You can read about past visits and maybe even find a new friend with the same interests.
Edit your story right from the iPhone. This is a big help because I’m always messing up. [superemotions file="icon_biggrin.gif" title="Big Grin"]
Edit or add captions to your photos right on the iPhone.
Create a title for your story. Your title does not always have to be “So and So at Home,” you can edit the title right on the iPhone.
Delete the entire story from your iPhone. For those times when you think twice about whether you should post the pictures or story you just uploaded.

Shameless plug – I have entered my story to the “Get Me to BlogHer” contest. The contest is sponsored by whrrl and SocialLuxe Lounge and the prize is a trip to BlogHer in July. Please leave a comment, share and click on “I Like It.”

Thank you!

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.

2009-06-01_1028whrrl

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:

Read the full article »

Tags: blogher, Facebook, iPhone, Scrapbooking, storytelling, Travel, twitter, whrrl

Give Your Life a Whrrl

Written on June 1, 2009 by Michele in Geek Stuff, Michele, Reviews, Scrapbooking

3 Comments - Leave a comment!

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.

2009-06-01_1028whrrl

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.

2009-06-01_1056whrrl

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.

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.