Picle 1.0.4 is in the App Store

Picle is an App (currently only for iPhone) that we launched at year's South by South West Interactive. Picle adds sound to iPhone photography, allowing you to capture a little audio clip when you take a photo. This photo-plus-sound clip is called a 'Picle', and the app makes it quick and simple to lace individual Picles together into 'Stories'.

The latest update is packed with new sharing features - yes, you can share it directly into Tumblr, embed it straight into your Facebook stream (as well as uploading it directly to YouTube or to PicleApp.com - the website we've built for people to publish Picles and Stories to). 

1 - @siobhanwatts and her 'Instant Morning'. This gives a lovely insight into a morning routine, a brief glimpse into someone else's world. 

2 - @nguyenduong  Story of his time in Kauai, this Story gives me wanderlust.  It feels like watching one of the old photo carousel wheels of someone's holiday, but without their narration. Instead you have the much richer ambient audio of ice clinking, birds squawking and the waves crashing.

3 - Mandarin 940's 'Pigs and Pandas' is a lovely example of storytelling. Seeing and hearing someone from another culture use Picle to create a narrative around these play characters is a real validation of Alex's original thought that sound could enhance imagery.  

4 - And our very own @v_bee making her home made Lemon Curd. There have been quite a few examples of people documenting making meals and other goodies and this is one of the best. This was stuff was ridiculously tasty and I love how we get to see the making process behind it.

As readers of this blog will know (we've written about it here), we are developing Picle in a lean way, so we launched as a Minimal Viable Product and we have been building new features for each release based on user feedback, interviews and testing. For example when we first launched we had no social features built into the app and with this release we have made it possible to post Stories as a video to Facebook & Tumblr as well as Twitter and YouTube (a feature from the previous release). 

We have made some changes to the user interface as well. If you are a first time downloader there is an introductory few slides explaining what Picle is and how to use it. 

 

We have also added a swipe feature to stories meaning you don't have to go into the story if you want to delete, rename or share it. The two pictures on the left shows the app in a pre and post swipe state. We have also repositioned the share button so it is more prominent in the story screen. You can see it in the picture on the right in the top right hand corner.  

 

 

 

 

To share a Story tap on the share icon and you will be given the sharing options. If you want to share as a video to Facebook, YouTube or Tumblr tap on the 'Share as Video' option. This will bring up those options, you then need to configure and then you can share.  You can then see how the uploading process is going and Picle will let you know once your story has been posted. 

 

 

 

This will be the last version of  Picle 1.0 as we have racked up a bit of technical debt so we won't be releasing an update for a little while as we redevelop. We will be going over the feedback, stats and interviews as well as testing out some new ideas. I'll be blogging about those insights and what we have learned pretty soon. As always it would be great to get your feedback and opinions once we have shared these insights and ideas.