Picle+Description

The picle app is billed as one to " Preserve the moments that matter. Telling stories with photos and sound clips".

In the app, you assemble individual "picles" a combination of a photo and a 10 second or less audio clip, so each representing a moment. The photos can be taken directly with the camera or uploaded from the photo library. In the settings, you can adjust it so you are prompted to record audio at the time of upload, or to add after the photo is uploaded.

A story is then created by selecting picles from your collection. It publishes the results to the picle web site (an account is required to create and publish the stories). The stories can also be exported as video to YouTube, Facebook, and tumblr.

The app has not been updated since August 2012, and suffers from interface inconsistencies -- e.g. in ios7 you are not able to edit the name of the story (it presents a dialog box that is lacking a field to enter the title in) nor can you change the name of the story on the web site. The final product is not much different from what can be done more easily by assembling media into a video. I also experienced several crashes in trying to use the tool.

The premise of recording audio in the moment that are connected to photos is appealing, and would be suitable of stories happening or creating in the moment. The ability to create different stories from a collection of media might lend itself to activities of creating different stories from the same media.

The lack of updates and interface quirks (or any recent entries in the developers blog) would make me concerned about using the app.

1389320007