3 ms·

What a great idea. It sits quite well in the spot of giving people with a passing interest in birds, and nature in general, quite a decent amount of information

by smackay 12y ago

What a great idea. It sits quite well in the spot of giving people with a passing interest in birds, and nature in general, quite a decent amount of information. It might even be a gateway app, transforming casual users into full-time birders. What I think might be missing is some form of call to action where people could engage with local groups or NGOs to find out about organized field trips and other events that would better inform people about a range of conservation issues and make them more aware of the world around them. The work that the Cornell Lab of Ornithology is doing is pretty interesting. There are many online databases for recording bird sightings but as far as I know eBird is the only one with a strong focus on data quality and monitored by network of local volunteers that work as curators and moderators. They are also leaders in making the data open through their API which is generating a lot of useful projects and ideas. http://ebird.org/content/ebird/ http://ebird.org/content/ebird/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EBird https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EBird https://confluence.cornell.edu/display/CLOISAPI/eBird+API+1.1 https://confluence.cornell.edu/display/CLOISAPI/eBird+API+1....

gerry_shaw 12y ago
Thanks for the compliment. This is just the 1.0 MVP release. I've got a number of ideas on the roadmap. My intention was to build a birding app for the casual birder. Birds Eye covers the hard core birder market, I wanted something more approachable. eBird is really great. It's amazing that it's been running for 10 years. It's really caught on in North America. I'm hoping with this app we will start to get more data around the world (localization is scheduled for the 1.1 release :)
- smackay 12y ago
  I think there's a decent amount of latent interest in the environment in general and birds in particular since they are probably the most visible. The hard part is getting from somewhat interested to quite interested - that would make a big difference in environment issues - but that's hard to do unless you find out about local birds clubs, etc. which are really targeted at the serious/obsessed birder. Cornell do a reasonable job of engaging people's interest and the data available on eBird should help. eBird adoption is growing here in Portugal - the main advantage is the moderation which is useful in keeping out the, shall we say, less reliable observations. As a result we see a decline in the use of other databases as people move to eBird. I use the eBird API for www.birdinglisboa.com which provides a news service for birders in the Lisbon area.</shameless plug>

by smackay 12y ago

gerry_shaw 12y ago

Thanks for the compliment. This is just the 1.0 MVP release. I've got a number of ideas on the roadmap. My intention was to build a birding app for the casual birder. Birds Eye covers the hard core birder market, I wanted something more approachable. eBird is really great. It's amazing that it's been running for 10 years. It's really caught on in North America. I'm hoping with this app we will start to get more data around the world (localization is scheduled for the 1.1 release :)

smackay 12y ago
I think there's a decent amount of latent interest in the environment in general and birds in particular since they are probably the most visible. The hard part is getting from somewhat interested to quite interested - that would make a big difference in environment issues - but that's hard to do unless you find out about local birds clubs, etc. which are really targeted at the serious/obsessed birder. Cornell do a reasonable job of engaging people's interest and the data available on eBird should help. eBird adoption is growing here in Portugal - the main advantage is the moderation which is useful in keeping out the, shall we say, less reliable observations. As a result we see a decline in the use of other databases as people move to eBird. I use the eBird API for www.birdinglisboa.com which provides a news service for birders in the Lisbon area.</shameless plug>