Comments on: Birder’s Diary 3.6 Review

By: Alan Cairns

Alan Cairns — Tue, 20 Apr 2010 07:21:29 +0000

I am puzzled about your comments on the date format in Birder’s Diary and Bird Journal. I have both programmes, and my dates are entered Canadian fashion (25/12/2009), not American (12/25/2009). I didn’t have to set up anything to get this – I guess the programmes just adopt the Windows System settings. I don’t know what the Australian formats are, but if you set them up as system settings you should be OK.

And BD isn’t really all that ugly – you should see Avisys, which still
has problems with the mouse wheel and long file names. BJ is easily the best looking, and I think many of its shortcomings will be remedied in V. 2.

If you’re a report man, you should have a look at Wings. It has a very flexible (albeit opaque) report editor, and its ability to slice and dice data is unrivaled. Nobody ever accused it of being user friendly, though. Its database origins are very apparent.

Thanks for the reviews, I enjoyed them.

Alan

By: Sebastian

Sebastian — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 05:15:12 +0000

No problem Paul. I think Birder’s Diary is certainly a great option.

I actually didn’t mean either! There are taxonomies available for all currently identified Australian species, but there is no commercial wildlife listing program, including Jones Technologies’ Birder’s Diary, that offer them. There was a program once available called “Birdinfo” developed by Simon Bennett from Canberra that offered other animals, but unfortunately development of this software has ceased and it is currently unavailable. If you are a patient man, it is possible to generate your own taxonomic lists through Birder’s Diary. I believe if you make lists you create publicly available through Jones Technologies, you will even be compensated for your efforts.
Sebastian´s last blog ..Bye, bye waders! Cairns will miss you!

By: Paul York

Paul York — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 05:04:23 +0000

Thanks for the review Sebastian. I have almost decided to buy Birder’s Diary.

I did have a question though. When you said “as there is currently no active program that offers anything other than birds”, were you saying that no Australian taxonomies actually exist for such things as butterflies, mammals, fish etc? Or did you just mean that Jones Technologies had not so far provided any with the software package?

Cheers
Paul

By: Birder's Diary 3.6 Review - Developer Repons | NorthQLDBirder

Birder's Diary 3.6 Review - Developer Repons | NorthQLDBirder — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 05:44:36 +0000

[...] a few quick emails with Jeff, I managed to check all the responses that he provided to my Birder’s Diary review. Here is his response with only a few minor bits removed: Hello [...]

By: Sebastian

Sebastian — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 11:50:34 +0000

It seems a fair few people are using Wildlife Recorder, I will have to give it a look.

I’m glad you are all finding this review useful!