Well, after some mucking around with licenses and exchanging 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 Sebastian,
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I want to thank you for doing the birding community a big service in performing such reviews as you did here with Birder’s Diary. I am sure that many folks appreciate a 3rd party, independent review of such things. I also want to thank you personally for doing such a professional job. I will certainly post a link to your site from mine for others to view.
Please allow me to note a few potential corrections to the article that you may want to make in order to make it completely accurate for your users. They are minor.
1. You can actually stop Petey, the talking psitticine, from talking at any time. Two ways, right-click on Petey and choose “Be Quite” from the popup menu; and pressing the Scroll Lock (universal talk button for Microsoft) and saying “Be Quiet”. He stops immediately. Actually, I never use him, but you wouldn’t believe how many users love it. Hence, why I keep him around.
It really is a religious battle for most folks. They either hate him or love him.
2. In Australia there is a complete list of species per Region. A complete list of species is supplied for Australia as a whole, and then the following regions: Australian Capital Territory, New South Wales, Northern Territory, Queensland, South Australia, Tasmania, Victoria, Western Australia and Australasia Islands.
3. You mention the inability to correct errors in a SmartSearch field by using the Backspace key and of having to use the Reset button on the Sightings Entry window. I assure you that you can do this quite effectively with the Backspace key. For help on the many versatile features of the SmartSearch fields (really essential), while a SmartSearch field has focus (blinking cursor in it) press “Alt+F1″. You will get a popup dialog explaining use and features of this very versatile search and entry mechanism. For example, the DELETE key clears the field at any time – no need to use the RESET button. And Backspace will delete backwards. But without this and the other knowledge from this help window, a user can quickly get confused at the proper functioning of SmartSearch fields.
4. I love your concepts on missing features (e.g. more links to updated ornithological sites and a search feature for Wikipedia)! Expect that in the next release.
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Thank you!
Jeff J Jones
Jeff@BirdersDiary.comhttp://www.BirdersDiary.com
Naturally, I investigated all these corrections and comments and found as follows:
1. It is true that there are numerous options for disabling ‘Petey’ the talking parrot. I did mention this in the review, but where I got it wrong is that it is in fact possible to quiet him when he is in the middle of one of his annoying rambles. Jeff outlines the methods above.
2. Yes, you can generate a checklist for the different states of Australia. Apparently my problem was caused by my running an older version of the database. Just the same, this is not an incredibly useful list. The Australian state with the most species for example, Queensland, is ten percent larger than Alaska. You can imagine how much larger the species list especially considering it is home to the world heritage listed wet tropics region. The list is literally hundreds and hundreds of species long. This is hardly the fault of Birder’s Diary though, as the state list a step further than any other program I have seen.
3. I tested Jeff’s suggestions relating to SmartSearch fields with mixed results. You can use backspace to clear a field, you just can’t hold it. You have to press and release the backspace key otherwise it locks up. In any case, the ability to use delete key to clear it one hit covers this problem. Using (Alt+F1) to get help using the field just flat out didn’t work. I still definitely like the function of the Bird Journal fields much better. Again though, the Bird Journal fields do not allow search by scientific name (up to version 1.4).
All in all, few major corrections. I have to say, even with my nincompoopery at times, Jeff was incredibly helpful and supportive throughout the review process. He never seemed frustrated or irritated no matter how much I bothered him.
The best designed software in the world is nothing without adequate support. Ever had a problem with a Google product?
