Falcons are more closely related to parrots than other raptors??
Yes! That is the word on the street here at the ABA Convention and on the birding listservs and blogs. There’s an article about at the Chicago Tribune and Grrl Scientist has a bit more detail here in her blog.
So, what does this mean to you? Your field guide orders are going to change. But aren’t they always changing anyway. I still get confused seeing waterfowl up front instead of loons and grebes.
The other interesting deal going down is that a man attending the convention has scanned in his National Geographic Field Guide and placed it on his iTouch! He said that it took him three weeks and he showed me how he can zoom in on the illustrations and you can easily view the text. He also used the Thayer Software for birding and has all the North American bird calls to go along with it. Now, because it’s proprietary to National Geo, he can’t sell it, but he has offered to mail a disk of the scanned guide to anyone who wants it–for FREE! He doesn’t want money and he just seems to enjoy getting a good guide on an iTouch.
I was going to blog out loud to National Geographic and say: “Yo, dudes, why aren’t you doing this–getting a good field guide onto an iPod, iTouch, or iPhone? You did such a fun job with the Palm Pilot thing.” And when I checked email yesterday, I got this in my Inbox:
Introducing National Geographic Handheld Birds Online
Now all of the power in National Geographic Handheld Birds™ is available Online! Access Handheld Birds™ from any full-featured web browser on a computer or mobile device such as the iPhone. With the new online features Handheld Birds™ is a must-have for any bird enthusiast!
Here are just some of the new Online features:
-Compare species side-by-side
-Search on multiple selections for criteria
-Search with new “family” criteria
-Add notes to checklists and individual species observations
-Manage your checklists and lifelists
-Set date ranges for checklists for a single day or over months
-Order species in checklists by name, taxonomic order, and count
-Download checklists to your desktop or store them online
-Set personal preferences
-Manage up to 100 checklists at a time
For a limited time only, you can get a full 1-year subscription to Handheld Birds Online for only $25. That’s a 50% savings off the regular price!
This now makes it compatible with an iPhone or iTouch when you are online.
Techno Birding is getting interesting folks.
That Nat’l Geo handheld sounds really cool! Thanks for sharing! (I’ve also been checking out the ABA’s website and thinking about joining.)
Even though he isn’t making money off the scanned Nat Geo guide, distributing the disk is still a copyright violation, and if NGS are offering their own electronic version of the guide they might actually care and enforce it. I’m not trying to be mean, I’m just hoping the scanner doesn’t end up in trouble for his well-intentioned offer!
If the NGS product is online, that means an internet connection is necessary to use it. It would only be available through an iPod Touch if there was a wireless access point nearby. An iPhone could get to it from more places, but would still need a viable connection.
IANAL, but I think Andrea is correct about this being a copyright violation. If NGS is selling the equivalent, I believe it’s even more likely to be illegal. Not criticizing anyone, I expect that law will have to change in the near future. But for now, I’d hate for someone to be punished for act of naive goodwill.
shellmo
come to a convention, you’ll never be the same! i still remember my first time in tucson…
andrea and evan,
my point in posting about the Nat’l Geo scanning was not to get anyone in trouble or comment on the right or wrong. My point was that maybe the powers that be when it comes to field guides will realize that there is a market for this and that people want field guides on an iTouch or iPhone.
I don’t think the many scanning them wants to go into business, he sees it has a handy id tool and when people see it, they want it, and he wants to share the fun with them.
I have a feeling that since it took him three weeks to scan that he would probably gladly purchase it if it were available.
To my way of thinking $25.00 subscription to HandHeld Birds is way over priced. I bought the SD card for it for $99.00 so it would be cheaper to buy the SD card than to subscribe to the web site. I would say that they are following the same path that they (NGS) took with the SD card with HandHeld Birds on it–it was originally about $300.00 and that was to my thinking more than it was worth when there are plenty of guides for $25.00 of less available. I am guessing that there will not be a lot of takers(subscribers))