Whatbird.com

Today, September 3. 2009, at 5 PM PST, some fine reviewer at Apple, cleaned off their desk and finally released all the remaining versions of iBird Explorer 1.7. This includes Pro, Plus, West, North, South, Canada, Backyard and iBird 15 (free). Here are the many new features of 1.7

■ Notes
By far, the most requested new feature by iBird users! Notes lets you record bird sighting and observation data right alongside bird species in iBird Explorer. Each species page contains a note card, accessed from the Note icon in the menu at the bottom of the species page. Notes includes an automatic time stamp button, for quickly creating a log of sightings, unlimited space for your written observations, and the ability to email your recorded information, giving you a secure backup in case your iPhone or iPod is lost or damaged.

■ Family Accounts
We have added hundreds of pages of new content to iBird Explorer, with details on 82 species families. This information includes taxonomic order and physical, behavioral, visual, habitat, migration, conservation and geographic location details specific to each bird family.

■ Spanish Language Support
In addition to English and French language bird names, you can opt to display bird names in Spanish from the iBird Settings menu.

■ Additional Hawaiian Species
For iBird West, Plus and Pro users, we have extended our coverage of Hawaiian island birds with six new species.

■ Other New Features
Other new iBird Explorer features include: new embedded help screens, glossary information for all search parameters, 50 new photos from professional nature photographers, and improved accuracy for Flickr searches.

We hope you enjoy these new features. If you have feedback, we would love to hear from you. Visit us on the web at www.ibird.com or join the conversation on Twitter, @ibirdexplorer, and on our Facebook fan page (search for iBird).

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iBird Explorer: Finally a field guide as light as a feather. See it at http://www.ibird.com

Looks like I'm the first to say "THANKS!". The new features are awesome, especially the note taking one. Great job! And the Hawaiian updates are just in time for my trip in two weeks :)

Dave

Mitch,

I have been using iBird Explorer Plus for many months now and have been looking forward to eventually upgrading to iBird Explorer Pro. 

Yesterday I downloaded version 1.7 of iBird Explorer Plus and installed it on my iPod Touch and it seems to work fine. 

However, so far I have not been able to find any means to upgrade to iBird Explorer Pro in the new software or in the iTunes store for your products. 

You had indicated previously that this new version of iBird Explorer Plus would include a method for accomplishing this upgrade to iBird Explorer Pro. 

Did this get upgrade process get left out of the new version or is there some other way to accomplish the upgrade that you promised?

Jim Ferris 

davemyb:

Looks like I'm the first to say "THANKS!". The new features are awesome, especially the note taking one. Great job! And the Hawaiian updates are just in time for my trip in two weeks :)

Dave

 

You are the first here in the forum and I am grateful that you took the time to acknowledge the work we did. I hope you enjoy the Hawaii species on your vacation. 

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Mitch Waite

jferris33:

Mitch,

I have been using iBird Explorer Plus for many months now and have been looking forward to eventually upgrading to iBird Explorer Pro. 

Yesterday I downloaded version 1.7 of iBird Explorer Plus and installed it on my iPod Touch and it seems to work fine. 

However, so far I have not been able to find any means to upgrade to iBird Explorer Pro in the new software or in the iTunes store for your products. 

You had indicated previously that this new version of iBird Explorer Plus would include a method for accomplishing this upgrade to iBird Explorer Pro. 

Did this get upgrade process get left out of the new version or is there some other way to accomplish the upgrade that you promised?

Jim Ferris 

Jim: We are working on the upgrade system, as I said on our Facebook iBird fan page:

For those of you waiting for the upgrade feature we are working on it. Its unfortunate that as a developer you can't always hit the dates you strive for. Its unnerving when people post "you promised in the forum...." and hold your feet to the fire like you are a bad person when you dont hit the schedule. The normal reaction when this happens is to shut down and not keep everyone informed, which most large corporatoins do, but which I won't do. However I am reluctant to give dates because of the unreliability of the review process (it took Apple 5 weeks!) adn the fact that when I estimate a delivery date poeple call it a "promise". However I can say this much...we will first implement it in Plus and then once we are sure there are no glitches we will add it too all the apps except the free version (you can't have an inapp purchase on a free app). I hope this helps.

 

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Mitch Waite

Thanks for the fantastic update. The notes function is very nice, but the Family pages are the real winner for me. It's funny, when I read about the notes feature in the update details, I thought to my self "cool, I can manually enter some taxonomic and conservation info in there". You can imagine my delight when I read on, and found out about the families feature. I would still love more on each species, but this will make waiting for upgrade capability much easier. By the way, I completely understand that the upgrade issue is a tricky one, and I am happy to wait it out and enjoy iBird Northeast for a while. Just keep up the great work.

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~Anders

Anders:

Thanks for the fantastic update. The notes function is very nice, but the Family pages are the real winner for me. It's funny, when I read about the notes feature in the update details, I thought to my self "cool, I can manually enter some taxonomic and conservation info in there". You can imagine my delight when I read on, and found out about the families feature. I would still love more on each species, but this will make waiting for upgrade capability much easier. By the way, I completely understand that the upgrade issue is a tricky one, and I am happy to wait it out and enjoy iBird Northeast for a while. Just keep up the great work.

Gosh that is nice to hear that you like the Family Account pages. We wondered when slaving over them if it was going to be worth the effort and all we had to go on was the fact that I know as a learner there are big holes in books that teach birding about the families.

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iBird Explorer: Finally a field guide as light as a feather. See it at http://www.ibird.com

I'm glad you guys decided to put in the effort. It's a very useful feature. One thing I think would be great for a future update would be if you could tap on the family name in that page and bring up the list of birds in that family from the "browse" tab. Just something to consider. Thanks again.

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~Anders

Mitch,

Sorry if I came across wrong.  I had the impression from some of your previous notes in the forum that you were going to offer the upgrade feature in the next release (1.7) of iBird Plus and that was why I posted my note as I did.  I understand your reluctance to commit to a delivery date, especially when you have to contend with Apple's capricious approval process.

I have a suggestion that might help to avoid this kind of misunderstanding - post a note right on the home screen of the iBird web site stating the status so that your customers can easily determine what is happening with your efforts to implement the upgrade as well as updates to your products in general.  Not everyone uses Facebook (including myself) but I'll bet that there are lots of your customers like me that have spent some time searching for info on the status of your upgrade offer from Plus to Pro.  This might cut down on some of the negative reviews you have been getting about the upgrade (or lack thereof).

Thanks for your explanation and a great product for bird watchers.  Keep up the good work.

Jim