Cloudy Days and Connected Nights

It is always a pleasure when an app I have come to rely on continues to get better. I use iGmail (See iGmail, GMail finally done right on the iPhone) almost more than any single other app on my iPhone, maybe more than Twittelator and SimplyTweet, certainly more than Facebook.

So I immediately downloaded the update. After a false start (I had to delete and do a fresh install to get the app to work*), the new version is, as advertised, considerably faster on my 3G. That is what I notice first and most.

You can now set the shake motion to a variety of actions, instead of check all. There are a few other minor tweaks, and a new in app purchase premium package that adds pinch and zoom and a favorite icon. The premium package is only $.99, and since the base app, without push, is free, it is one more way to support the development of the app. The log out/log in process has been improved for those who have both a Google Apps account and a regular GMail account.

If you are a new user, of course, you will not notice the speed improvement…but for those of us who have used iGmail for a while, it is an impressive effort, and makes the app just that much more usable! Your inbox loads faster. Individual emails display faster. Controls work faster. I especially notice the difference on the Delete button. Very nice!

*(A note on the app store now says that the old preference file from the Settings App is causing the problem, and recommends a delete and reinstall instead of an upgrade.)

The iPhone is hot, hot, hot. Taking over the smartphone portion of inernet traffic, and providing such an explosion of apps as never seen before on any platform.

Birding is hot (notice the difference). Fastest growing outdoor recreational activity by some counts, and certainly an activity that attracts many millions of us, and puts us out in all weathers to enjoy nature. Some reckon it is closer to a religion than it is to a hobby. It has its own born-again-experience, and often produces changes in life-style similar to classical conversion. It has its revival meetings (you can be at a birding festival just about any weekend of the year, and have your pick of several most weekends during peak migration seasons). It has its evangelists, and it has it Bibles: Field Guides, beginning with Peterson’s epic work. In the past few years it seems that anyone who is anyone in birding is publishing his or her own field guide. Count the current guides in print. Amazing.

And, of course, the internet is hot, hot, hot, hot. Who can live without it? Nuff said.

Birding and the internet have been married for a long time and are now having smartphone children. (Okay, cut me some slack here.) You have, as the best example, iBird Explorer, arguably the most extensive birding reference ever published in any format, spawned by the WhatBird.com site, and fostered by the iPhone.

And now we have BirdsEye, the legitmate offspring of Cornell Lab of Ornithology’s eBird site, also appearing in the iPhone household…er…App Store.

(And that is not to mention the iPhone birding apps with print parents: Nat Geo, Peterson’s, and Audubon all have iPhone versions of their guides…however, the print folks have yet to demonstrate a real understanding of the potential of the new platform. In each case the app looks a lot like someone tried to jam a book inside the machine…closer to a Kindle experience than a real iPhone adventure.)

I can see the thought process behind BirdsEye now.

“Like wow. We have all this data on bird locations in eBird. Whouldn’t it be really neat if there were an iPhone app that could call up that data instantly by location and tell you what birds are being see, or have been seen, right where you are, or near where you are…or anywhere you might be going? Wouldn’t it be good to include some basic id materials for folks who might be seeing the bird for the first time, or who might need a reminder…like we have all the Vireo photos, and we have this huge Macaulay Library of Sound collection of bird song recordings…what if we linked those in? And, what if we got someone really famous and cool (like you know, a birding rock star) to write brief descriptive text about each bird species? (Like maybe Kenn Kaufman?) What if?”

“And what if we found a clever iPhone developer to put it all together?”

Hay presto. BirdsEye!

[See Kenn Kaufman's response below...he rightly points out that the intent of the text is not id...but rather further info to help you locate the bird: habitat and habits, etc. Very smart! For Kenn's announcement/review of the app, which includes a more accurate rendering of the development history, see his own blog entry.]

And the amazing thing is: they pulled it off. BirdsEye does all that, and does it with a certain classy nonchalance that is at least iPhone-like enough satisfy most technophiles, and easy enough to use to satisfy most iPhoning birders.

Yup. You can use the auto-location on your phone to specify a location, or manually enter an an address, and then view, with the touch of a control, all the recent and/or historical bird sightings within 50 miles, 100 miles, 200 miles, 500 miles and beyond 500 miles. (Internet connection, either wifi or 3G, required!!) Once you set up a life list, the app will even show you just the birds being seen which are not already on your list. Each species appears in the checklist with a picture, the common name, and a date for the reference. Along the side of the list are a set of icons for the different families. Those with dainty fingers will be able to touch the family icon to jump right to that section of the sightings list. Even normal sized fingers might do the trick with practice.

Touching a species in the sightings checklist list brings up the id pages. You have at least one picture, descriptive text by Kenn Kaufman, and sounds from the Macaulay Library for over 400 of the most commonly sighted species (developer claims it is 95% of the species recorded by the top 500 submitters to eBird, and I have no reason to doubt him). The rest are available by in-app purchase from the App Store, either in one go (another $20), or in family groups (various prices).

Whether or not the app includes id info for the species, you can view a map with pins for each of the sighting locations (Hot Spots)! Way cool. Each pin opens the sightings for that location (not just the bird you are looking at, but all the birds seen there). You can see this same information as a list, which includes the distance from you. Finally, you can get directions to the spot from Google Maps. I kid you not: Directions.

And of course, the final icon on the species view is the sound icon, which calls up a little sound bar at the bottom with the recordings.

That’s one way of doing it. You can also jump right to the Hot Spots view, and explore the locations first, using the map and list tools outlined above, to see if there is anywhere you might like to go.

And, as a third possibility, you can search by a species by name, and the app will tell you all the places it has been or is being seen. Pretty amazing.

A word about the life list feature. This is the easiest life list to set up that I have ever seen. Edit Life List presents you with a master checklist of all species. You just touch the little check box to add one to your list, and you can add as many as you like in one go. You can also add birds to your list from the species view for that bird. Could not be easier really.

All well and good, but does it work?

Simple answer. Yes!

I have not done extensive testing, and I suppose there might still be areas where there is not much eBird data…but they must be few and far between these days. Southern Maine, where I live is not the most heavily birded area in the country, and yet there is plenty of data for my area, and I can not think of a spot where birds are regularly seen that is not already in the Hot Spot data base. A similar check of the Tucson Arizona area yielded predictable and satisfying results. By all indications, yes indeed, the app works as advertised.

And it is a lot of fun! There I said it. It is a lot of fun. Maybe, of course, it is just me, but I found it to be a lot of fun.

And I expect it to be eminently useful as well. I am planning a trip to Phoenix and Tucson this month and I will certainly check out what birds are being seen where using BirdsEye. What could be easier?

If the app has a weak point it is the id section. With all due respect to Kenn Kaufman (birding rock star extraordinary), the folks at Vireo, and the Macaulay Library, there is just not enough meat here to satisfy. I am not certain the id stuff is even needed in this app, and it certainly will not substitute for a real field guide…and certainly not for iBird on the iPhone.

On the other hand, as a companion app to iBird…now that is a combination to reckon with! Even to bird with!

And, of course, BirdsEye simply cries out for a way to record and upload your own sightings to eBird. Now that would be something! That would be so, so, cool. All that BirdsEye already does and the ability to record and submit trip lists…that would make BirdsEye an absolute, positive necessity for any serious iPhoning birder. Nuff said. BirdsEye guys, do it please!

BirdsEye is another wonderful example of what the iPhone is best at…easy, quick, anywhere access to masses of data from the internet… implemented in a way that makes the data useful, and even fun to use. Congratulations to all who were involved in this. Cornell Lab’s eBird team, Vireo, the Macaulay Library, and the developers at BirdsInHand. This is one great iPhone birding app…totally different…serving a totally different purpose…but right up there with iBird Explorer. It earns a permanent place on this birder’s iPhone, I know that!

Acer Aspire One 10in. on top. HP Mini 311. Dell 13.1 inch below.

[NOTE: while much of this is still true, I have now replaced the HP Mini 311 with a CULV based Acer Aspire Timeline 1810TZ. To see why, read Atom + ION: empty promise?]

Just over a year ago I wrote a piece on my Point & Shoot Landscape Blog called Netbooks for Traveling Photographers. It is among the most popular posts I have ever written, and is still getting regular hits a year later. It is still worth a read if you are new to the subject of Netbooks, and have specific questions on how they manage a photographic work-flow.

Until a week ago I was still using the Acer Aspire One 250 that is described in that article. I have processed more than 2000 thousand images, primarily in Lightroom, on that little Netbook in the past year. I have had no reason to regret my choice and I still highly recommend a Netbook to any photographer who spends much time on the road. It is hard to match the simple portability, and they are certainly powerful enough from all but the most demanding tasks. And, there is nothing quite like a Netbook for ease of doing all the daily stuff you need a computer for. Load up a browser (I use Chrome for preference), subscribe to a Google account, and you can do email, calendar, news feeds, Twitter, FaceBook, etc. etc. With a copy of ThinkFree or Open office (or even the real MicroSoft Office), you can even tweak the occasional PowerPoint for work…or run numbers in Excel: all on a machine that requires very little effort to carry. I have made two trips to Europe in the past year without my work laptop: just carried my Blackberry and my Netbook and I was good to go.

Within the past five months, however, I have gotten more heavily into HD video, and, while you can edit HD on a conventional Atom powered Netbook like the Aspire One, no one would claim that it is an enjoyable experience.

Lightroom's Develop Module on the Aspire One

About that same time, the first announcements of a new class of Thin and Light laptops, some not much bigger than your average Netbook, began to appear. The smallest of the Thin and Lights are 11.6-12.1 inch screen machines with a screen resolution of 1366×768 (16/9 wide screen, HD video format), and are powered by the new CULV processors from Intel (Consumer Ultra-Low Voltage). The CULV processors come in various shades of single and dual core, and are based on the more powerful processors used in real laptops. They are several times as powerful as the Atom processors used in Netbooks, but due to low voltage circuits, get just as good battery life. They are paired with the more capable Intel integrated GM4500 graphics as well.

Lr's Develop Module on the HP Mini's larger screen

Also, about that time the first ION based Netbooks began to be announced: primarily in the form of the HP Mini 311. This Netbook combines an 11.6 inch, 1366×768 screen with the same Atom processor found in the majority of Netbooks, but uses the NVIDA ION graphics processor instead of the usual Intel integrated GM950 graphics. Since graphic performance, especially the ability to render complex 3D graphics and video streams, is one area where Netbooks are noticeably deficient, the ION platform, at least on paper, offers the promise of real improvement. For one thing, today’s graphics rich OSs should be a lot happier on an ION based machine.

Couple that with the Adobe announcement of an upgraded Flash plugin which specifically takes advantage of the graphics acceleration offered by the ION and GM4500 graphics processors, and we are beginning to see some new possibilities opening for Netbook sized laptops.

As important as HD video was to my deliberations as I read the first reviews of the new machines, one of the major reasons I was looking was screen resolution. After a year of living with the 1024×600 10 inch screen on the Aspire One, I was beginning to feel just a little cramped. 1366×768? I could imagine how Lightroom would look on a screen that big (big being relative…I was determined to say as close to the Netbook form factor as possible: I really value the portablilty!)

Suffice it to say that I did my research and opted for the HP Mini 311 with ION Graphics. For one thing, while more expensive than a conventional 10 inch Atom powered Netbook, it was still less expensive than the dual core CULV machines. For another, reviewers rated the ION graphics performance significantly higher than the GM4500, and the new Flash beta is optimized for ION at a slightly higher level than it is for the Intel chipset.

And, perhaps as important in the end, the HP was available when I was ready to buy and the dual core Aspire 1810T (my other strong contender) was not. On such little things the tides of decision turn…at least, it seems, my decisions!

PhotoShop Element's Camera Distortion Filter

So far the HP Mini 311 has met all my expectations. It is not too much larger than my Aspire One. It still fits in the same over the shoulder backpack I used for the Aspire. The extra screen real-estate makes a huge difference in viewing images and working in Lightroom (not to mention Powerpoint and Excel). With 3 Gigs of memory installed, it runs both Lightroom and PhotoShop Elements at the same time…flicking back and forth between them instantly. And it runs both programs faster than the Aspire One ever managed. The speed increase in noticeable and welcome in Lightroom, on every operation, but especially on complex actions like the graduated filter effects…but it is totally amazing on PhSElements, turning a real sluggard, which crashed way too often, into a working proposition for the first time in my experience on a Netbook. This has significantly changed my post-processing work flow already, making it possible for me to use PhotoShop Elements as my external editor while running Lightroom: for those times I need to apply layers, local edits, or use, for instance, the Correct Camera Distortion filter (see Distortion City…and how to cure it! on P&S Landscapes). Slick.

With the Atom processor, HD video editing is still a challenge, but along with the new computer I discovered a new video editor: Corel Video Studio 12, which does the trick of creating low resolution stand in files for HD video as you import it into a project, so your editing is done quickly and easily, and then the edits are applied to the original HD files when the final project is burned to disk. Corel runs just fine on the HP Mini 311.

HD Video in Windows Media Player

The 311 even runs HULU desktop…something it should not, by the specs, do. And, with the new Adobe Flash 10.1 beta installed, it does really well on HD video from YouTube or other streaming sites. Windows Media Player handles raw MP4 video straight from the camera with ease. Impressive. Watching an HD video on a 1366×768 16/9 ratio screen is, in fact, a real pleasure.

I should mention that the HP Mini 311 I bought came with Windows 7 Home Premium. It provided my first experience of Windows 7, and while I will never be a real fan of Windows, it is the best implementation I have seen yet, and seems well suited to the Atom/ION platform. It is notably faster in almost every operation than Windows XP, at least on the 311, and many of the rough edges of XP seem to have been well and intelligently smoothed. Every program I rely on has, so far, run at least as well under 7 as it did under XP, and maybe even a bit better.

It is still Windows, of course.

I will have to wait for more extensive reviews of the newer CULV machines to see my somewhat impulsive buy was, in the end, for the best…but I am very impressed with the HP Mini 311. In another year there will undoubtedly be CULV machines with more powerful graphics processors. Combine the CPU power and a dedicated graphics accelerator and you would have a Netbook sized machine to rival almost any laptop on the market. We will see. Nothing is forever, but for now my HP Mini is pretty much this photographers dream of the mobile image processing station!

Corel VideoStudio 12

almost full sized key board for very easy typing.

Audubon Birds

I have covered the development of the iBird apps pretty extensively, and if you have read the reviews you know that they are, in my opinion, among the best examples of what the iPhone does best…not to mention perhaps the most comprehensive birding guide ever published in any form. iBird provides quick easy access to a what amounts to a whole library of birding resouces, right in the palm of your hand, as well as a complete set of audio recordings, and more images, including both detailed paintings and photographs, than you could look at in several years. I am not alone in my opinion of the apps. Apple has featured iBird in two different ad campaigns already.

There is a new version of iBird just out, with additional features and content: 1.8.3. I will be reviewing that in a companion piece.

This is a review of the competition.

While iBird is essentially the creation of one man with a vision, who pretty much single handedly assembled the materials from sources around the world,  the Audubon Nature Guides series has the backing of the largest conservation organization in the US…and its developers had access to the materials already gathered for the printed Audubon Guide series. That is enough to raise a certain high level of expectation.

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And  Audubon Birds  does not stand alone. There are already Audubon Guides to Wildflowers, Mammels, and Trees in the App Store, with guides to Insects and Spiders, Butterflies, Fish, Reptiles, and Seashore Creatures in development. Multi-subject and Regional/Habitat guides are also planned. Essentially the developers intend to reproduce the printed Audubon series in app form.

Audubon Birds is a good introduction to the series.

There are three ways to access the information on a given species (see screen shots above). You can start with the Quick Guide which groups the birds into sets based on a typical bird or a salient characteristic. You have chicken-like birds, duck-like birds, hawk-like birds, long-legged waders, tree-clinging birds, etc. You can also browse by family: Barn Owls, Typical Owls, Blackbirds and Orioles, New World Sparrows, etc.

Then, you can browse the whole indexed list of common names, either by first or last name.

Quick sets and Families, and the species themselves, are arranged in alphabetical order…something which purists among birders will undoubtedly object to on the grounds that it hides the relationships between birds and families which taxonomic order displays. Alphabetical does, however, make it easier for the beginner to find birds. There is no direct way to find a bird by its scientific name, and, more disappointingly, there is no text entry search to allow you to go directly to a species by common name.

Finally there is a search engine, with (compared to iBird) a very limited set of search criteria. Here you do have text (word) search, as well as zip code search, a selector for shape, and check lists for color, region, and size. You can make multiple selections on the check lists, though over selecting will result in no matches pretty quickly.

Once you get to a particular species, you have, for each: one or more photographs (mostly more), a range map, a brief description (brief in relative terms…the text seems to have come directly from the printed guides, though it has been updated where necessary), a list of similar species, and, most important of all for this app, an extensive set of recordings. Most species have both songs and calls, and often several of each, clearly labeled as to where they were recorded.

The audio is far and away the strongest feature of Audubon Birds. I know of no other easily accessible source of such a wealth of recorded songs and calls.

There is also a Life List button on the species view, and a Sighting button. The Sighting button works as you might expect, opening a little dialog view where you can either specify the location and date, or let the iPhone do it, enter a brief note, etc. Unfortunately the Life List button is not as intuitive. It does not pick up the species name from the view you have open, and it does not automatically pick up the species name when you record a sighting. You have to manually type in the name, and there is not even a type-ahead-look-up function. Since we are dealing with an iPhone here, a computer by any other name, one has to ask “why not?”

I should also mention that on the browse views and accessible on Species views by touching the Dashboard button, there is a Camera icon, which, as you would expect, allows you to take a picture using the iPhone’s built in camera. There is, unfortunately no provision to include a picture from the library that you have already taken. There is also a file folder icon called My Content, which gives you access to your saved photos, life list, and sightings.

Life list, photos, and sightings can be synced with the www.audubonguides.com website, once you establish a free account there. Beware. Choosing sync all species, even when on wifi, can tie up your iPhone for a long time.

And that, as they say, is it for features.

The user experience is, in my opinion, fair. It takes a long time to find a particular species, and the search functions are, as mentioned, limited. Photos are excellent, but somewhat limited. You can only enlarge most them about 3 times and there are no indicators of important details. They are just photos. The life list function is pretty useless as implemented, and there are not enough fields to make the sightings feature really useful either. The text, while good, is not extensive.

In my opinion, iBird gives you a considerably better chance of actually IDing a bird you are not familiar with in a reasonable time in the field, as well as providing a depth of resource for further study that is simply not there in Audubon Birds.

On the other hand, the sound library is fantastic! I don’t know how to say it more forcefully. Fantastic! Astounding. Wonderful. Just about everything any bird song- and call-ophile could ask for.

I expect, I hope, to see improvements in the Audubon Guide series as they mature: especially since, while Birds might have heavy competition from iBird, Wildflowers, Mammals, Trees, and the planned future guides have none! We need the Audubon series to get good…and to get good fast!

So, if you are considering a bird guide for the iPhone, my honest recommendation is still iBird Plus or Pro. Audubon Birds may mature over the next releases. I would love to see it give iBird a real run for the money. The winners in the end, will be all the iPhone toting birders of the world (or at least North America).

Oh, and if you are really into bird songs and calls, you might consider Audubon Birds worth the purchase price for the audio alone! Just consider all the other features as a bonus.

Deliveries for the iPhone

I have watched this little App develop over the past few updates into something quite fine and supremely useful! Deliveries is, in my opinion, a perfect example of the real potential and attraction of the iPhone.

The premise is simple: track shipments and packages quickly and easily. Automate the process for over 30 major internet vendors and commonly used shippers, so that you can track either by order number or by tracking number. As the app has developed, the authors have added the ability to see expanded order detail (automatically retrived from the vendor or shipper’s web site), a map of where your shipment is in relation to where you are, and the actual info page on the internet from the vendor or shipper…all without leaving the app. Very fine indeed. And useful! I find that Deliveries has become my preferred way of tracking packages. I will turn on my iPhone to check a package, even when I am sitting at my computer. And if that is not a testiment to the potential and attraction of the iPhone, I don’t know what would be.

The process is as simple as the premise. You add a shipment to track by entering a nickname, picking a vendor or shipper from a long list of possibles, entering the order or tracking number (which you can copy and paste from the confirmation email on the iPhone), and your account credentials if appropriate. Once a shipment is added, opening the app will automatically update the status. There is even a big count down number of days remaining to cheer you when you check.

I have tested Deliveries so far with Amazon and UPS, and it works amazingly well. There may be services in the vendor/shipper list that do not work as well…but I am assuming that they all function…and if they all work as well as Amazon and UPS, I would not be surprised.

So…if you order over the internet, or, as I do, regularly ship UPS or FedX, get this app! You will love it for its functionality and elegance. You will come, as I quickly have,  to depend on it, and on your iPhone, for all your order and shipment tracking needs.