• Welcome to BirdForum, the internet's largest birding community with thousands of members from all over the world. The forums are dedicated to wild birds, birding, binoculars and equipment and all that goes with it.

    Please register for an account to take part in the discussions in the forum, post your pictures in the gallery and more.
ZEISS DTI thermal imaging cameras. For more discoveries at night, and during the day.

Bird Journal V1.1 (1 Viewer)

C

Common Loon

Member
I know a lot of us use this forum to discuss various pieces of Bird Recording Software so I thought I'd give a tip about one I've recently purchased.
It's called "Bird Journal" and is available from Bluebird Technology. Recently been updated to V1.1 with more updates to come.
I've found it very intuitive to use, it looks good and the support from the author is excellent. A trial version is available from Bluebird Technology's site.
I have no connection with the creators - Just thought I'd give a bit of publicity to a very good product.:t: Hope others find this useful.

Andy C (Glos)
 
Hello Andy - I was about to start a thread to ask if anyone had experience of this software package and to solicit their opinions. You've had 231 views and no responses, which I find puzzling. Anyway, I've just downloaded the trial version, so here goes. Is the full version worth the £29? All the best. Mike
 
Andy

I did look at the trial download the other week. I liked the way you recorded information but I dismissed it because I couldnt work out how you create reports e.g. 'list all records in Wiltshire over the last month' so I could send to the recorder. It just seemed to come up with a list of entries that I then had to open to see what they were. Can you advise me if there is a way to do that.

bob
 
Common Loon said:
I know a lot of us use this forum to discuss various pieces of Bird Recording Software so I thought I'd give a tip about one I've recently purchased.
It's called "Bird Journal" and is available from Bluebird Technology. Recently been updated to V1.1 with more updates to come.
I've found it very intuitive to use, it looks good and the support from the author is excellent. A trial version is available from Bluebird Technology's site.
I have no connection with the creators - Just thought I'd give a bit of publicity to a very good product.:t: Hope others find this useful.

Andy C (Glos)
Click to expand...

See this thread, for what it's worth.

Alan
 
This is a great product...I just wrote a bit about under entitled Imaging data software... But Bluebird is perfect..easy to use...can include photos, can tailor the data to fit what I want and not something that I will not care to collect data on. Some birders like myself, like to keep data but not all that some of these programs have available...This program allows me to put in fields (text or checklist etc) of just the data "I" want....
 
Bob Philpott said:
Andy

I did look at the trial download the other week. I liked the way you recorded information but I dismissed it because I couldnt work out how you create reports e.g. 'list all records in Wiltshire over the last month' so I could send to the recorder. It just seemed to come up with a list of entries that I then had to open to see what they were. Can you advise me if there is a way to do that.

bob
Click to expand...
I need this function too so emailed the makers.
They replied and said they are improving the exporting report function for future releases.
Soon as it had that it will be spot on imo.
 
peteh said:
I need this function too so emailed the makers.
They replied and said they are improving the exporting report function for future releases.
Soon as it had that it will be spot on imo.
Click to expand...

I have bought it having contacted the software makers and being told the same as above. I am very impressed with the current version and understand there will be improvements in the near future. I have had the usual questions to start off and received almost instant responses even when my email was sent late in the evening. It is a long slog to enter years of paper records!
 
Bob Philpott said:
Andy

I did look at the trial download the other week. I liked the way you recorded information but I dismissed it because I couldnt work out how you create reports e.g. 'list all records in Wiltshire over the last month' so I could send to the recorder. It just seemed to come up with a list of entries that I then had to open to see what they were. Can you advise me if there is a way to do that.

bob
Click to expand...

Yes. You go to the "Birds" tab. This opens a list of all your sightings. You can then select by year, month, or location or any combination thereof.

Alan.
 
Hi,
I also got interested from the trial-version, and asked a few questions about future features. Got answer quickly, here is what they wrote:

"We are working on Bird Journal version 2 for release early next year; the main features include Checklists, Other Wildlife and Import. Free upgrades are available for minor version updates which include general maintenance fixes. A reasonably fee applies to major version upgrades.

Using the new Checklist feature in version 2, you can create your own custom checklists for example, regional checklists, country checklists etc. Checklists can be created and edited within Bird Journal.

We aim to update the taxonomy lists each year using a taxonomy update wizard making the process as smooth as possible.
"

Regards, Florian
 
We now have Bird Journal 1.4....I have backup up my data onto an external hard drive but would like to run the program on my laptop as well as the desktop. I have downloaded version 1.4 to both desktop and laptop. But I can still only open up the data files and see them when I am on my desktop, the original location. If I have a backup on my laptop and have also installed 1.4, why can the version not read the backup. It comes across as an adobe reader file for one thing.

But...some serious issues here. I really like the program but there is no reason why I cannot operate a program on more than one computer and keep saving to both..

Ideas? What do others do in this situation?
 
lmans66 said:
We now have Bird Journal 1.4....I have backup up my data onto an external hard drive but would like to run the program on my laptop as well as the desktop. I have downloaded version 1.4 to both desktop and laptop. But I can still only open up the data files and see them when I am on my desktop, the original location. If I have a backup on my laptop and have also installed 1.4, why can the version not read the backup. It comes across as an adobe reader file for one thing.

But...some serious issues here. I really like the program but there is no reason why I cannot operate a program on more than one computer and keep saving to both..

Ideas? What do others do in this situation?
Click to expand...

You're flirting with disaster here. If you use the programme indiscriminately on two computers your data will get out of sync. Unless you are very obsessive and always transfer the data file to the other computer each time you stop using it, which is a bit of a pain. One way around this is to keep the data file on a USB stick and transfer that to the relevant computer. I don't know how to tell Bird Journal to look for its data in a non-standard location. Having more than one data file is a disaster waiting to happen

The backup file is not the same filename as the data file. The data file is called user.birdJournal and where it is depends on the OS. Make sure that you can see hidden folders and search for that file. That's the one you need to keep in sync.

I strongly recommend that you work only on your desktop, unless you will be away for a bit, in which case you could copy user.birdJournal to your laptop, so long as you copy it back to your desktop when you get home, before you make any use of the programme on your desktop.

The next release will (I'm told) include a restore facility, which will make it a lot easier to use on two computers, but the above cautions still apply. I have no idea what the licensing restrictions allow.
 
Oh I hear ya....I use two external hard drives to copy all of my data, birds, public, private etc.... That way my hard drive on the main computer is not the 'keeper of knowledge' but rather my external hard drives. I travel so much and do so with little net books, it just makes sense to me.

I am good at backing up.

Where is that file marked user? I have not been able to find it...ideas?
 
lmans66 said:
Where is that file marked user? I have not been able to find it...ideas?
Click to expand...

Good question! Here's what they told me when I did a clean install and asked how to restore my data:

We'll be adding a backup restore feature in the version 2 update early next year.
For now, it's a manual process, but quite easy:

- Run the newly installed Bird Journal once, and then exit. This creates a
blank new database.
- Search on the drive that has Windows installed (probably C:), for the
blank database - a file called "user.birdJournal".
- Verify that the file found is indeed the correct blank database; it
should be a small file of around 70KB.
- Copy the backup file "backup.birdJournal" over the blank new database
file "user.birdJournal".

Please be careful not to copy the files the wrong way around.

That's it, you can then launch Bird Journal as normal, and your backup will
be restored.


I did that with no trouble last month. I think I found the file in c:\appdata\bluebird technology, but it isn't there now. In fact I cannot find it anywhere! So I now have all that data in an unknown data file! This worries me. I will be super careful with backups.

Alan
 
I did that with no trouble last month. I think I found the file in c:\appdata\bluebird technology, but it isn't there now. In fact I cannot find it anywhere! So I now have all that data in an unknown data file! This worries me. I will be super careful with backups.

Alan[/QUOTE]

Thanks Alan. I found the 'user' file easily on my netbook which is XP but couldnt on my laptop which is Visa. Thanks to the above I have now found it in Vista in 'appdata'.

I was going to use the netbook for sightings when away from home but reading all the above items will no longer do that until the back up and restore changes have been made.
 
[/QUOTE]

Thanks Alan. I found the 'user' file easily on my netbook which is XP but couldnt on my laptop which is Visa. Thanks to the above I have now found it in Vista in 'appdata'.

I was going to use the netbook for sightings when away from home but reading all the above items will no longer do that until the back up and restore changes have been made.[/QUOTE]

Well I need to go looking for it so I know where it is. It goes bug me that I can only use this on my desktop as I travel with a laptop and like to continually update this if I can on the road. It is part of the 'game' of birding. Other than that I enjoy the program but wow, I wish I could use it on several computers like many other programs
 
I have brought the attention of this forum to the attention of Bluebird. They responded quickly as always and are apparently monitoring the comments on here and other forums. They say they intend to set up a users community forum on their website in the future; I think it was around the time the next version is released.
 
Warning! This thread is more than 14 years ago old.
It's likely that no further discussion is required, in which case we recommend starting a new thread. If however you feel your response is required you can still do so.

Similar threads

B
Software update missing in iPad storage iOS 16.4
Replies
4
Views
650
Bubbs
B
E
Taxonomic bird sorting website I wrote
Replies
0
Views
531
Eric Goodill
E
H
Review of birding apps I use on Android
Replies
7
Views
2K
THE_FERN
T
T
To Balance Rail or not?
Replies
13
Views
693
Thrupenney Bit
T
K
Digiscoping with android phone vs with mirrorless DLSR- advice please?
Replies
6
Views
442
Mike Crawley
Mike Crawley

Users who are viewing this thread

Total: 2 (members: 0, guests: 2)
Back
Top