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Birding Apps for Android (1 Viewer)

PS If you agree, please find the time to cast a vote (1-5 stars) by using the Market application of your smartphone. This will help blueBill Mobile in spreading more. Thanks.
 
I'm very interested if this becomes something like the Collins eGuide, it's because of that I haven't switched over to Android yet.
 
Rather than just for recording...is there an AP like Ipod has for sounds and such or one in the works? jim

Yup, ironically just available a couple days now, iBird is now good for the Android. I see it in the marketplace and plan on trying it out. Reviews on FB seem promising. No Pro version for Android yet.
 
Yup, ironically just available a couple days now, iBird is now good for the Android. I see it in the marketplace and plan on trying it out. Reviews on FB seem promising. No Pro version for Android yet.

I just bought iBird (android) and have been playing with it for a half hour. Amazing. Two things to note: it's apparently North American species only, and it requires a wi-fi link to complete the bandwidth heavy download. It has a good search function, decent quality sounds, and something like 230 species. Each species has links galore for further info (wiki, flikr, etc...). More birds would be better, but I don't know of a similar program for the droid, so this should keep me happy for a while.
 
I'm very interested if this becomes something like the Collins eGuide, it's because of that I haven't switched over to Android yet.

Good question and I'm preparing a post with some insight of the point, which has some subtle aspects.

I can anticipate now that blueBill will have sounds and images initially for the Western Palearctic ecozone - while it can provides information for the whole world, there's some time needed to prepare and verify the media, and of course I'll start from the area where I live.
 
Good question and I'm preparing a post with some insight of the point, which has some subtle aspects.

I can anticipate now that blueBill will have sounds and images initially for the Western Palearctic ecozone - while it can provides information for the whole world, there's some time needed to prepare and verify the media, and of course I'll start from the area where I live.

Do you have an ETA for this - would love it!:t:
 
It should be a matter of one week. As you can see from the screenshot, the thing is substantially ready, I need some test and to complete the catalog of sounds for all the species.

PS Of course, the tabs with photos and movies that you see in the screenshot will be empty for the next version; I can confirm photos will be available around July 20.
 

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BTW, the thing seems to be completed and yesterday I fixed the last bugs. blueBill will have access to about 6000 recordings from xeno-canto, covering about 680 species. Each recording can be individually downloaded and eventually deleted later (only if you run out of card space). Probably some smarter things can be done for managing media, but I'll do this later (eventually, listening to suggestions).

I'll keep on testing it for a few days (I've also to update the manual pages on the website) but we can expect a release at the middle of this week.

A final remark. When you download a song, the phone obviously connects to the xeno-canto website and as part of the normal internet protocols it communicates a few pieces of information to that website; they are completely unrelated with the identity of the user and, of course, his own data; they basically consists in the phone model, manufacturer and operating system version, plus the language of the user. I've arranged things so those pieces of information are sent to me too; in this way I'll be aware of which phone models are actually used (so I can infer that blueBill works on them) and what international languages are used.

Do you feel this is a problem? I'm a strong advocate of privacy - mine and others' - and I care that others don't feel that their is violated. So, if you have any doubt let me know.
 
I just downloaded the latest version off the Market and it works great on my Dell Streak. Looking forward to the update.
 
I just downloaded the latest version off the Market and it works great on my Dell Streak. Looking forward to the update.

Ten minutes ago I published the update, but I forgot to change the version number. Nothing dramatic, but it could cause some trouble when eventually reporting defects. Don't update for a few minutes more, until I publish a corrected update.
 
Just a small problem, I tried adding a Eurasian Collared Dove and then tried to download a call, but it said I had less than 20mb left on my card when I have 14gb+ and 1.4Gb left on internal storage...

Dell Streak
Android 1.6

Any other details can be provided..

Thanks for your hard work..
 
Just a small problem, I tried adding a Eurasian Collared Dove and then tried to download a call, but it said I had less than 20mb left on my card when I have 14gb+ and 1.4Gb left on internal storage...

Dell Streak
Android 1.6

Any other details can be provided..

Thanks for your hard work..

Ok, I'll try to understand what's happening and provide a solution as soon as possible. I was in doubt whether to add this control or not, but I think is important as otherwise people would risk to fill the card.

One question: when you tried, was the phone connected to the computer (e.g. with the USB)? I noted that in such circumstances the phone shares the sdcard with the computer, and marks it as unusable (thus having 0 free memory) until the connection is closed.

If somebody else could try with a different model and let me know, he would provide me with useful information.
 
One question: when you tried, was the phone connected to the computer (e.g. with the USB)? I noted that in such circumstances the phone shares the sdcard with the computer, and marks it as unusable (thus having 0 free memory) until the connection is closed.

If somebody else could try with a different model and let me know, he would provide me with useful information.

It is when I'm unconnected aswell, I dont think the streak allows phone connection to the card when connected to the computer.
 
It is when I'm unconnected aswell, I dont think the streak allows phone connection to the card when connected to the computer.

I didn't find anything so far - going on. Generally speaking, keep in mind that if the application has got problems in writing to the card, you risk to loose your observation data (they are saved to the card as well). I'm applying another change to have observation data saved to the internal memory (they usually take a very small room) for best safety.
 
Thanks again...

On a side note, I was a VB6 developer for 16 years and I'm looking at maybe doing some Android apps ( if I can get Eclipse installed on Win 7 64bit ) so may have a look at your source to try debug it myself... will let you now what I find if I get Eclipse installed properly.
 
Thanks again...

On a side note, I was a VB6 developer for 16 years and I'm looking at maybe doing some Android apps ( if I can get Eclipse installed on Win 7 64bit ) so may have a look at your source to try debug it myself... will let you now what I find if I get Eclipse installed properly.

That's GREAT! :) It's what open source is for... You can contact me privately at fabrizio dot giudici at tidalwave dot it.
 
A few days ago somebody asked me about what the future of blueBill Mobile will be, specifically in comparison with other reference applications.

I've drafted a few things about blueBill design principles: http://bluebill.tidalwave.it/mobile/vision/

It's not yet an official document (it's not linked from the site) and I've still to work on it to make it better and more understandable. But in the meantime it should give you some hints about which are the strengths (and the weaknesses) of the project.

Be also aware that I've created also a FaceBook page for eventually getting feedback (see http://bluebill.tidalwave.it/mobile/contacts/).

Thanks for your attention.
 
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Theoretically all Android devices should be compatible (there are o.s. version issues, but I'm targetting 1.5, and earlier than it there is less than 1% of devices). Of course, a *Pad could be very different than a phone because of the larger screen, and blueBill Mobile could be less user friendly... or more, who knows?

I plan to buy an Android *Pad within the summer, as soon as some new models come out and I realize what they offer. Until them, if somebody tries blueBill Mobile with a *Pad, please let me know. Eventually the user interface can be adapted.

I have just purchased one of the cheaper, (7" Mini Tablet PC Netbook WiFi Touchscreen Mini Android) of ebay. Not from the seller this link is to but its the same one, I paid £86 and collected personally so no postage.
http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/7-Mini-Tablet...tem&pt=LH_DefaultDomain_3&hash=item3cae9d7378


I have loaded the Bluebell software on the tablet and it seems to work fine, no glitches yet. It is running with Android 1.6 :t:
 
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