Pricing and recommendations for software. (1 Viewer)

I'm trying to find a good piece of listing and recording software that dosn't feel like it's overpriced.

I think that Birders Diary would suit what I want with the software which is largely keeping various patch/year/world lists up to date but the £100 price tag seems steep. Additionally, I've see reference elsewhere of an annual subscription fee too. Is that the case with Birders Diary? The recent upgrade to v4 looks like a patch rather than a new product and it seems that people were charged for that too so I'm not sure I want to rely on a system that seems to milk it's users quite so dry.

Alternatively, Bird Journal looks ok, but it seems to have a £35 per year subscription price. This again is a steep annual fee and is another example of a greedy pricing model. I don't mind paying what the product is worth, but I don't want to pay for it over and over again once I've bought it.

So, am I missing something here? Are there good products out there with a pricing model that is more reasonable?

Maybe you could write a bit about your requirements? What do you want the software to be able to do for you? Does it bother you where and in what format your data is kept?

I'm still a fan of Scythebill, but since I say this every time somebody asks about a world listing program it seems inappropriate to keep repeating why I like it. It's free, and it runs on all major operating systems.

Andrea

Cheers, if anyone happens to know the answers in the op too I'd be grateful.

Regarding my needs, I guess that my main requirements are along these lines:

• Log lists for Britain, World and user-defined sites.
• Record lists from foreign trips and update my world and country lists accordingly.
• Automatically update (or prompt action) when taxonomic changes occur.
• Allow me to filter by species metadata. For example "show me birds I've not seen in GB that are non-BB rarities.
• Allow links to useful info such as distribution maps for subspecies.
• Allow a choice of taxonomy and common names to adopt.
• Enable backup to local storage.
• Cloud saves and sync of data across my devices.
• I don't mind paying a reasonable fee, but yearly subscriptions are not an attractive monetization model.

Cheers for any tips.

I'd be interested in recs too, but would have thought taxonomic changes would require regular input from the supplier, and can't see how this could be achieved without an annual sub.

MSA said:

would have thought taxonomic changes would require regular input from the supplier, and can't see how this could be achieved without an annual sub.

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Not all updates warrant an annual subscription. In gaming multi-million pound games may end up with years of developer support and patches and the expectation is that the purchaser would never be charged for an update as they have already paid for the product. Anyway, that aside, it seems to me that there is a real gap in the market for something good in this field.

The cheapest way I think would be to go online. Ebird would allow most of what you would like to see, but data input for now would be through the web or through a phone app. The app available at this time is through birdseye, ebird is developing their own in house app (do not know how long that will take). Likewise, you can use apps such as birdseye to have access to what have been seen near where you are that you have not already entered into ebird.

I agree with others that most stand alone applications would charge you for updating the taxonomy. Some of them will only charge when you choose to get such an update, which if you can edit a little in the list yourself, may only be necessary every 2-3 years. I am using http://www.birdbase.com/ which runs updates in that way, but it is an older style database that only allows Clements list and have another couple of misses compared to your demands.

Niels

Cheers for the info. It's not necessarily cheapest that I'm after, it just needs to not be a rip-off. I'm afraid that some of the products I've been looking at are pretty unpolished by today's standards and can be overpriced. Annual subscriptions on top of that can be a step too far.

I'll comment on which of these Scythebill does and doesn't do.

Scythebill has a very dedicated developer who does provide taxonomic updates (and if you have entered which subspecies you have seen it will correctly adjust your totals after splits, for example). You have a choice between IOC and Clements. Taxonomic updates are usually provided within a few weeks of becoming official.

Scythebill has intelligent data entry, so when you start typing it'll make suggestions for which bird you mean (and you can define your own shortcuts if you like).

You can create your own lists based on location, dates, status (introduced eg), breeding codes, and a few other criteria (assuming you did enter that data for each sighting). You can also define your own sites. (So in particular you can create a list of all the birds you have ever seen on your patch, or in a particular country, or in the month of March in Europe.)

It can't filter a list by user-defined criteria (although you can filter by notes, and maybe that would be a way of getting in info on BB rarities - but which other program has that info?). It currently can *not* show you which birds you haven't seen in a particular location, but I think this would be easy to implement, and the developer is very open to feedback. Scythebill now has checklists for almost all countries, but more fine-grained information is available in only some places (eg for all the US states). I can see the usefulness of a list of specific targets, and now that there will be country lists to subtract seen birds from this would make sense.

For each subspecies it tells you about distribution in the text, but there's no link (and which authority would you want it to link to?). In practice I've found that picking `the right' subspecies is very easy for the majority of birds you encounter, and in some cases I had to google. I'm not sure whether being able to record to subspecies level is the norm - it's certainly very useful when there are taxonomic updates.

The data is kept on your computer. It's written as an xml file which is pretty much human-readable. With whatever listing software you choose you risk that whoever developes it will go out of business. Something like Ebird is likely to be long lasting, but may not have all the functionality you are looking for. Scythebill does allow exporting data that can be uploaded into Ebird (so you only enter it once). You could easily ensure that the data is backed up into the cloud by using appropriate software, but see next point.

Scythebill has no support for mobile devices at the moment. Since it's the effort of one developer this is unlikely to change soon.

Scythebill is free but if you want to make a contribution the author invites you to pay a fee to a conservation organization.

The creator keeps his on lifelist of more than 5000 species on Scythebill (and only there) so he isn't going to just drop it.

Why not check it out? It's very easy to download and install. There's an online manual. Enter a few sightings and see whether it is likely to work for you. It's a bit ideosyncratic, but has improved quite a bit since I started using it.

Andrea

Hi Andrea. Thank you for your very helpful info. I've downloaded Scythebill and am having a wee play about with it to get a feel for it. At first glance I think that it can actually show which birds are lifers for each country or region so that looks like a good feature, perhaps recently implemented?

For backup or for using more than one device, would the best routine be to upload the XML file to somewhere then import that xml file to the second copy of Scythebill. I'm thinking for example of having it accessible at a desktop and laptop.

Paul Brooks said:

For backup or for using more than one device, would the best routine be to upload the XML file to somewhere then import that xml file to the second copy of Scythebill. I'm thinking for example of having it accessible at a desktop and laptop.

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It sounds like you could have the data file on a cloud service such as dropbox and have instant access to the latest version as long as you don't run it on both computers at the same time. I would still with intervals copy that file to a second location for backup.

Niels

I really think that there is not a good vlue fully-featured product out there at the moment. Birders Diary is £100 and the "upgrade" from 3.7 to 4.0 actually reads more like a series of patch notes and bug fixes - which were charged for again.

Birders Journal looks ok I think but the pricing is an annual subscription charge, which is a steep charge considering that it's going to cost you thousands of pounds over it's lifetime.

I don't mind paying for a product, but to be honest the only good options on the market do seem like rip-offs.

Author of Scythebill here (and thanks for the kind words, Andrea).

You can easily use the checklists to answer "how many lifers do I have in GB, discounting rarities?" But she's right that there isn't easy support for "how many new birds for my GB list can I get, discounting rarities", or more interesting things like "how many new birds could I get for my Western Palearctic list in a trip to Israel" or "how many species could I add to my current ABA Big Year with a trip to Alabama". I bring this up in particular because I'm implementing it right now.

And I'm personally irritated by the "subscription for taxonomy" model - the idea of charging more than a token fee for updated content that the developer got for free feels very wrong. (And doubly so when it takes them many months to get it ready!)

For cloud synchronization, I'd recommend using something like DropBox or Google Drive. There's absolutely zero possibility of my personally providing anything more reliable than those services.

I have toyed with the notion of Android support for data entry in the field. I'll probably get around to it some day, but I wouldn't want anyone holding their breath. (As for iOS - not likely. I'd have to first pay for an Apple device and then still pay them $99 a year just for the privilege of writing code for it and then still only be allowed to give away the app on Apple's whim. I'd love to partner with someone, but I'm sure they'd want to sell the app for $ or £.)

Another vote for Scythebill from me. I switched from Wings and haven't regretted it. Adam is great at updates (both the program and the taxonomy). I store my database on Dropbox so I can access it anywhere. It is quite simple to export your records to a spreadsheet if you need to analyse them in a way Scythebill currently doesn't support.

What's not to like?

Looking at Bird Journal, perhaps someone could help with a question or two. If I for example try to add a list of bird seen on a recent trip to Australia, I can select Australia as a country, but the "Location" drop-down wont add anything other than "Australia" again. I'd like to make that "Sydney Suburbs and Royal National Park) but it seems not to allow that. Also there is a dropdown there for "checklist" which I assume would allow me just tick off from a list, but that dropdown is blank too. Is this because I'm on a trial account?
Cheers

Hi Paul,

You're running a trial of premium at the moment so have access to everything. I've just applied another 14 days so you don't run out of time.

Locations are added using the locations button at the top of the main screen, and can then be selected when adding entries. We intend to make it possible to create them on the new entry screen too. (Similar to how the mobile apps work)

You just need to install a taxonomy to use for Australia from the library. If you click the library button then search for Australia you'll see a few options. Probably the best option is now the BARC/IOC checklist.

Hope this helps.

Justin
(Bird Journal guy)

Hi Justin. Thanks for the reply. Also thank you for the extension to the trial. I'll have a good delve into it and then decide where to put my pennies.
Cheers once again.

I've been adding records from a recent trip and am enjoying Bird Journal. Am I missing something or is it only possible to enter a record if you assign a specific date to it? At some stage I'll add a load of British list birds that won't have a specific date just so as to have a British List available there. Do I need to assign a date for a Starling/Wood Pigeon/Carrion Crow entry? Perhaps I'll just add a checklist of common species against an arbitary date.

Paul Brooks said:

I've been adding records from a recent trip and am enjoying Bird Journal. Am I missing something or is it only possible to enter a record if you assign a specific date to it? At some stage I'll add a load of British list birds that won't have a specific date just so as to have a British List available there. Do I need to assign a date for a Starling/Wood Pigeon/Carrion Crow entry? Perhaps I'll just add a checklist of common species against an arbitary date.

Click to expand...

Ebird has a requirement such as that. Their current work-around is to recommend that the user enters such lists for 1-1-1900, together with a comment that this is "list building" and then hides the list from others (third part here not applicable for you).

Niels

Glad to hear you're enjoying it.

Yes, Bird Journal has the same requirement as eBird here. There's a suggestion for this open on our feedback site that you can vote for:
http://support.birdjournal.com/forums/262707-general/suggestions/6322772-date-range-on-entries

An early date such as that, or the start of the year/month, if known, will give the best results when filtering & using graphs.