Twitter for rarities (1 Viewer)

[garry1366]

As per me previous posts 'I don't see how it can compete with RBA or birdguides'.

That's the point Johnny , it already does compete with RBA and Birdguides, in fact whilst I don't want to get into the debate about which service is best it outcompetes Birdguides it's been around longer and gets much more of it's info from the observers directly and is faster putting the news out.

Anyway I started this off to alert people to it's presence, hopefully done that and they can make their own minds up, I know everyone I've shown the feed to on my phone has been on the blower to get the feed or sorting out a new smart(er) phone so they can take advantage of it.

If I can get some screen shots of it I'll post them here later.

G

 

[Jonny Rankin]

Hi Gary,

Are you talking about this: http://www.birdinformation.co.uk/index.php

If so I'd love to trial it if at all possible... theres not too much detail on the website.

Cheers,

Jonny

 

[Pie Face]

Hi Gary,

Are you talking about this: http://www.birdinformation.co.uk/index.php

If so I'd love to trial it if at all possible... theres not too much detail on the website.

Cheers,

Jonny

I'd be interested in a weeks trial but the website is very vague!

 

[garry1366]

I don't work for them boys I'm just a punter, you'd have to get in touch and speak to them.

G

 

[davem]

This was mentioned to me by Phil Oddy when we caught up at BBWF last weekend (reminiscing about the view from the Birdnet office etc!) so it's good to have more info about it :t:

Sadly with my state of the art Nokia 3510 I think I'll have to wait, although if I'm lucky enough to have work GIVE me an iPhone :eek!: then maybe things'll change!

Til then, pager and phone combo for me...

 

[Pie Face]

I don't work for them boys I'm just a punter, you'd have to get in touch and speak to them.

G

Spoke to David Garry. Nice bloke and very helpful. Signed up for Twitter and already getting the info.
It is as Garry says exactly the same service as you get with a Birdnet pager and at the moment just £40 a year!!!!
I like the Birdguides stuff but my iphones email fetch can be uncomfortably slow at times.
You don't need to have a fancy smart phone. If you've got unlimited text you could set up twitter to alert you via text. Some pay as you go providers will give you unlimited text as long as you top up £10 a month.

Birdnet seem to have embraced the available technology and I hope it's a success for them.

 

[Jonny Rankin]

Spoke to David Garry. Nice bloke and very helpful. Signed up for Twitter and already getting the info.
It is as Garry says exactly the same service as you get with a Birdnet pager and at the moment just £40 a year!!!!
I like the Birdguides stuff but my iphones email fetch can be uncomfortably slow at times.
You don't need to have a fancy smart phone. If you've got unlimited text you could set up twitter to alert you via text. Some pay as you go providers will give you unlimited text as long as you top up £10 a month.

Birdnet seem to have embraced the available technology and I hope it's a success for them.

Nice one... I gave him a call too.

I've organised a weeks trail and I'll be getting a few days Twitter trail too... canne wait to try it out :t:

 

[garry1366]

Glad you're finding it OK Highwayman.

I've got mine set up to receive mega's, national which I've found gets things like seawatch news from Cornwall etc but means I don't have to hear about Green Sands on midlands reservoirs, and also getting north east news. I also set it up to text me with mega's so if I get an audible alert in case I don't look at the feed for a while, the only downside is getting messages about House Finch whenever it's seen but I can live with that and I doubt it's gonna eat up my fair use policy on my unlimited texts!.

Good luck with it Jonny

G

 

[Pie Face]

Disappointing that this thread doesn't seem to be getting the interest that it deserves. I've just posted a review on my blog www.ofpiesandbirds.blogspot.com

Mark

 

[Blue Alert]

Right. Presumably you are paying the £40 for access to the various Birdnet Twitter streams? Once you've paid, the service will accept your request to follow them and it'll just be like following any other Twitter stream?

And this is the SAME info that Birdnet put out on their pager, which is as good as birdguides or RBA? For only £40, this seems a bit unlikely.

Can I use the standard Twitter app, or do I have to bother with a branded app?

What are the regions it covers? How small an area does it work for? For example, could I ask for only info from WWT Slimbridge, or Ham Wall, as I could on my birdguides' Bird News Anywhere with a couple of clicks on my iPhone? Or are you limited to large regions (i.e North West, South West, Midlands?).

Can I specifiy news within my own bespoke areas (i.e. 60km from Glos, 30km from Oxford)?

 

[Cheshire Birder]

And this is the SAME info that Birdnet put out on their pager, which is as good as birdguides or RBA? For only £40, this seems a bit unlikely.

What are the regions it covers? How small an area does it work for? For example, could I ask for only info from WWT Slimbridge, or Ham Wall, as I could on my birdguides' Bird News Anywhere with a couple of clicks on my iPhone? Or are you limited to large regions (i.e North West, South West, Midlands?).

Can I specifiy news within my own bespoke areas (i.e. 60km from Glos, 30km from Oxford)?

From what I was told at the birdfair, the answer to your first question is yes.

At the moment i believe all information is put out. They have not yet got a facility to localise the information i.e. only want info from NE England say. Best thing to get the answers to these questions is to send them an email via their website address.

CB

 

[Jonny Rankin]

Right. Presumably you are paying the £40 for access to the various Birdnet Twitter streams? Once you've paid, the service will accept your request to follow them and it'll just be like following any other Twitter stream?

And this is the SAME info that Birdnet put out on their pager, which is as good as birdguides or RBA? For only £40, this seems a bit unlikely.

Can I use the standard Twitter app, or do I have to bother with a branded app?

What are the regions it covers? How small an area does it work for? For example, could I ask for only info from WWT Slimbridge, or Ham Wall, as I could on my birdguides' Bird News Anywhere with a couple of clicks on my iPhone? Or are you limited to large regions (i.e North West, South West, Midlands?).

Can I specifiy news within my own bespoke areas (i.e. 60km from Glos, 30km from Oxford)?

Rite...

You can indeed use the standard Twitter apps... I started a new account specially for my trial.

You essentially subscribe via Twitter to whatever streams you would on the pager... I went for East Anglian updates and megas. Although you can also choose to follow the national stream and any number of regions you like... the news replicates what you would get via a birdnet pager.

I am not sure any news service offers updates below the regional level?!

I did notice the news differs from birdguides for example and seems to have a Norfolk / Essex bias? Presumably that reflects the birdnet service users.

I am yet to do a full review but I've had the trial over the bank holiday and its certainly impressed... :t:

 

[Pie Face]

Right. Presumably you are paying the £40 for access to the various Birdnet Twitter streams? Once you've paid, the service will accept your request to follow them and it'll just be like following any other Twitter stream?

And this is the SAME info that Birdnet put out on their pager, which is as good as birdguides or RBA? For only £40, this seems a bit unlikely.

Can I use the standard Twitter app, or do I have to bother with a branded app?

What are the regions it covers? How small an area does it work for? For example, could I ask for only info from WWT Slimbridge, or Ham Wall, as I could on my birdguides' Bird News Anywhere with a couple of clicks on my iPhone? Or are you limited to large regions (i.e North West, South West, Midlands?).

Can I specifiy news within my own bespoke areas (i.e. 60km from Glos, 30km from Oxford)?

At present it is £40 and nothing more. You do get the same info as you would with a Birdnet pager. This is a new service give it time and with the advances in technology it will improve further. The Birdguides filter is very good but If I were that regular at Ham Wall and Slimbridge I'd expect a phonecall ;-)

In case you missed it, on the previous page, there is a review on my blog.

 

[Jonny Rankin]

This is a new service give it time and with the advances in technology it will improve further.

Couldn't agree more

Also, read ya review and theres little I can add to that - v comprehensive :t:

 

[Jonny Rankin]

I did notice the news differs from birdguides for example and seems to have a Norfolk / Essex bias? Presumably that reflects the birdnet service users.

To update... the the reason I wasnt getting the Suffolk news through is because it is largely national news too & isnt replicated via the local channels. As such I have now added the national channel and all is top :t:

 

[Blue Alert]

The Birdguides filter is very good but If I were that regular at Ham Wall and Slimbridge I'd expect a phonecall ;-)

Oh, sure. It's just interesting to know how specific a service goes. I like functionality.

 

[Steve]

It has been moved to TV Radio etc.

 

[garry1366]

It has been moved to TV Radio etc.

What has?

 

[Steve]

http://www.birdforum.net/showthread.php?t=148517

This has.

 

[garry1366]

After resurrecting interest in this thread I thought I'd share my experience of the last week.

I have a HTC phone an HD2, it runs on windows mobile 6.5. It has a built in twitter client called peep which you can paste a shortcut to it on your homescreem and access the twitter thread direct from there without logging onto the internet, I found it to be excellent, however despite the phone being less than year old but it seems HTC don't provide much in the way of upgrades to their software.

In the last week Twitter have changed the way third party apps gain authorisation to the feed and despite knowing this was on the cards since last Dec HTC saw fit to do nothing about it. So I lost my twitter feed. I called Birdnet as I was en route to Orkney to ask if they could find anything out and Gareth got this info for me.

It's not the end of the world as there are loads of apps out there to use. I tried snaptu but this comes with loads of other apps as a bundle and you have to load it up each time which takes about 5 or 6 keystrokes and 30 secs for it to fire up, it is free but I got rid.

I now have moTweets which cost £2.69 but it's brilliant, you can pin a shortcut to the homescreen and it takes one stroke to be viewing your content. But the real reason I like it is it can be set to update every minute rather than every 5 with HTC peep and it also gives an audible alert everytime a message comes through (you can set this from any in your phones list) this to me addresses the only thing a pager was better at than twitter on a phone.

G