five questions

[Greg Sepesi]

Hi, All.

I haven't done much field guide development in the last couple of years. However my last day of four hour daily commuting was last week and now, with my much appreciated train-free days, I'm ready to get back to field guide development. To help ensure that I don't stray too far from what is actually wanted in a field guide, please take a few minutes to answer the following five questions.

1) How many paperback field guides do you have?

2) How many field guide applications do you have?

3) Typically, how frequently do you use a field guide (e.g., once per week)?

4) Typically, when you use a field guide, how long do you use it (e.g., 5 minutes)?

5) If you had a magic wand, how would you change your field guides?


Thanks,
Greg

P.S., you can reply to this group or, if you would rather keep your reply confidential, email me at "sepesi at eduneer.com"

[5UKM]

Hey we are alive !
My answers to your questions

1) 12 + including Birds,Animals, Bugs, Flowers, Trees etc (5 are bird
books)
2) 2 Tangled & Bird ID .. both on a Palm TX
3) As needed .. could be a dozen times a day to once a month,
according to where & what I am doing
4) 5 - 10 minutes for ID purposes. Way longer if the particular book
gives more info'.
5) As a teenager in the UK, I owned a collection of.. "Observers Book
of British ... Birds, Mammals, Fish, Trees, etc." I owned them all!
Each book was HARD backed, 6"x 4" x 1". Real pocket sized. Very
comprehensive, giving good description, habits & habitat.The bird book
was my bible
& I could recite it, gave full nesting habits,egg description,
migration etc...

Now I know that in the UK, - Bird, Animal etc. species counts are
relatively few compared to USA, & can be comfortably fitted into a
small book .. but you did say if I had a magic wand .. That is the
main reason I do like TANGLED .. it fits all into my Palm TX. Just
missing the habits, nesting & otherwise of the birds.
The other negative is nothing to do with the application, its to do
with the PDA, impossible to see it in any sort of bright light, most
frustrating. & of course I retired to the USA to the Mojave Dessert
where the sun shines BRIGHT .... hence the paperbacks for ID purposes.

[Greg Sepesi]

Thanks for your answers.

There is a lot of activity in screen technology. We can only hope that we'll eventually have access to an inexpensive, high resolution, color, touch screen display that is easily viewed in direct sunlight, does not require a lot of power, and is hopefully not particularly toxic to manufacture.

In the Tangled field guide, some of the bird information that you mentioned (e.g., nesting habits, egg description, migration) is hidden in the attributes list. For example, if I check just Canada Goose in the classification list and then project that check to the attribute list the result is 14 checks:

- breeding habitat: wetland-open water
- primary diet: green plant-matter
- secondary diet: aquatic invertebrates
- gender appearance: monomorphic
- pair-bonding: strongly monogamous
- shape: swimmer
- size: between crow and hawk

- value range: brood count
- value range: clutch size
- value range: fledge time
- value range: incubation time
- value range: length
- value range: wingspan

The value range information is hidden even more because the only way to access that is by setting the sort order in the classification list.

Anyway, I think the idea of linking together field guide information from a variety of sources during initialization is a keeper, but making that information easy to access needs work in Tangled. Perhaps there should be another shortcut letter (e.g., 'o' for other) associated with each species that would gather all the attribute information into one page.

[Mark L. Schropp Jr.]

Sorry for the delay. I hope this information helps

1) I have about 3 paperback field guides.

2) I have only the Tangled field guide application that I run on Palm OS.

3) I use my guides once or twice a week.

4) When I do use a guide it varies from 5 minutes to an hour.

5) My magic wand would make sure that any update to the Tangled guide
would work on my Palm TX.

[Greg Sepesi]

Thanks for taking the time to answer those questions.

As usual, the American Ornithologists' Union updated their checklist of North American birds this summer. Later this week I plan to include that updated information in an update to the PalmOS version of Tangled and the birds of North America multimedia.

- Greg