Online or local is a key decision and there are no "right or wrong" answers.
Most online systems probably have good backup and security mechanisms and
you can access them from any PC (or other device!) in the world if there is
an Internet connection. Unfortunately (as we saw with birdinfo and with
many other online service in other areas) their commercial model may not
work too well and you should always make sure that you have some form of
local copy of your data in case they disappear one day. (And this is NOT in
any way intended as a criticism of Eremaea, which I think is a great site!)
Having the data on your own PC means you are not dependant on the internet
(which can be important - I usually take my PC on birding trips and they
are often in places without Internet access) but many people fail to back
up their own PCs and when the disaster strikes (in my case water spilt in
the PC) they lose everything - only I didn't as I am paranoid about
backups. And as I wrote my own system it can give me all the reports I want!
So there are pros and cons both ways - of course having data in an online
system means that others can benefit from your sightings! One thing I have
learnt is not to trust the statistics from online sites - some people tend
to record highlights and not report the common stuff so you find that stuff
which you see every time at a site gets reported only 50% of the time.
On 23 July 2012 18:14, Tim Bawden <> wrote:
> <>
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