Hi Luke,
I agree twitter is indeed a useful tool for near-instant reporting of
birding information. I think there are two reasons why it is not the
equivalent of a rare bird pager/sms system such as they have in the UK. The
first is network coverage. To use twitter you must be on a 3G network, or
use the slow and more expensive GPRS system. This is basically restrictive
in that you can't use it to report that Grey Falcon you saw at Cunnamulla
until you get back near Brisbane. The other reason is verification. Eremea
has a lag in reporting because there is a human in between you and the
reporters making sure that incorrect reports are caught before they become
public. Twitter would be completely unverified, so you would have to take
each report with a grain of salt unless you knew the person reporting to be
reliable.
That said, I see value in twitter as a technology for this style of thing,
particularly as a way of accessing Eremea.
Regards,
Chris
ps. I'm also keen to check out Google Wave, but haven't been able to get an
invite as yet.
On Wed, Nov 4, 2009 at 9:20 PM, Russell Woodford <>wrote:
> HI Luke
>
> You raise some very interesting points here. I've taught web design in the
> past, but threw it out in favour of a subject I called "Web 2.0" where I
> tried to get students to use and learn about a wide range of tools. The most
> time-consuming and difficult thing - and certainly the most exciting - was
> that I could never repeat the same course from one semester to the next.
> There were new technologies and tools every time the course came up again!
>
> Now I'm interested in Google Wave, and hope to get some birders to try it
> out. I'm still trying to get my head around how it works, let alone how it
> can work for a birding community. There will be some who don't want to leave
> the plain old email system we have now, but there will be many keen to
> explore the possibilities of Wave.
>
> We do have a birding-aus Twitter Feed and anyone can subscribe to that -
> sorry, can "Follow" that! There is also a feed from the Eremaea rare bird
> sightings. Thanks for Paul Dodd for setting up these feeds. If you missed
> Paul's message about how these work, here are the links (you can find Paul's
> full message on the Archives).
>
> Birding-Aus [birdlingaus] http://twitter.com/birdingaus
> Birdline Australia [birdlineaus] http://twitter.com/birdlineaus
> Birdline Central & Southern Queensland [birdlinecsq]
> http://twitter.com/birdlinecsq
> Birdline North Queensland [birdlinenq] http://twitter.com/birdlinenq
> Birdline NSW [birdlinensw] http://twitter.com/birdlinensw
> Birdline NT [birdlinent] http://twitter.com/birdlinent
> Birdline Tasmania [birdlinetas] http://twitter.com/birdlinetas
> Birdline Victoria [birdlinevic] http://twitter.com/birdlinevic
> Birdline Indonesia [birdlineindon] http://twitter.com/birdlineindon
>
> Happy twittering!
>
> Russell
>
>
> Russell Woodford
> Birding-Aus List Owner
>
> Geelong Victoria Australia
> http://www.birding-aus.org
>
>
>
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