Web bird news vs Yahoo Group bird news
Some people have expressed concern that this service will kill off the Yahoo Group or conversely that the Yahoo Group is a better way of disseminating bird news. In this article I present the pros and cons. This service has been running in Berkshire since 2000 and has been a tremendous success. However, it's entirely dependent on user input and it's the users who will decide whether the advantages really do outweigh the disadvantages.
Advantages
For Recorders
- Records can be downloaded at any time and easily imported into other database systems.
- Species, sites and observers are in a consistent format.
For birders
- You can easily see all of today/previous day's news on one page without having to sift through lots of emails.
- You can search for records by species, site, observer and date.
- Records are periodically exported to the county database saving you from compiling monthly reports to send to the Recorder.
- In addition to the web, bird news is available by email, on mobile phones, and RSS.
- News can be viewed and submitted in the field by anybody with a wap-capable phone.
- If you've got a Blackberry (or other email-capable) phone you can receive email alerts in the field.
- You don't have to register to view bird news.
Disadvantages
- By its very nature it presents the news as a list of dry facts.
- Logging in and filling in a form is not as quick and easy as sending an email to a Yahoo Group.