Date: Fri, 29 Aug 2003 14:04:23 -0400 Reply-To: Maryland Birds & Birding Sender: Maryland Birds & Birding From: Gary Pokrant Subject: Cornell Lab of Ornithology's Birder's Diary version 3 will be rel eased September 30th. MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain I thought the group would be interested in the following announcement I just received. Note toward the end of the message that they are also looking for last minute beta testers. Gary Pokrant Rockville, MD Gary.Pokrant@rfs.com Cornell Lab of Ornithology's Birder's Diary version 3 will be released September 30th. We are getting really, really close! Birder's Diary v3 was officially unveiled at the British Bird Fair in England on August 15-17th. Response from birders and world tour leaders was overwhelming! They loved the ease-of-use and the ability to say a bird's name and have the sighting entered. Having over 20,000 alias names was also a big hit. You can enter a sighting, even if you are not sure of the bird's current common or scientific name. Everything was easy to find. Complex or advanced features were out of view until you asked for them. The five bird taxonomic lists were all up-to-date. You can now make your own splits and lumps without waiting for the annual updates. The British birders especially liked the ability to use English-US or English-UK common bird names as well as Spanish, French or German names Birder's Diary v3 also includes Whales and Dolphins of the World as well as North American Butterflies. Birder's Diary version 3 is finished and is now in the hands of beta testers. We are currently working with beta version number 55, so you can see we have been busy! The final Help files are being created in September and a final bug-fix marathon will take place during the second week of September. We hope to begin shipping in later September. We are now accepting orders. Call 800-865-2473. If you own a previous version of Birder's Diary, you can get version 3 at a reduced price. Order before October 1st and you will also receive 5 years of free updates to the taxonomic lists and checklists. If you would like to help us with the final stage of beta testing, let us know. We need feedback about your experiences with Birder's Diary version 3 during the first hour of use. We need to know where you got stumped and what we can do to make using the program even easier. If everything worked perfectly we wouldn't mind hearing about that as well. If you volunteer, please let us know if you have watched any of the help videos on our web site. Have you read any of the Frequently Asked Questions? How would you describe your computer expertise? We are looking for new beta testers of all skill levels. You do not need to own an earlier version of Birder's Diary. You will be expected to sign a confidentiality form and to send a detailed log to us via email detailing your experiences after 1, 2 and 3 hours of use. You must have a computer with a Pentium 300 Processor or the equivalent and 128 MB or more of RAM. If you are interested, please email Pete@Birding.com and put "Glutton for Punishment" in the subject line. We will only be accepting a very limited number of volunteers. *** ======================================================================= To leave the MDOsprey list, send e-mail to listserv@home.ease.lsoft.com with the following message in line 1: signoff mdosprey ======================================================================= =========================================================================