Dear Friends and Family; birder's, web developers, and others that have been curious :)
Finally, it is time to release a small portion of our baby out into the public. It has been a long long time coming, with endless hours of scratching our heads, but it's basic form has finally arrived... We'd like to introduce: Aviatlas! a public birding toolbox. Pronounced a-v-atlas, it's a map based web application, designed for the content to be added and edited by the users. Check it out at:
www.aviatlas.com
High Speed for Now
For those of you still in the Stone Age with dial up internet (just kidding I know it isn't your fault!) I'm sorry to say that your pretty much out of luck with Aviatlas at this point in time. You can give it a whirl if you like but I can't guarantee it won't be very frustrating. We are working on a text only version of Aviatlas but that unfortunately won't be available for a while to come yet, our apologies.
Test it out
What we'd like to encourage right now is for birder's to jump on board to share some info about their favorite local hotspots and test things out. As a web application this is no run-of-the-mill web page so be sure to e-mail any blips you might come across or thoughts for improvements. Also let us know how you use Aviatlas so we can further refine the project. With a little luck we hope to charge up some interest in joining the challenge Aviatlas. Our personal network of birders is rather small so if you would please pass Aviatlas on to birders that you know.
18,000 Hotspots on the map
You'll notice that when you open up Aviatlas it is already jammed packed with hotspots, nearly 18,000 in fact! These markers are what we call hotspot 'stubs', that were generously provided by ebird. These are unedited and unconfirmed Hotspots that need contribution and their locations confirmed. When the map first loads it appears that only the US is populated with these stubs, this is because we are using a complex ranking system to bring the most popular hotspots to the front. Be sure to explore other parts of the world. Don't get us wrong though, you don't have to take a trip halfway around the world to utilize Aviatlas - we already use Aviatlas to plan trips to the surrounding mountains in Tucson, but just imagine when we begin to get contributions in Peru, New Zealand, or Kenya!
A little history and purpose...Aviatlas began as one of those light bulb thoughts while sitting on the couch over two years ago and has budded into one heck of an after-hours-project. At conception it seemed like a simple enough idea... to bring birding information to an interactive map, but we were quickly reminded that the simplest things are by nature the most refined and complex things.
As budding birders and world travelers we desired multiple scales of birding information - local to worldwide, we wanted both opinion and facts about places, we wanted refined bird lists and ways to plan, document and share birding trips. Basically, we wanted a better way to harness and contribute to the knowledge in the absolutely massive birding community. So for us, the challenge and necessity was to build a seamless framework of tools for a public built, refined, and managed birding database. The solution was to utilize two technologies that were just beginning to take root at the time: Web 2.0 and place based information (interactive maps). Since then these two concepts have taken over the web and absolutely revolutionized the way we get information.
Hotspot WikiWhat you see today at Aviatlas is a result of a long period of massaging a broad framework of tools down to a very simple user interface. The first tool we are revealing is the Hotspot wiki tool that allows users to add, edit, move, delete, print and share birding hotspots. This simple tool at Aviatlas is only one of many that are in the oven. As Aviatlas builds we hope the users will take pride and responsibility in refining the descriptions of their local hotspots to be accurate and useful. So today we start simple and keep our fingers crossed that our tiny server can hold up!
Before it crashes! We'd like to give special thanks to Glen Eller, Scott Jackson Ricketts, and Allen Boynton, along with Blue Ridge Birder's for their spark and fire of inspiration. And a huge thanks to our developer Bob Anderson - who has magically brought our ideas from chicken scratch to reality!
Good Birding,
Aaron and Eva
Tucson, AZ
www.aviatlas.comPlease let us know how you put Aviatlas to use!
Also be sure to pass Aviatlas on to fellow birders, the whole thing relies on community input!
Questions, comments, ideas - you can reach us at:
info@aviatlas.com
Some examples on the site:Each individual Hotspot has it's own URL address:
Some quick Tips on how to use Aviatlas: - To navigate you can use the mouse scroll wheel to zoom in and out. Click and hold to pan the map. Double Click to zoom towards the location you want to go.
- Use the 'search' on the upper right of the screen to find any hotspot on the map (just try it, it tickles me how well it works!) example: mentidero wash
- Use the 'find' box in the lower left of the screen to navigate to a particular place in the world, example: riva san vitale, switzerland (no hotspots there yet though...)
- Be sure to try the different map modes for viewing (towards the top of the map) - my personal favorite is by far 'satellite' or 'hybrid' modes, it blows my mind every time i use it.
- If you get tired of seeing all of the hotspots and would rather just see the map, you can always turn off the hotspots under the 'viewing' drop down towards the top of the screen.
- Once you've signed up for an account you'll have the ability to contribute and also if you like a chance to make a public profile to share a little about yourself.
for more tips visit:
www.aviatlas.com/tips
