Thomas got a great shout out today from the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department (ECE) at UCSB. And why shouldn’t he? He’s finishing excellent research in computer vision AND winning DEMOgod awards with us at Birdeez.
A team of UC Santa Barbara students including ECE Ph.D. student, Thomas Kuo, has landed a DEMOgod award for their app “Birdeez” at the DEMO, The Launchpad for Emerging Technology and Trends, Fall 2012 competition.
Aww, shucks! Wonder team? Sure, we have the brains, the birds and the mustache to power this team, but we were still blushing from this compliment from UCSB’s Engineering Department.
A team of UC Santa Barbara alumni that took first place in the 2012 New Venture Competition market track has landed a DEMOgod award for their app Birdeez at the DEMO Fall 2012 competition.
Well, that’s just true. We guess we won’t fight it.
Read the rest of their coverage on the UCSB Engineering website.
I got to talk with Robin Eschler of Socially Conscious Investing again recently. This time it was about our recent DEMOgod Win and what this means for Birdeez. As she said:
Birdeez makes birdwatching fun and accessible for novices and experts alike. It not only quickly identifies wild birds through geolocation, a recent sightings list of birds and some quick entries regarding size, shape and color, it also helps scientists track birds to gain more data from every sighting. Plus, it is the intent of the Birdeez team that it will promote greater interest and understanding of our natural environment by making birdwatching fun and easy for children and adults alike.
Listen to the interview below!
Or read about it on Social Impact Marketing, the home of Socially Conscious Investing.
I hope to continue to make the Bren School, and the Eco-entrepreneurship Program there, proud with Birdeez!
Bird watchers know birds, right? Not necessarily, according to Jeff Simeon (MESM 2012), who says that most self-identified birders can name only twenty of the 900 bird species found in North America.
Simeon knows this from research he conducted for his Bren School Eco-E project, which was to develop and market Birdeez, a new iPhone app that makes it easy to identify, record, and share bird sightings. Things are going well for CEO and design presenter Simeon and his partners on the technical side, UCSB undergraduate economics student Patrick Toerner and PhD student Thomas Kuo, who studies computer vision.
We’ll do more than just help you name it, but that is a good start!
The uniqueness of Birdeez is that you can search data associated with your location, as well as keep track of birds you see. This educational app also adds to the database for other Birdeez users.
We love getting the coverage in our home town paper! Hope we made you Santa Barbara folks proud.
Birdeez awarded one of 5 prestigious awards for their product launch at DEMO Fall 2012
Read the whole article here on the Santa Barbara Independent.
Boingo CEO Dave Hagan provided feedback to startups at DEMO Fall 2012, and we were picked as one of their favorites:
Birdeez (EcoLek LLC):Birdeez was founded by three UC Santa Barbara students just this year to encourage people to “reconnect with nature.” The easy-to-use app can help the surprisingly large “birder” community identify and learn more about birds that they spot, logs the sightings, and allows users to share via social networking sites. The founders plan to enhance the app with crowdsourcing functionality in the future, allowing users to take pics and upload them to the Birdeez community and database.
DEMO Fall 2012 really went great for us, and we feel lucky to have been picked up by Yahoo Finance!
Birdeez was awarded a DEMOgod award for their innovative product and presentation. A DEMO first, the Birdeez team was accompanied on stage by a live falcon for their presentation.
We were picked up by TechCrunch for our appearance at DEMO. People always seemed shocked to have a Bird app as part of their lineup. Bird watching is one of the things that drove the development of the internet! Maybe we’ll have to do a retrospective on bird watching and technology.
From TechCrunch:
Ecolek’s Birdeez grew out of a student project at UC Santa Barbara. A bird in the hand is worth two on your phone, or something. The app, simply put, helps bird-watchers identify and track whales. No, just kidding, it helps them track birds they see on their routine bird-watching adventures. Birdeezows read descriptions of the avian animals you identify, keep track of all your sightings and even tweet about it. Get it? Tweet? Warning: This app may not have quite as much utility if you’re an urban dweller. You can only identify pigeons so many times.
WE DISAGREE! There are likely close over 50 species of birds near you even if you are in a city! We chose to launch the app with an American Kestrel because it is an amazingly beautiful bird you can see almost anywhere in the US. We also were looking for a Peregrine Falcon since that is a species that nests on City Hall in Santa Clara!
Read about the rest of the 14 Most Interesting Startups to Emerge from DEMO on TechCrunch.
Some great coverage in TechHive of our Birdeez Launch!
The mobile age opened the door to a new way of identifying birds, taking advantage of the peculiar capabilities of smartphones, Simeon said. He calls Birdeez “Foursquare for birds.”