Category Archives: Opinion

Google AdBirds – Finally the Google Adwords campaign for Birdeez

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Google introduced a revolutionary new advertising service today, Google Adbirds.

Screen Shot 2014-04-01 at 11.01.42 AM

Those of you familiar with Birdeez will clearly see why this new service was tailored to our demographics. Birds can be designed to carry messages on their bill, head, wings and tail. Once designed, if your bid is high enough, the birds are released into the wild to bring their messages to bird feeders and backyards everywhere.

It’s clear that the Google design team took a lesson from the Birdeez handbook, designing an interface suspiciously similar to the Birdeez bird identification interface.

We hope the next time you’re out birding, you’ll see one of our feathered friends tattooed with our messages. We at Birdeez believe this is the best way to reach the 48 million Americans who bird watch!

Birdeez Launches from UCSB to Change the World – SB Audubon Society

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Thomas Kuo

Birdeez Team Launching Into Action to Change the World!
Left to Right – Thomas Kuo, Jeff Simeon and Patrick Toerner.

El Tecolote Logo - Santa Barbara Audubon SocietyA version of this article originally appeared in the Santa Barbara Audubon Society‘s news letter – El Tecolote for June-July 2013.

If numbers are to be believed, only a quarter of those reading this sentence can identify birds. The US Fish and Wildlife Service reports that 74% of people who watch birds can identify fewer than 20 species by sight. We at Birdeez hope to change that and, in the process, change the world.

Birdeez is an iPhone app, but you can think of it as the un-iBird. Instead of being an encyclopedia, we built Birdeez to be the easiest app for anyone to pick up and start learning local birds. The app knows where you are and what birds are near you at any given time of year.  Enter a bird’s shape, size and color and you’ll get a short list of birds that match. You can even save your bird sightings right in the app. We designed it to help anyone from 7 to 70 years old learn their birds. By connecting more people to the birds around them, we hope to create the next generation of environmental stewards. Continue reading →

Slate is WRONG – Bird Apps are great for kids and birds!

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A Slate article posted yesterday “Birding Applications: Great For Kids, Bad for Birds?” has a title that is misleading at best, and at worst an outright lie. Strong words, I know, but I think warranted because getting children outside and learning is an imperative for society and a focus of ours at Birdeez.

Jason Bittel begins with a sentiment we can agree with:

Getting kids into nature is a tough sell today. Inside, we have computers, televisions, video games, and climate control. Outside, there are mosquitoes, sunburn, and poison ivy. Of course, these two worlds are not inherently incompatible, and smartphones are starting to provide a link between them.

After that point, children completely fall out of the article. There are no children with smartphones running amok destroying birds with their apps. Continue reading →