NatureLocator: Leaf Watch Strapline: A geospatial smart phone application enabling public engagement in biological survey work via the crowd sourcing of data collection and data validation Primary University Users: Researchers and students Primary Other Users:  Anyone interested in collecting or providing crowd-sourced, geotagged photographic data NatureLocator’s Leaf Watch app provides a cross-platform solution for crowd [...]

Alongside the validation widget we’ve included a small degree of gamification.  That is to say, we’ve attempted to try to stimulate participation by turning the validation process into a game.  In order to do this we thought that simple is best and we opted for a leader board.  Only the top five validators are shown [...]

We’ve been mightily pleased with the response to our new website and, in particular, with the number of people that have taken part in validating the data.  In just two days we have had 230 people sign in and start checking records for us. Quite a few of these generous souls have shown a tenacity [...]

Well, the brand new website for the Nature Locator: Leaf Watch project went live today. http://leafwatch.naturelocator.org Actually, it’s been live for about a week but in order to check it thoroughly and put it through its paces we decided not to advertise its presence widely until today.  So, at 4 p.m. this afternoon we mailed [...]

One of the principal reasons for creating the website was to enable us to do some more crowd sourcing work.  This time, we’re going to be asking the public to help us check and validate the data collected by the app. One of the the team (Jasper Tredgold) has coded up a widget that will [...]

The Nature Locator team have been beavering away designing and coding the new website for the Leaf Watch app.  This will be an invaluable addition to the project as it gives us a one-stop-shop location to direct people to in order to help them find out about the app and the project. Here’s a sneak [...]

The Nature Locator team recently submitted a proposal for the Delegate Showcase element of the upcoming Bristol Natural History Consortium’s Communicate conference.  This was accepted and we will be presenting the app at the conference on the 3rd November. http://www.bnhc.org.uk/home/communicate/programme/day-2.html

A few weeks back we passed the 5000 mark for the number of submissions we’d received from the app.  Given that it was only launched in July 2011 with minimal marketing, this is a fantastic tally.  The number of submissions has plateaued now at around 5200 due to most horse-chestnut trees being at least partly defoliated – a [...]

Due to our little mishap recently we collected a few rather bad reviews on the Android Marketplace.  The app didn’t work, so people told us what they thought – and why shouldn’t they? What I’m really impressed with however, is that two of the people that initially left negative reviews came back and “upgraded” their [...]

If we could have planned the worst time for a technical issue with the backend (where the app sends data) to occur, it would have been from Friday 16th and for a few days afterwards.  Why?  Well, because this coincided with our biggest press coverage yet – appearing on the One Show.  Unfortunately for us, [...]