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.”
The Birdeez Team on stage with the other DEMOgods at DEMO Fall 2012.
We are amazed to announce that we are DEMOgods! After our great presentation on October 3rd, we were selected as one of the best! As Meghan Kelly of Venture Beat puts it:
Out of the 77 companies that demonstrated their products at this week’s DEMO conference, only five won the coveted DEMO God award. These startups don’t only have great businesses, but were awesome on stage.
We’re looking forward to taking this win and continuing to build a fantastic company. Thanks to Venture Beat and all the folks at DEMO Fall 2012 that voted for us!
We felt very honored to be chosen as one of the 77 companies to launch at DEMO Fall 2012 by Venture Beat. Their coverage was really great, and it was awesome to learn that Executive Editor Dylan Tweney is himself a beginning birdwatcher!
The U.S. has an estimated 48 million birdwatchers, but 74 percent can’t identify more than 20 birds.
I’d fall in that category: I could point out a red-tailed hawk, a turkey vulture, a crow, and … a bunch of little brown birds. But with 900+ species in the country, I know I’m missing a lot.
Fortunately, there’s an app for that.
Birdeez is an iPhone app that makes it “ridiculously easy,” in the words of cofounder Jeff Simeon, to identify birds and then share your sightings on Twitter. I can only imagine that if the geeky Jack Black character in “The Big Year” had this app, he’d have powered to the top of the rankings much faster than that annoying Owen Wilson character.
We’re in MacWorld! Here is a short quote from me.
“We’re really passionate about getting people outside, exploring nature again. Kind of unplugging from their computer screens,” he said. Simeon has worked as an environmental educator, while Toerner is a recent graduate in economics and Kuo is an electrical engineer. Their company, EcoLek, grew out of a business-school project at the University of California at Santa Barbara.
Hilarious sentiment in CIO!
While some people think social, location-based mobile apps are for the birds, others might like to use them for that very purpose. That’s the idea behind Birdeez, an iOS app created by three partners in California who have birdwatchers in their sights.