Help me to start my animal watching journal application

IF YOU ARE NOT ABLE TO DONATE THEN YOU CAN HELP ME SHARING THIS PROJECT IN YOUR SOCIAL NETWORKS, I WILL BE THANKFUL FOR YOUR KIND SUPPORT!

Why and what is this project about?

Well, I will start to answer to this questions with another question: Do you love and enjoy nature, animals and wildlife? If you do it then it is possible that sometimes you have experienced that special feeling that makes someone to believe that heaven is a place on earth (yes, like the title of that old song some of us listened on our childhoods) and maybe you have also wished to understand more about the things you saw.

For many years I have been practicing outdoors sports like hiking, trekking, some climbing; I have been lucky enough to visit some god blessed places that have left unique memories on my mind, have made me dream to return and wish to understand more about what I have seen (that's why at my near 40 years old I still hope to someday study biology).

Well, along this years I also have seen and met some people who studies animal life, work on conservancy projects or just help to build statistics about many animals species; to collect information they use to carry an small notebook, a pen, a camera and sometimes some extra stuff as laptop, GPS or another hard to understand devices. If you take a close look, most of the basic stuff exists on many of the people pockets in a form of a iPhone.

Scientists, students, explorers, adventurers, travelers and all kinds of people actually use their phones to take photos of the things that catch their attention; so why not  to use that technology to automatically store the basic information needed to build an animal watching journal? It doesn't really matter if a person are watching animals because of hobbie or professional studies, keeping some basic information will be helpful to understand in a better way what caught your attention, and even more, that information could be shared with other people or institutions that find it valuable for their studies, specially when they are not always lucky enough to be in the right place and time.

So, that´s this work about, to develop an application to build an animal watching journal able to automatically collect some basic information taking advance of the technological capabilities of an iPhone.

Features of the application.

The main features I want to include in the journal applications are:

1. Camera application and photo album. Many of you will be wondering why to build a camera application and a photo album when an iPhone already has them? It is because every photo will store additional data that standard camera application doesn't save and because every photo will be liked to internal database registers with the automatic information collected by the application as well as user notes.

2. Store automatic information. Every time a photo is taken the application will automatically try to save the following information (based on device conditions)

- GPS coordinates (when GPS available).

- Altitude (when GPS available).

- General weather information (when internet available).

- Inclination angle of the camera. This information used with additional data and a few math skills can be helpful to have an idea of how high a bird is flying in example.

- Date and time

3. User information. The application will allow users to enter their own related notes.

4. User defined categories. The application will allow to classify all the pictures taken into user defined categories.

5. Map visualization. Using google maps (or maybe another provider) people will be able to locate on a map the place where pictures where taken.

6. Sharing options. There will be options to send the pictures and their notes by emai, iPhone chat message or sync it with pc.

What devices will be able to use this application?

Only iPhones.

How money will be used?

The money I am requesting is needed to pay the following things:

• A Mac computer - 0.00 USD. Yes it is zero because I already have one, quite old but it works.
• A Mac developer subscription - 100 USD. It will be needed to access to developer resources, upload application, test, publish, etc.
• An iPhone - 650 USD. To build an application for iPhone, the simulator for Mac is helpful but finally an iPhone is needed to debug, tune and test. The price requested is the price listed on its website. If you are wondering why not to take one with a cellphone plan that would be cheaper, here in my country this devices are ridiculous expensive (even more its original price) and getting it with a plan will only allow me to get it at the normal price, so I will prefer to buy it over internet and pay transportation to my country... its gonna be the less expensive choice.
• Transportation to my country - 150 USD. Because as I said it is the less expensive choice.
• A website to promote the application - 80 USD. This is the average price of the subscription for one year to a hosting plan, with some basic capabilities and including a domain name
• Taxes and unexpected additional values 120 USD. Im sure there will exist and probably they will be more.

Well, as you can see I need 1100 USD to start; anyway if someone wants to donate more then it will be a kind action.

What will people get by their donation?

When I start the project, once when website be done it will include a page named "Special thanks to", that page will include one first section with the names (only the names) of the people who did the 5 higher donations sorted by value, and another section with the alphabetically sorted names of all the rest of persons who also sent some money.

If two or more persons donates the same value and they are part of top 5 higher donations then they will share their position on chart.

If a person does more than one donation then I will sum their values and consider as a single one.

Finally, the names of the people on the top 5 higher donations will also be included in the "animal watching journal" application that I will develop for iPhone. It will include in the lower right corner of the main screen a legend titled "Special thanks to", it will be a link to a screen where I will show their names.

If any person who does a donation doesn't want to show his/her name in the lists then should let me know sending me a message.

The names I will include in the chart are the names donators are showing in their profiles and they are the only responsible for its authenticity.

I reserve the right to not include, without any previous advise, the name of any donator if I found that: it is using the name of a company and I can't prove its authenticity, or if it uses any word or term that can result offensive to other people. So please, better use always real names.

All the names included in the developed website will be visible for the first two years from the begining of the project; the names included in the developed application for iPhone will be available in all its versions released the first two years from the begining of the project.

How long will be needed to develop this project?

Well, actually I work for a company but this is my personal project, I'm also still learning development techniques for iPhone, so the time I have to use learning and developing this application is limited just to maybe 2 hours per day. It means that the first version will be released about 6 to 10 months later of the time the total money to start be collected. The website will be online about 1 month after the total money be collected and funded to my account, there will be shown the status of the total project.

How will donators know the status of the development?

Well for all those who send me their email address I will send back a message as soon as I can pay the web hosting, domain name and publish an starting version of the site (about 1 month after the total money for the project be collected and funded to my account). There I will show the application development status.

Will the final application have a price to download an install?

Yes, I will publish it in apple store and it will have a cost per download but I still haven't determined it's final price, anyway it will be probably not more than (5 USD per download).

Why will it have a cost?

The money I will get for the selling of the application will be used for maintenance, improvements, pay my work and also because I really really really need an extra income.

Why do I say I also need an extra income?

Have you heard that need is the mother of all invention or creativity? Well I have many needs now, really bad ones, I have fell into a hole that is swallowing me and after praying for help and crying for a while, I finally understood that the only way to change my situation is being smart, working harder, using my skills, trying to do something better, focus on something for future and not only for the moment… That's why I remembered this project I had time ago and never started, for me this is the moment to do it.

Anything else to say?

Just my sincere thanks from the my heart to everyone who believes in me. With your donation you are doing much more than only sponsoring a project, you are bringing back to me the faith. If you want to promote my project using your social networks or your personal website then feel free to do it.


Guillermo Hurtado