Happy New Year 2015

Snowfall at Schonbrunn Palace, Austria

New Features in Bhutan Biodiversity Portal

Bhutan Biodiversity Portal (www.biodiversity.bt) after launching on 17^th December 2013 is now one year older. More than 4000 observations are contributed by the portal users. Various documents and checklists can be found or uploaded in the portal.

Following are the few major features added during the upgrade (Adopted from Bhutan Biodiversity Portal Facebook page)

1. Multiple Observations - You can now upload multiple observation at once and the images you uploaded will be stored for 20 days. Therefore, you can always come back and upload the observations with details.

2. Audio Uploads - If you have captured the sounds and songs of species, you can upload them with observations.

3. Checklist - You can now upload checklist in various ways (spreadsheets, file uploads, and in a textbox)

4. Name Locks - If you are absolutely sure that the observation you uploaded is certain species, you can now LOCK the names so that other users will not be able to suggest names.

5. Document Views - Now you can view the documents without having to manually download. The uploaded documents will be displayed in a PDF viewer.

6. Contacting Users - You can contact any users by going to their profile. Click on the "Contact Me" button

7. Species Curation - The species pages can now be edited online by authorized users.

8. Taxon Browser - You can now browse through the taxon hierarchy using the Taxon Browser on the species page.

9. Advanced Search - Click on the down arrow near the search bar and you can search using different criteria.

For those interested to register here is the link  http://biodiversity.bt/register/index

Phone Zombies : Haiku

National Day and Me

Fourth King and the Fifth King of Bhutan serving the crowd during the 107th National Day (17 Dec. 2014)
                                                                                                                                     (Courtesy: facebook.com/KingJigmeKhesar)

What it’s like to miss the National Day, when my own brothers and sisters are happily celebrating the occasion? I know I am part of it but all I know is, what media informs me. What I do is, closely follow up with certain media and imagine I was right there.  Wonder, how I would feel if I was there the very moment standing and smiling before the beloved monarchs of Bhutan like I always wish. Well, it’s the 107^th National of Bhutan and the year is declared as the 60^th birth anniversary celebration of the Fourth King of Bhutan.

Indeed, King’s speech was inspiring, I read it online. I could see very huge crowds, I saw the picture. Every moment seems to be updated every single minute on that particular day, 17^th December 2014. Here, I am sitting and watching the wonderful occasion through my computer window.

Celebration in the fairy tale like Kingdom is something that everyone wishes to set for, and if you are a citizen of that Kingdom then the urges are extremely high like mine.