[Taxacom] iPhone floristics

[Paul Hargraves]

Listers et al.,
  Never having been successful at insisting that phytoplankton students 
identify their unknowns by measurements and descriptions, rather than 
just matching up published pictures,  I note this recent app to take 
things one step further:
> *New iPhone App Assists Identification of Harmful Algal Species*
> A volunteer from the NOAA Phytoplankton Monitoring Network’s Texas Master Naturalist group, in collaboration with National Centers for Coastal Ocean Science (NCCOS) scientists, developed an iPhone application to assist marine phytoplankton and harmful algae identification. This “app” includes images from an NCCOS gallery of common phytoplankton and recordings of a staff scientist’s pronunciation of each species’ name. The application also contains a flash card game to improve volunteers’ identification skills. The app, which works on both the iPod Touch and iPhone, drew over one hundred downloads within the first few days of release. Three quarters of downloads were in the U.S., and the Japanese were the most active international downloaders. A description of this application, with links to a video demo and iTunes download, is at http://www.gano.name/shawn/phyto/.

The utility (?) of this app in "identifying" Harmful Algal Bloom species 
(with all the attendant potential health and economic implications upon 
misidentification) is on YouTube: > 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RswbKVnf-Dw

Is this sort of thing common in other areas?

PEH