CollinsBirds

CollinsBirds launched in Februrary 2010. It is a community site for birdwatchers with sighting maps, bird descriptions, illustrations and photos.  The site is intended as a companion to the publisher's book series, which is the most extensive in the UK. It is also designed to encourage new and younger people to take up birding.

We used a combination of HarperCollins' own gazateer (a list of sighting locations) by longitude and latitude and species data and combined it with Google's mapping data so that users can plot sightings of species around the world. One of the more complex features of the site is the alerts, which let people know when their favourite species are spotted in a certain place.  We also built social networking features such as profiles and "walls", photo uploading tools and a forum.