Thursday, June 4, 2009

A Request to Tech Developers

I've been doing a lot of gardening lately and I'm not, let's face it, very good at it.  The problem is, I'm never entirely sure what I should be pulling out and what I should be carefully nurturing.

So could you please come up with a program that would let us submit a photo of something we've found in the garden and have it instantly identified as something we should cultivate, pull out or maybe call the authorities?

There are lots of sites that let you do this in reverse.  You have to hunt through stacks of names and descriptions until you find a picture of that thing growing in or crawling through your garden and that can be tedious.  Plus, by the time you get back out there, it will have either shrivelled up and died, or tripled in size.

This program could also work for skin conditions and the pills or paraphernalia that just fell out of your teenager's/spouse's/boss's pocket.

But make it foolproof please (I know I'm asking a lot).  I once asked one of those Know-It-All sites what animal eats iris bulbs.

The answer came back: Giant Pandas.

I waited up night after night.  Maybe they were just too big to see?

 

10 comments:

Jane said...

Flickr might be your friend here. There are groups full of smart people who like to show off a little and identify things. Try: http://www.flickr.com/groups/botany/
or
http://www.flickr.com/groups/whatplantisthat/

Good luck!

Barb McMahon and Alan Mailloux said...

How cool is that?!!! Thanks Jane!

Man I love the interwebs.

Skye @ Planet Jinxatron said...

If it were foolproof, the answer would obviously have been "invisible giant pandas."

Barb McMahon and Alan Mailloux said...

...or I wouldn't be allowed to post questions... ;)

Kim Velk said...

Brilliant ideas. You should have figured out some way to get paid for them! How, I don't know either but they are _that_ good.

Barb McMahon and Alan Mailloux said...

Well, thank you.

I'll keep thinking...

Michael Drips said...

There's been a serious Giant Panda infestation in my garden here in Folsom, California. Oh and those Giant Pandas are so sneaky! Sometimes they leave behind obviously fake snail trails or they put plastic replicas of earwig bugs in my flower pot just to put me off their trail.
Thanks for letting me know who the real culprits are!!

Barb McMahon and Alan Mailloux said...

Just a small service I provide...

iredaleorama said...

http://www.ubcbotanicalgarden.org/forums/showthread.php?t=27360

Check it out! a place to upload a photo and have the plant identified

for free!

;)

Barb McMahon and Alan Mailloux said...

That is so cool!