The only time that the What’s Invasive apps will save your position and send it to our server is when you push the button to collect a weed or pest location. The app does not transmit your location continuously or is able to track your movements.

After you have pushed the button and collected the weed or pest location, on the iPhone you must then upload this information that you just collected by going to the Upload tab and manually initiating a data transfer. Any location data that you collected can also be deleted from the Upload queue before sending other weed locations to the server.

On the Android, the observation will be uploaded automatically after one minute — however, you can delete any observations before they get uploaded and you can also turn this feature off in the Settings menu.

You might be able to get a “trace” of your location if you repeatedly push the “collect” button while you are moving, but that still requires you to manually collect your location — there is nothing automatic about sending your location to our server.

When the app is on, the GPS is turned on, so the phone itself “knows” your location. But those data are not transmitted anywhere until you take action and collect a weed or pest data point and then manually upload that point or have the Android upload it after one minute to allow you to change your mind.

As an additional layer of security, you should always choose a username that does not expose you or any personal information about you. All data collected by everyone in the What’s Invasive! system is publicly available for download and within those data we DO associate your weed and pest location measurements with your username.

However, if your username is “secure” then no one will be able to connect you to your username. We do NOT associate your real name with the data you collected, only your username and we do not collect the UDID number associated with your particular phone.

There is also no requirement that you provide your real name when signing up (we currently do not even check for a valid email, although you might still want to provide an email contact in case we need to send you update information — we don’t do this regularly and have only done it once in two years).

I hope that this information about how the system works allows you to choose how and when you want to participate in collecting weed and pest information. We hope that the levels of security that we have instated are sufficient, but if you have any other suggestions or concerns, please let us know!

- Eric

“hope your apps could be enjoyed by chinese users, haha.”

The method is to make sure that all text in the application is placed inside of strings in the resource fork of the application. We then sent them the XML of strings to translate. They then send back the translated XML, we put it into the same fork (but a different folder that can be selected when the user changes the system language on the phone), then send them back the newly compiled app.

http://m.91.com/Soft/Detail.aspx?Platform=Android&f_id=4002113

We assume then that this company gets some sort of revenue through advertising, because our app is free, but if anyone can look at this page and tell us more, then that would be great!

http://eddmaps.org/

What’s Invasive! is now collaborating EDDMapS, putting the location data of invasive weeds discovered by the What’s Invasive! system in the hands of both local environmental managers and also of national weed experts!

Geotagging of photos occurs via GPS regardless of cell phone connectivity and location information is stored along with the text and photo observations. When cell connectivity is re-established, uploads will occur and the correct geotags will be sent along with the observations.

If GPS is turned off, and there is no cellular connectivity to triangulate for secondary geolocation, then observations will not be located and location information will have to be inserted via the website for every observation.

The Android has an option to turn off automatic uploads in case connectivity is very slow or battery life is an issue. This option must be set back to “on” before uploads will occur.

We already have expanded from our pilot park in Santa Monica to include the Channel Islands in California, Rock Creek Park in Washington DC, and with the help of one of our Danish graduate students, Denmark (“Danmark” in Danish), to show off the system to a group of Europeans.

If you want to check out the capabilities of setting up a new park, then first login to What’s Invasive! (if you don’t already have a login, it’s easy to sign up).

After that, go to “Account” in the upper right menu and select “Manage Sites”. The first thing to do is set up the park and you should use the official NPS acronym as the Park Tag (non-NPS locations will be designated with 5 or 6 letters). After that, there are a series of pages that should be easy to understand and walk you through the process of creating species and uploading images of them.

Once the park is approved, then everyone with an Android phone running What’s Invasive will be able to access the species list and collect location data. Be sure to download the newest version of the Android app to get all the latest functionality.

A new iPhone app with the same capabilities is coming soon!