I don't necessarily mind that many of the submissions look like sports team logos.  After all, we're going for dynamic, and sport teams embody that characteristic. 

My favorites of the entries tend toward the more abstract.  #55 (and its various cousins) are clean, elegant and simple.  They'd reproduce equally well in stamped/formed jewelry, clothing or stationery.  They would also lend themselves to being used as embossed elements.  The artist has shown us what they'd look like on a webpage banner, business card, as a watermark, etc.  I also like #6 for the same reasons (despite it looking like it could live on the side of a football helmet).  It's not as kinetic as #55 but the falcon head silhouette is spot-on.  It would certainly work well as an insignia.  It's simple enough to be used in a variety of applications (ornaments, watermark/embossed, pins/jewelry, web banners, etc).

For pure dynamism, I like 19, 28 & 62, all the product of the same artist. These are very sports-like, but they convey a definite sense of power and motion.  They'd work well as graphic elements, whether on clothing or printed material; perhaps not so well as pieces of jewelry though.

For whimsy and daring it's hard to beat 54, even though I think "dragon" rather than "falcon" when I see it.  The design is reminiscent of Anglo-Saxon or Celtic interlaced art, which I greatly enjoy and admire.

As for the rest, there is something to like in just about every one of the designs. I don't envy the Merchandise Committee for the tough job they're going to have whittling down the choices (or choosing none of the above).  Best of luck to them and to all the talented artists who rose to the challenge.

It looks like the wrong set of coordinates were entered. There are always two solutions to the satellite tracking equations. (Remember those quadratic equations in high school algebra?) These two solutions represent the positions on the Earth's spherical surface that intersect the line representing the direction of Quest's signal as determined by the Doppler shift of the orbiting satellites. At least that's how I understand it.

Anyway, there are always two sets of coordinates, and it is usually the first set that is correct. However,  in this case, the 2nd set was correct, but the 1st set was plotted on the map. Quest's correct position was near Prince Edward Point

Well, my working theory is that Quest was abducted by aliens and taken to their base high in the boreal forests of Colorado...

Unfortunately Argos doesn't provide any guidance as to which of the two sets of coordinates are the correct one for any given data set.  Thus far, it has always been the case that the first set are correct, but context is clearly important when plotting the data...

The data point was pretty obviously bogus. Not only does it show Quest hundreds of miles farther west than she's ever traveled, but the nearest data points both before and after the one plotted were back at PEP.  Those data points had very poor Location Class and quality values associated with them.  But she's been so boring lately with her concentration around Prince Edward Point that I thought I'd spice up the map with a little "zinger" courtesy of Argos.

BTW, if anyone decides to submit a logo to Crowdspring, please do it anonymously under a username other than what you normally go by. Let the submission stand on its own merit and not on your reputation.

Agreed.  I was thinking the same thing.

Anyone can sign up at crowdSpring as a designer.

Yes, but not everyone has the software to put ideas into motion.  Is there anything free on the internet that we can use?

I'd recommend the GIMP

It's a very powerful program, on par with Adobe Photoshop, but if you're not versed in its use, you may have a hard time learning what you'd need to in order to build a pro-quality logo in time to meet the submission deadline...

Anyone can sign up at crowdSpring as a designer.

40/41, 38, 32, 28, 19, 17, 6 & 5 are my favorites right now.  41, 32, 28, 6 & 5 got the falcon right & they look the most dynamic, so they're in my top tier.  38 has a nice design, a bit different from the others.  28 is very dynamic and, dare I say, patriotic in its color scheme. Something about 6 really grabs me... I'm not sure the green fade scheme would work well on merchandise, but the simplicity of the design is eye-catching.

I too liked our Kaver in the egg design, and it will certainly be retired with all the respect and gratitude due to it.  It was designed for us by one of the many unsung members of the Kodak Birdcam team at Kodak.com.  I think she did a heck of a job, putting in a lot of hours and submitting several revisions on a purely volunteer basis.

Lots of interesting and creative designs represented.  Unfortunately none of them seem to have adhered to criteria items 1 or 3 (other than to list the name "Rochester" on a couple of them).  In particular, other than emphasizing "cam" in the name, I don't see any of the logos that say to me "that's a webcam site in Rochester, NY".

Huh.  How about that.  I guess hair shows up brightly under IR illumination...

Guess we'll have to clean that up when we install PanCam.

I noticed an arc that appears in the upper right and upper left corners of the Cam 4 image at night.  It disappears in daylight.  Here's a movie from pre-dusk today that shows the effect:
(movie)

My first thought was that this was an optical effect from the IR illuminators, either the ones in Camera 4 itself, or possibly one of the nestbox cameras reflecting IR light off the lens of Cam 4.  The problem with that theory is that the arc appears to move, not only in and out of the frame, but also toward and away from the camera.  It never appears to be sharply in focus, so I thought may be it was a spider web of some kind, but nothing of the sort appears in the daylight shots.

So, would anybody care to weigh in with their theory as to what we might be seeing here?

What buildings are we seeing on Camera 4 ??

From left to right...

• Powers Building (with the flag)
• Crossroads Building
• Wilder Building (the small red brick building in front of Crossroads)
• First Federal Plaza (with the "flying saucer" Changing Scenes restaurant on top)

Very cool, would love to see one and the Whale shark...gentle giants. Thanks Bobbie.

Whale Sharks are amazing.  I saw a couple of them at the Atlanta Aquarium some years back.

I finally got over to Kodak Park (actually Eastman Business Park, since many of the buildings are now leased to other companies) this afternoon.  Carol was parked at the pull-off on Weiland Road and she pointed out the female Peregrine, who was tucked in on the east side of the blue power plant.  Since I'm a Kodak employee with an employee pass, I drove around the corner of Weiland Road and parked in the nearby visitor lot.  Across Weiland Road to the north is a large employee parking lot.  Just beyond the parking lot are a set of railroad tracks, and beyond those is the blue power plant building.  By walking to the edge of the parking lot (it's surrounded by a chain-link fence) I was able to get quite close.  The falcon was well in the shadows and her back was turned to me (she was snoozing much of the time) so I had no opportunity to spot a band, and the picture quality isn't the greatest.  Nonetheless, in better light, and with a scope from that location, we'd probably have a decent shot at reading a leg band.

While we were working Beauty kept an eye on us from the corner of the Wilder building.  It looks like that perch is well used, to judge by the pellet on the copper flashing...

M&K's nest box from the Kodak Tower is now located on the Powers Building.  A&B's nest box was built by the Boyscouts and in storage at June's house.  When we needed two nest boxes, it was brought out of storage to be placed on the Times Square bldg.

That's close but not quite correct.  The box at Times Square was built for display.  It was in the Kodak Community Information Center at Building 28 in Kodak Park for many years.  I picked it up from there when we were moving the nest box off Kodak Tower, since the DEC was even at that time thinking about the possibility of putting up multiple nest boxes downtown.

There were 2 other nest boxes at KP.  One was on Building 59 which was demolished, so it got taken down and presumably destroyed. The other was on Building 83 in the Research Labs complex.  I wrote about both of these boxes in a 2005 post at Peregrinations.

My latest blog entry covers some of our time in Rome from our recent trip:
http://birdblog.marchlords.com/2010/10/our-italian-adventure-la-vita-roma.html

We lost our beautiful Tessa last year to old age, but Quest has grown to a (more or less) mature five years old.  In February we added Sasha to the pack.  She's a five year old Siberian Husky we got from a local rescue.  Her previous owner was an over-the-road truck driver who fell on hard times and couldn't keep her.  She's sweet and a perfect addition to our family.