[Notification Service (beta)]

Not having received a notification yet, does anyone have an example of what they will look like?

[Notification Service (beta)]

/does every innocent comment get flamed around here????

I am sorry, I did not mean to flame you.

 

I thought the purpose of the notifier was to let you know as soon as possible that there is a new cache close to you so you can decide of you want to rush out and find it. Since events can not be found (attended) for several weeks at least it seamed an email notification for it would be of little use.

 

Currently I have a PQ setup to show all unfound caches within 100 miles of my home and the events show up in it giving me enough notice, but then if this notifier is as good as I hope it will be that PQ may not be needed any more.

[Notification Service (beta)]

Doesn't seem to let you have miles over 50. For an Event cache I would like to by able to get them farther away..

 

Cool feature, WTG TPTB!

Do you really need to rush over to the site of an event the minute it been approved? They ususally give you some time before the event takes place.

[Notification Service (beta)]

Of course. I just tried it and found a couple small of issues of my own specifically:

 

1) The name field, when you create a new notification the 'name' field does not get saved and always gets stored as "New Notification". But when you edit it, it will save your name.

 

2) When you select "earthcache" you can only choose "temporary disabled" and "enabled" but not "publish" or "retract". This may have been intentional but it seamed odd that only this cache would not have those options.

 

I can think of several of new features to add to this but I will withhold them and just enjoy the bounty that has been provided.

 

Thanks.

[Notification Service (beta)]

its beta, and I think they are launching new features today, give them a chance to work the bugs out.

[Statistics?]

I am infavor of stats. There are already a couple of websites that show some stats by scraping them off the GC website, and having GC do it themselfs would be much more efficent. If someone does not like stats they can opt out of them by not looking at the stats pages.

[Pq E-mail Problem]

I have three queries that claim to have run today, one at 12:15 (PDT) and 13:15 both to comcast, and a third set to gmail at 13:37 to see if it was a comcast problem. by 14:17 none had arrived.

The PQ that claimed to have ran at 13:15 just arrived at my comcast email address at 14:21, first and third PQ's are still awol.

 

Additional information: by 14:43 all had arrived.

[Pq E-mail Problem]

I have three queries that claim to have run today, one at 12:15 (PDT) and 13:15 both to comcast, and a third set to gmail at 13:37 to see if it was a comcast problem. by 14:17 none had arrived.

[Missing Pq's]

So it is, my bad.

[Missing Pq's]

At I created a new PQ centered on a zip code, tested it in preview mode, it showed 500 caches in a 60 mile radius, set it to run today and noted that it ran at 12:15 pm. Got back after lunch and noted that it had not arrived yet. Checked some things to reassure myself that my email account was working (like sending it an email from my gmail account), so created a new identical query set to run today and to run only once (yes I tested it in preview first), its marked as having run at 1:15 pm, but still no email. I created yet a third PQ, sending it to an alternate email address, it claims to have run at 1:37 pm but by 2:05 pm it still has not arrived.

 

Is something happening with the PQ system?

 

All times are PDT, I have two existing PQ's that are scheduled to run today but have not yet done so and I am at the 5 per day limit. All were tested to make sure they generated results before they were set to run.

[Suggesting New Attributes]

Having the attributes is great, but to make them really useful you need to be able to search on them, using either pocket queries preferable, so you can include or exclude caches that have a query on them. Otherwise they are not much more useful that the owner just adding text to the description saying the same thing.

[Where Have I/you Been?]

You can almost do this now, in the hide & seek page or from a users profile page you can select to view caches found by another user, these caches can be downloaded, 20 at a time, into ExpertGPS (or a simular program) and combined into a single file using cut and paste that can then be viewed.

 

If you want a PQ of them you need to have the other user create a PQ for there own caches and then put your email address as the destination (I have a friend I go caching with often that has done this for me).

 

Since the information is already available, it would be nice if you could set up a PQ for caches found by another user.

[More Crazy Feature Requests]

Just a couple of crazy idea's that will probably annoy those with a non competitive bent.

 

1) Allow the owner of a cache the ability to designate who got the FTF for there cache, we could then keep statistics as to how many FTF's a cacher really has. If a cache owner does not have to designate the FTF cacher if they don't want to.

 

2) Have a statistics screen where you could see who are the leaders within a given nation/stage/metropolitan area. If a cacher does not want to appear in the leader board they could have a setting on there profile where they could opt in or opt out.

 

(My #1 request is a pocket query that would show recently archived caches but I have mentioned that in other topics)

[Add Nearest To Work/other Functionality]

You can always setup multiple PQ's each for different pre defined locations. What would be really cool is if you could create a PQ with two points in it (like home and work) and then find the closes caches to a line running between those two points.

[Broken Record]

Heck, I'm still waiting for the ability to get only those caches that have had any log in the past 7 days.

If you want those that have any log in the last 7 days you can get it by selecting "Updated in the last 7 days", this includes any logs or changes to the listing.

[Pocket Queries]

Some things I have noticed,

 

You can only run 5 queries in a 24 hour period, if you have a bunch of queries that run late on friday, your saturday queries wont run until late also.

 

A single query runs later in the day based on when it ran last, if you have one query that runs every day, you might be better off making seven identical queries that run on different days of the week.

[Proposal: Memorial Caches]

If someone wants to place a cache in memory of or as a memorial to someone, I think thats fine, but of what purpose would there be to having a special memorial type of cache?

 

Would you want to keep statistics as to how many memorial caches you have visited?

 

Would you want to set up PQ's to include or exclude memorial caches?

 

Would memorial caches be restricted to virual type of placement or could you put a standard box at the site with a log book where you could record your thoughts?

 

Just questions I have.

[Weekly Email, Showing Archived Caches?]

In my situation, I run a series of ten PQ's over a two day period each week to build a GSAK database of all caches within a 60 mile radius of my home (yes, in the SF bay area there are that many). I then have a couple of other PQ's I run on a daily basis to try to capture new caches that are added during the week. From this data I will download a batch of caches into the PDA and GPSr for which ever area I plan on going that day. Using this method on occasion I do try to find caches that have been archived or disabled (its happened to me twice in the last week, once disabled the day before the other was archived the day before). I do have a PQ for detecting disabled caches but since it does not pick up archived caches I don't find it very useful. I would wish for either one of two things:

 

1) A PQ option that would show all caches who'se status has changed within the last week (new > active > disabled > archived).

 

2) When ever a cache is set to archived, it actually goes disabled for one week before it becomes truely archived, this way we have a chance to see them.

 

One idea I had for those who walk around with binders full of printed caches, when ever you print up a cache and add it to your binder, add it to your watch list as well, you will get an email notification when ever its updated.

[Pocket Query Suggestion]

Hi Odragon,

 

Thanks for the response, to clarify what I was trying to get at:

 

1) Add an option to include only caches where the status has changed within one week (say between Pending, Active, Inactive and Archived).

 

I really don't want to see any pending caches, just when they change from pending to Active.

 

As for the Archived caches, I don't need to see all the archived caches, just those that have gone away since I ran my bulk queries in the beginning of the week. If a cache has gone from Active directly to Archived there is no way to know its gone without rebuilding my list from a fresh set of pocket queries. If we only showed caches archived in the last week and only if this option is turned on, that would do the job.

 

Now if there were a restriction that would not allow a cache to be archived unless it has been inactive for a week, that would do the job also.

[Pocket Query Suggestion]

I have a couple of suggestions that I think would improve the Pocket Query system.

 

1) Add an option to include only caches where the status has changed within one week (say between Pending, Active, Inactive and Archived).

 

Once a week I usually build a database of the local caches using multiple PQ's and combine them using GSAK, and would like to have a way to keep it up to date during the week. While I can get some of the new and inactive caches using the "Updated in the last 7 days" filter, this reports every cache that is logged which greatly cuts down the queries radius and it does not tell me that a cache had been archived.

 

2) Name gpx file after the name of the query.

 

If I have a pocket query called "Close to Home" it generates a GPX file with some random number as the file name. It would be more usefull if the file name was something like "Close_to_Home.gpx", that way it you could identify it once its extracted from the email.

 

3) Increase Query Limit to 1000.

 

A lot of the new GPSr's can store more than 500 way points and here in the SF bay area I have 10 queries set up to get the most of the more than 4000 caches in the bay area and there is a lot of overlaps and gaps. If the queries were bigger I would not need to set up as many so the amount of resources would really not be that different. You could balance the bandwith issue by requiring that the gpx files be sent out as a zip files.

 

Thanks for listening.

Joe (aka Blanston12)

[SF Bay Area geocachers]

Congratulations to winini on finding his one thousandth cache. And I think he is up to 160 FTF's.

[SF Bay Area geocachers]

For those of you that haven't noticed yet, you can now track digitalfish!  Lynn did a great job of taking the code I wrote for tracking our smashed pennies and adding it to their site (which looks a heck of a lot better than our site).  Now I need to go back and catch the fish I currently have in my sig binder.

 

--Marky

 

Track digitalfish? I thought you were just supposed to collect them.

[Case For Garmin 60 Cs]

Would this case interfere with putting the cache into the mounting bracket?