nafai

There's so much text on the mainpage, I'd hardly call that prominent. It certainly does nothing visually to pull it from the rest of the articles. It's styled the same, using identical headlines, fonts, coloring, etc. as the featured articles, and what's worse: it's below the crease. Heavens no you don't need popups, but browse around to even a handful of other subscription based sites if you'd like to see better, nonintrusive ways to do it. The most logical would be to put it in the header login label (Header1_lblLogin). On one's first visit to the site, that spot is the most consistent in location and use for logging in or creating a new account with the majority of the web. Here is where the problems start. On the login / account creation page, there is ZERO mention of subscription content and two different types of membership. This should be the very first thing on this page, I don't know (sarcasm), maybe under "Why create a Geocaching account?". This is where any user can be expected to be presented with such a thing, and will not be perceived as a nuisance of any sort. Then, once logged in, you have to navigate to your account and see on the righthand side a brief mention of your membership status. Even something as simple as a bold color instead of bold black would call that to greater attention. Regardless, the Header Login label should have a bright red "Upgrade to Premium" link next to your name if you're a regular member. As for the member ads on the small ad bar? I've never seen them. I see ads for license plates, keychains, and tee-shirts, but nothing about premium membership. I have just tried 5 caches, both logged in and logged out, refreshing quite a few times to see if I've missed a trigger. To eliminate any browser incompatibilities, I did a text search on the html source for both "premium" and "member" and found nothing. Methinks they aren't working like you want them to, cap'n. The subscriber-only caches are also poorly marked. There's a little icon next to them, but not only does that icon not communicate that it's subscriber-only until after you figure that out on your own, but your Cache Types page doesn't even SHOW or define that such an indicator exists! Seriously, if you go through your site from a perspective of someone without any knowlegde or expectations on how you've designed it, you'll quickly see that you are rather hiding the existence of your subscription content. It doesn't have to be a popup window to be obvious, and it doesn't have to be buried to remain unintrusive.

Yes, it couldn't possibly be that there are hundreds if not thousands of people who find caches regularly just don't bother to create and update a registered user. The site doesn't require it, and many people like to preserve their anonymity online unless absolutely necessary to do otherwise. Don't assume because on someone's profile they don't show many caches that they aren't avid geocachers. But for the record, it's sad to see that this community is no different from other niche hobbiest communities. New people and new ideas scorned by old-timers, as if a new person or a new way of enjoying this hobby or this site somehow harms them personally. <rolls eyes> I guess people pick and choose what they want to pay attention to. >> PS: Before you ask, sharing that PQ data also violates the TOU. "I have no desire to break your TOU..." If I develop a Dashboard Widget using PQ data, you will have to be a premium member capable of receiving your own PQs. Seriously, I'm being reasonable here. The kneejerk reactions are disconcerting. Btw, a major flaw in the premium member section: people here had to alert me to the fact that it even existed. I've been using this site for some time and never come across it. Not only is the choice not heavily attractive for users looking at the option, but it's a Geo Hunt just to discover that this site *has* premium content, and to then find out what that premium content is!

You do? Just to keep it running, you'd pay? Are you the type of person they are targetting with their subscription model? If so, and I doubt it, they're doing you, and themselves, a disservice by setting their membership price so low, or at least not offering different tiers. Sites with hardcore fans that use a donation model quickly find that people like you will gladly part with more than $3 a month to help keep something they love alive. If they are targetting people such as yourself, than a subscription model is the wrong choice. As for the format of the data: it *is* being provided in the manner I want. XML is all that's needed, and as I mentioned, was unaware that Pocket Queries were in that format. And no, I don't believe that "giving away" all of your business data is the way to go. The subscription page mentions: "we need to move to a subscription basis for newer features for the web site." Ok...well, how about listing some of these said features, or things that are on the table for rolling out in the future? Is it limited to scripted queries emailed to me, and access to members-only caches? If it is, that's fine too, but you have to communicate that value to potential customers. Heck, I'd even say to limit the free participation back from what it is at present. To me, tracking my individual caching progress is the most valuable service this site offers. It has a tangible benefit that I don't have to connect any dots as to why it would need to be charged for. As Joe User, it certainly feels more "premium" to me than the server typing in my zipcode for me 5 times a day (oversimplification, yes, but you get my point). All I'm saying is that the present premium membership isn't communicating its value very well; if PQs are the Bees Knees, then it needs some PR work, and definitely needs to be made more prominent on the site. A tagline listing the features on the subscription page doesn't cut it. Customer don't by features, they buy benefits. "It's like having the geocaching.com website on your PDA?" Hello? AvantGo? Don't shoot the messenger. But this is terribly off topic. I wanted an XML file of queried data, and I have it. Feeds still have an advantage that would make PQs more marketable; they could be accessed via any internet capable device, and not limited to scheduled emails.

If Pocket Queries are the sole feature you're using to sell Premium Memberships, then allow me politely to draw the analogy between this site, the RIAA, and the early 20th century railroad industry. Technology changes, and people's expectations of how things work changes. Businesses that change with it and figure out how to remain profitable and renew themselves succeed. Others blame technology or try to block said progress, instead of blaming their poor business model. RSS syndication is here to stay. Scraping, whether it's with javascript, or cURL commands through PHP, or even XML hijacking with ASP, are also here to stay. People are interested in having the bits and pieces of many things that they like all in one place. These technologies give them that. And as more web browsers begin integrating it, people will become accustomed to having that type of content delivery and notification. As for the site scraping, do you find and block non-members who from 9-5 run a search with their zipcode twice per hour? If I, as Joe Schmoe cause 16 page hits, do you prevent me from accessing your website in the future? I'm guessing no, and if you think that people aren't already using site scraping to mine for the data that they are personally interested in, you're fooling yourself. As a content provider myself, I have no desire to break your TOU. I will cease development via the scraper, and will pay for, and receive the Pocket Queries, which I did not realize were XML. I sincerely hope, however, that if nothing else, I have caused some questions to be raised. You can blame, discourage, and get upset at these technologies that allow people to access your site's data in manners that you don't intend, and get swallowed up as people do it anyway, or you can look at the communicated and tangible value of your Premium Memberships, which at present, are severely lacking. But I'm sure your server statistics show you how many people hit this site regularly and are never converted over to paying members.

Not really. First, a pocket query is only usable by premium members. As the descriptor page indicates, they are also fairly processor or bandwidth heavy, and they are run on a schedule. RSS feeds use XML, which is a neutral format that can be used by developers for an infinite number of uses. Essentially, I'm making a Dashboard Widget (http://www.apple.com/macosx/features/dashboard/) that will show Caches in your area by zipcode. If an RSS XML feed was provided, this would not only make this task much easier, but it would also be much more friendly for the server than the implementation I'm currently going to have to use: site scraping, which will essentially load the entire page, graphics, menus, extraneous text and all of http://www.geocaching.com/seek/nearest.asp...p=XXXXX&x=0&y=0 That's a 100k hit to the server every time it's invoked, versus about 5k for the average RSS XML feed file.

It would be very nice if geocaching.com created an RSS feed for caches. I don't know what sort of technology you are using for your backend database, but I've yet to see a system that didn't allow for a fairly simple addition of automated RSS / XML creation along with the web page. Is this planned for the future perhaps?

Well, Netscape uses the Gecko rendering engine, so instead of getting all of the extra crap and fluff, why not just get the original? Mozilla. It is the only browser on the planet that can claim to render pages anywhere near up to web standards. Funniest of all, Microsoft helped WC3 come up with the standards, and their browser doesn't even do things properly that were decided on as standard in 1995!! Heck, tabbed browser and pop-up blocking alone, as well as a cookie manager are reason enough to switch to Mozilla, even if it *didn't* render things the way they are supposed to.

I just got the Legend for $85 new. I think you have until Friday on this deal. Call Staples (1-800-3STAPLE) and order it from them. Use their price matching policy with Amazon.com to lower the price to 184.99 (they may add $5 due to a shipping difference). Purchase something you need from Staples (I got CD-Rs) or a product that is Free After Rebate. You have to get your subtotal up to $200. THEN use the coupon code: 33869 to get $50 off purchases of $200 or more. Now you're down to 134.99 for your eTrex Legend. Add the $50 Garmin MFG rebate, and it's a cool $85. I think this is only good until May 31st!