KC2ZGU

You mean if someone accidentally finds a cache before they're a member, they shouldn't be allowed to write their name in the log before they go back to their computer and read GSP's terms (which by the way apply to the website, not the cache itself, which if the property of whoever placed it and under THEIR terms), and log a visit with the correct date? I think at the most this should be a policy that cache owners can choose to enforce, or maybe a general recommendation to owners, but the online log system doesn't have any business enforcing it. And consider a situation like this: You want to get one of your friends interested in caching, so you let him illegally look at some cache coordinates on your GPS screen, and the two of you find and sign a cache together. A few days later, he signs up for his own account, and, assuming your suggestion was implemented, can't accurately record his backlogged but still all-important first find! I don't buy it. I've looked at dozens of pages for caches around areas where I live or have visited, and even downloaded waypoints, for caches I haven't had time to search for and therefore haven't posted any logs for. I imagine pretty much everyone does this. That's a lot of vandalism suspects...

No. If you want to install custom software on your phone or do anything with it that doesn't involve your network operator billing you extra every second, then you picked the wrong network. Everybody should know this by now. Wow...didn't try to stoke up any hostility! Easy there big guy! I have Verizon because out of over 500 people in my contacts list probably 498 of them have Verizon and plus where I live it is the only phone company that has coverage all over the areas I travel. I have tried them all, and I mean all through my company and Verizon has a signal everywhere that the other companies drop out. Anyways, thanks for the info and I will wait on some of the unlocked phones! OK, technically that should read "you bought a locked phone from the wrong network operator" (although custom GPS software is problematic on any locked phone now since everyone's selling their own navigation services). If you get an unlocked CDMA phone you could do whatever you want with it, but they are somewhat harder to find than unlocked GSM/UMTS handsets, an the cynic in me has to remind you that since you don't have a SIM card Verizon can hypothetically refuse to activate your new phone. There's also the possibility of replacing the crippled Verizon firmware; I've heard of people doing this to get full bluetooth OBEX support, so it could probably allow unrestricted GPS access (although you might be limited to BREW apps instead of J2ME for dumbphones) Verizon has such a horribly abusive history with how they set up their phones that whenever someone wants to use their phone for bluetooth/gps/music player/etc i have to ask whether being able to talk to 80 million people for free is really worth losing all that flexibility.

I personally would just draw my own replacement icons, and put them under an open license for anyone else to use , that are similar enough to be useful but not identical enough that you could get sued for infringement if Groundspeak decides they don't like you for some reason. Besides, the official cache type icons don't really fit with the décor of any program or operating system released in the last 6 years anyway...

I've been using my Sony Ericsson W580i for all my Geocaching/OSM surveying/geotagging/general GPS logging needs for the last year or so (it's a nice phone and pretty decent music player, as long as you either but an unlocked one or install SE's real firmware over AT&T's, otherwise it won't let you use the bluetooth or filesystem with any custom apps unless you get a signed midlet and jump through all the associated hoops to install it... but J2ME's hopelessly screwed up deployment system and the fake "security" sold by commercial CAs are rants for another day). Anyway, my SirfiIII-based OnCourse Bluetooth GPS just came out of the washing machine (not intentional!) and the battery didn't exactly survive... the rest of it works just fine, but I don't want to lug around an external battery all the time. I've been wanting to get a new receiver ever since I noticed how the static navigation mode makes it almost useless for walking and very annoying for caching (If you're moving below a certain speed, which is always 15% faster than the normal walking speed of the person holding it, it stops reporting movement until you're moving fast enough again. Makes it look smoother when you're driving, but inhibits finding a specific location on foot by definition. It's a shame the companies making cheap GPS units don't consider use cases besides driving directions); now I have a good excuse... I'm looking at a few possible replacement models, but I haven't seen many specific recommendations for geocaching/walking use. Since many Sirf units (including mine) have the bluetooth wiring problem that makes them blow up whenever a program like gpsd tries to reconfigure the serial port, and half of the other ones are probably set for static navigation in the factory, it looks like a good idea to avoid this chipset altogether. I've heard read good reviews of the MediaTek chipset, and the Qstarz and iTrek models look nice. Has anyone else here been using a bluetooth GPS for geocaching? Which models/chipsets, and how well do they work? On the software side, I'm using TrekBuddy, with mostly self-prepared maps made from open street map data using a custom perl/osmarender script, and GPSbabel (premium account required to get GPX files? not anymore!) to convert .loc waypoints. I also use a relatively new program called Viking for general GPS data display and editing; it can display tracks on top of OSM tiles, display/edit waypoints, and copy tracks and waypoints between files. Since TrekBuddy has a few things I don't like about it (can't display tracks or any kind of vector maps, and its belief that I can make sense of distances like ".006 miles"), so does anyone know of other (preferably free/open source) J2ME programs that can at least show maps, save tracks and waypoints, and of course find caches ?

No. If you want to install custom software on your phone or do anything with it that doesn't involve your network operator billing you extra every second, then you picked the wrong network. Everybody should know this by now.

oh dear, people have already been using GPS for so long that they've forgotten how to tell directions Most of the GPS units designed for driving use (which is basically anything you see in mainstream stores these days) can only give you heading information when moving, so if you need direction information for caching you can either get a good handheld unit or a separate magnetic compass, or estimate directions from the sun, nearby roads, etc.

Viking looks like a great program; thanks for mentioning it. I pulled the latest source code from subversion (670) and managed to compile it under linux. I ran into two small problems with the src/icons directory though: 1. it dies with parallel make (-j flag) 2. some of the generated header files trigger some kind of compiler error, so after a few minutes looking at the various files i took a random guess and added --static to the gdk-pixbuf-csource call and it made everything work. All the icons seem to show up when the program runs. It loaded several of my GPX tracks and displays them nicely and extremely fast (I do a lot of OSM editing so there's lots of tracks around my neighborhood). Osmarender maps work fine, except at the highest zoom level which is beyond osmarender's z17. The realtime GPS layer doesn't show anything but a big blue arrow, since the GPS receiver is sitting on my desk and not moving. It also recognizes geocache information in gpsbabel converted loc -> gpx waypoint files. http://img212.imageshack.us/img212/5476/vikingyq5.png I hope Groundspeak doesn't sue me for sharing a screenshot that shows the locations of some of their caches, er, caches listed on their site. I really don't know anymore. As much as I think it's completely ludicrous for a website to assume all ownership of content created entirely by users, I'd rather not piss anyone off. Not out of respect for the lawyers' feelings, but for my own protection. to geonerd: you'll probably have better luck with your eee if you learn how to use linux. One of the big differences is that there aren't "installers" like on windows where the developer picks whatever non-standard technology they wish to send you an executable file from which you blindly click "next" fourteen times. Instead, we have package managers that can install and upgrade programs very efficiently and robotically, and unless you're using programs that are either very obscure, or proprietary like google earth, you never have to compile anything by hand.

The N82 is a GSM/UMTS handset so it doesn't work with Sprint. I was going to mention that I use a Sony Ericsson w580i with a bluetooth GPS receiver, but this isn't a "why GSM carriers are always better" thred Anyway, I would look at what GPS apps are available for the palm/blackberry operating systems, or whichever has better java support (extensions you probably need are file access and either bluetooth or location API depending on if you're using internal or external GPS)