Starglider

Looking at the above screen I was happy that it was my own cartridge so I already knew where to go.

The whole cartridge code should be encrypted.. I like the idea of the Wherigo but cannot understand how the cache type was even launched without it being fully tested.. I deal with cryptography as part of my daily work and I can assure you that this will not work. If cartridges would be encrypted completely they had to think of a secure way to get the decryption key to the player software. Of course Groundspeak could put one key into the player application that is used to decrypt all cartridges, but then someone would soon debug or disassemble the player and get the key. The inability to distribute individual keys for decryption was one of the problems of the DVD encryption scheme. The other error was that they tried to gain security by obscurity. I believe they should seriously consider adding optional encryption at least to strings and all positional data in the cartridge. The player software does not need to know the coordinates and boundaries of zones until they become active. And strings do not need to be present in plaint text until they are actually displayed to the user. Imagine the builder would be able to encrypt this data at compilation time with keys supplied by the cartridge designer. The player software could decrypt it in the field using keys provided by the user. That could be any kind of information the user finds on location (text or numbers on signs that are already present there or the good old piece of paper in a micro). There will still be people trying to crack these keys but they would have to do that again and again for each individual key used in each cartridge. And, unlike cracking DVDs, there would be no money to save in doing so. Unless, of course, Groundspeak starts to charge people for cartridge downloads - but then they will need encryption anyways.

On my Acer n300 (640x480, Windows Mobile 5) the graphics look corrupted also. Two examples so you guys got something to look at (and laugh): (these images do NOT show the whole screen and I resized them to 50% of the original resolution) Note the tiny directions arrow in the right example - isn't that cute? Of course I tried different font size settings in Windows to make it look better, but without success.

When I save a new cartridge on my Acer n300 (Windows Mobile 5, 5.1.195) under My Documents\Groundspeak\Wherigo\Cartridges the Wherigo player does not find it, no matter how often i make it reload the cartridge list. The funny thing is: If I remove the tutorial cartridge from there and rename my new cartridge to "Wherigo Tutorial" the player does find it and even shows the correct cartridge name (so not the file name).

I'm not sure if this is in any way related to the opimizations you made. When I had a look at my bookmark lists today I noticed this strange reading: "Page 3 of 1"

Now I know where all my missing socks have gone

If a cache owner has not yet done paperless caching chances are good that he is not aware of the problem. A warning message that appears when someone creates a visible additional waypoint with hidden coordinates where the comment contains text could help. I personally would prefer if these waypoints would be included in the PQs. If the gpx file format does not allow Waypoints without coordinates the cache listing coordinates should be assigned to them by default.

Do you know the two-letter language codes defined in ISO639-1 ? They could simply add just one (!) text field to the cache data where people can define the languages that they use in their cache description just by entering the language codes, e.g. "en sp" if the description is in English and Spanish. Most likely People will not use more than 3 different languages, so this field can be really short. Then all you have to if you look for descriptions in English is to search for caches where the languages field contains the code "en". Does this look like rocket science?

@jibanez: Great idea, and similar things have been supposed several times before. It would make life so much easier to any cacher who visits foreign countries if one could look for caches that have a description in a specified language. You simply can't do that with the search options that are currently available. You could do that using offline tools like GSAK, but only to some extend. @SmartSnapper: What you suggest can only be done if someone goes for traditional caches only. But when it comes to more complex cache types you simply need to understand the descriptions. And there are countries in the world where these types of caches are very popular. As you certainly know, since you have been to Germany I also don't see why it should keep anyone from meeting local cachers if he could look for caches with descriptions in certain languages in the database.

I experienced the problem with IE yesterday. I don't have an ad- or popup-blocker installed. When I looked at this cache I noticed all the images in the cache description were gone and the formatting of the text seemed to have basically gone. I looked into the HTML source code and noticed that most of the HTML tags were missing: <strong>, <ul>, <li>, <img> and all tags belonging to the table. So what was left was basically plain text with the exception of the <font> tag that marks a part of the text in red and the <p> tags. Unfortunalety I did not make a copy of the source code but I will if it happens again. The parts of the page that do not belong to the cache description looked quite normal to me, but I don't believe I would have noticed a missing ad I reloaded the cache page several times with the same result. About 15 minutes later i reloaded the cache description again and everything looked fine.

Why not create a bookmark list that includes the nearest cache to each of the places that you regularly visit. Then can use these caches to do do your searches. Pocket queries would be another way to do it. Remeber you can always run them online if you don't need the gpx-files.

Not what, where A blocking option should effectively keep the users from accessing the "blocked" listings from the cache page.

You are not allowed to enter! Enter? (Y)es / (N)o / (W)hatsup?"

With an automatic update to reflect seasonal changes in the vegetation?

On the cache details pages of your own caches there is an "edit attributes" button.

The discussion about new Attributes seems to have silently moved to another thread, along with the attention of the people that make the decisions. At least that's my impression. I may be totally wrong

Thank you!

@Keystone Approver: Thank you for your reply. I just did like you suggested. While you're right that the bookmark ratings are not anonymous to the system they look anonymous to everybody else. This seems to make some people feel safe enough to let themselves go. I'd bet if the name of the poster would be clearly visible it would make people take more care about what they write. One could still use a sock puppet account, but that would be clearly visible to everyone who looks at the posters profile.

One of the cachers that rated a bookmark listing of mine just used the anonymity of this feature to post an offensive comment including the well known "f"-word. IMHO it was not a wise choice to make these ratings anonymous. Am I the only one?

Althoug the e-mail notifications would be delayed the online logs on the html pages would still be up-to-date. So if you plan to visit a cache you could still get the latest info. What if the delay would only be applied to found logs? That's where you find most spoilers. @ralann: I think it's great that you don't like the idea. That shows me it would serve its purpose

I just tried to create my 5th bookmark list and "surprise, surprise": Followed by a long list of debug information. Wasn't it 10 bookmark lists per user?

There are some caches that are more "vulnerable" to spoiler logs than others. As a cache owner I would love to have the option to delay watchlist notification e-mails by say 24 hours. Why? Because that would give the owner the opportunity to check logs for spoilers BEFORE they are sent to every person that has the cache on his/her watchlist. Comments?

IMHO there is one very useful attribute missing: "English description available" Imaginge you are travelling through old Europe and would like to look for some caches there. You'll face the following situation: - some cache descriptions are in English - some are in English and in the local language - some are in the local language but contain a remark that the owner will send you an english description on request - some are in the local language only Try to imaginge how much fun it is to find the caches with english descriptions with the current search engine Of course it does not make much sense to have this attribute unless you can use it as a filter for searches.

Bug or feature? Some german cachers report that they can create bookmark lists although they are no PMs. They can't edit these list once they are there - whenever they click on "edit" a new list is created. And they can't delete their lists..

Great idea!