ChileHead

When we used to have ALRs, some were fun initially. But they got out of control as cache owners added more and more absurd requirements to their caches to prevent people from logging them. ALRs were banned, but challenges were allowed to keep a different version of them as long as they were geocaching related. So sure, finding caches related to song tracks of albums might be considered geocaching related to you, but to me it just seems silly. It's so very far from the original concept of a challenge in my opinion.

Garmin's site is pretty much abandoned and irrelevant. However, the instructions for loading the PQ onto the device should be largely the same. When you plug the 600 into your computer, the device should mount like a USB flash drive does. Your PQ comes as a zip file, and you will likely need to unzip the file to extract the two gpx files from that zip, and copy these into the Garmin/GPX directory. At least that's how my 400 works, and I think the 6xx series is largely the same.

Google gmail uses the content for commercial use as well. If you send me an email about shoes, I can almost guarantee I'll see an ad on the right hand side for some internet shoe sales, or a link to amazon shoes or boots. It's pretty standard now to use content of emails or messages to have directed advertising, though normally the company will say there is no identifying information sent. I'd like to see how the PII (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personally_identifiable_information) laws are being followed, or if it even applies. Should cachers have any expectation of privacy in the MC? If I send a phone number or address or birth date to another cacher, can I be assured that nobody has access to this other than the cacher I sent this to? It may not apply here at all, but it is something I have to be concerned about with the 6 million devices my company has collecting and sending data to the mother ship each night. We don't want the liability of storing potential PII data, so we make sure we never get it in the first place.

I haven't seen it stated, but I was assuming that the MC functionality would be added to the public API for those well behaving apps that use the API. Hopefully it is, otherwise apps that use the geocaching API won't have it, and apps that scrape the site for data could add it by more scraping.

You can always ask for somebody's private email through the MC. It's not quite as convenient, but for those times when you have some privacy concern it's an option. I can't say I've ever been concerned about privacy with the notes I send through the GS system though, but I can grok it. I haven't seen anything to indicate this would ever happen.

That would be nice. I think a MC and email option can coexist nicely together, if email responses got added to the MC and MC responses generated email. That would be awesome for those of us who have a strong preference with email as a communication vehicle, and allows HQ to continue to develop and add features to the MC that might entice those of us old farts who live in email to try something new if it's better.

They will likely be concatenated in the MC so there is really only one message to look at. Not sure it's legit to do that. I email then log for virtuals. I don't wait for an ok.

Looking at your stats, with benchmarks excluded: 1911+171+107+9+9+190+1+2+10+28+2+5=2445 2445 matches exactly what your total is. If you included the 5 extra for benchmarks, it would be 2450.

Are you using an anonymizing proxy? There should be nothing wrong with a proxy unless it's anonymizing.

Thanks for adding new functionality to the site. It's nice to see effort being put into new features and getting input from the community. I'll echo what's already been said about wanting the contents of the message in an email. Emails are pushed to my phone and are available all the time, even when I'm offline or have bad service. I'd also like to see the ability to respond to a message in email. Ideally this would work by allowing me to use the player's id in a reply. So if Jeremy sent me a message (like he ever would!), I'd get an email with the message text, and the reply-to address would be "51214b3d-6777-4c99-9508-b6107967ff29@messaging.geocaching.com" and if I replied, the contents of my message would be appended to the conversation. Some server side validation would have to be done to make sure the reply came from the email address on file for my account to prevent spam. Or, I could decide to reply right in the message center, but that gives every cacher the choice of how they want to use the message center. Attachments might have to be dropped, and the message would have to be truncated to 1000 characters, but it frees people to use the system of their choice. Possibly even make this a premium member feature?

I'm sure that's in the list, and I'd like to also see a quick link on the cache page (at least for earthcaches, if not all) for "Message cache owner" that would take you right to the message center ready to type & send. The "old" way I assume is not going away any time soon, so hopefully people can play with both systems and let the new one improve until the functionality is better and faster than the email option.

Yes, I like that too. Overall the headers look cleaner. Getting to my profile is not real intuitive though - I'd rather see another item in the drop down menu next to my name. Minor glitchy thing - I can get to my profile by clicking my name, but if I click on my find count below my name, it does nothing, even though the cursor changes to indicate it's clickable.

Garmin seems to have abandoned their geocaching game. Some of their newest products are preloaded with geocache data from geocaching.com, and all product literature seems to mention geocaching.com and not their own failed site which they last changed well over a year ago. What sort of problem do you have? I don't have that device, but perhaps somebody here can help you. Almost all the Garmin devices should support gpx files, though I'm not sure about the Nuvi line.

^^ this

I viewed it, and wasn't logged in, and the count was at 4. I logged in, viewed again, and the count moved to 5. So seems the count may (?) only update for logged in users?

If you're concerned about privacy, don't use the internet. I'm not being snarky here, but there are bigger problems with privacy than your last login date. Social media sites, forums like this one, photo sharing, etc ... share more private info than login dates. You should be much more concerned about the fact that, if you log your finds, that anybody can see where you were on what dates.

Nope. Used to be a better way that worked on any cache. It was fun when first discovered, but the FTF game became boring when I could get FTF on any non-puzzle cache when there was no competition.

FTF is a statement of fact. First. To. Find. It doesn't matter if it was before or after publication, or if the cacher had inside information, or if they stalked a cacher while they hid it, or followed footprints in the snow. It's not something to claim or give away. When people complain that the FTF hounds are greedy and aren't giving others a chance, it makes me wonder what those people really want. Would you really want a FTF only because the competition gave it to you? FTF is most fun when you come across a group of other cachers and you are all feverishly looking for a well hidden cache. Or when you go out, find the cache, and come across others on the way back to the trail head. I have about 80-100 FTFs before publication from many years ago, using information that was public to anybody who knew where to look, but most didn't know about. After a while going for those lost the fun, as I knew I could get FTF pre publication without any competition, and what was the point?

In my area I was surprised to find a new geocache published by a very experienced geocacher who had specifically stated in their geocache description that they had became a member over a decade ago. They had about seven thousand finds. Their cache gets published. People went to find it. It was in a frigging parking lot. About a week later, they get another cache published. Again, it was in a parking lot. I feel angry that these caches have even been published. Why would a reviewer publish these lame caches? So seriously, to be honest I find most new cachers are hiding much better caches than the average cache being hidden by veteran cachers. There are so many people that are simply interested in the numbers, that any old random spot that doesn't have a cache is a potential hiding spot for the numbers crowd who have been caching for a decade or more. In contrast, newbie cachers who have not been corrupted by numbers are still excited about geocaching, the treasure hunt, and want to show off a secret spot or location that they know about and want to bring people to. Sure, sometimes they are too excited and haven't hidden it yet, or don't know how to use their GPS and have lousy coordinates, or even don't know what makes an appropriate container. But you know what - in almost all cases the location and experience looking for a newbie cacher's first hide is much more exciting and rewarding than finding a veteran's lamp post cache, guard rail cache, or random spot on the side of the road cache.

Sometimes you can follow tracks and see where people dug down into the snow to find a cache, and it can be easier (but usually isn't!) One time years ago I needed a cache to fill a calendar day in January in the middle of the Adirondack mountains where we were skiing. There was only one cache reasonably nearby, and it was NOT winter accessible. I got lucky and dug through 3 feet of snow and found a film canister at the base of a tree. It was great fun to ski out a few miles to find that little sucker. Even if you don't find a cache in winter, you usually (I hope!) still had fun.

You can use google search, though it's not perfect. If you wanted to search for caches with the word "red" in the title in "New South Wales", do a google search of the following: site:geocaching.com "new south wales" red The "site:geocaching.com" restricts search results to geocaching.com, and the combo of "new south wales" and red will yield results at the top of caches with both red and "new south wales" in the page's title. You'll get other results below that, but generally the ones more relevant will be at the top.

I think I'm pretty sure I know who you are talking about. They have gotten a bit smarter since then and leave less of a trail of their geocoin thefts.

It amazes me that people care that much. If I'm FTF, I sign the log, write about my experience online and don't say anything about FTF. I could care less if the next guy or the next ten claim FTF. I could also care less if I accidentally signed the back of the logbook and somebody was already signed in on the front of the logbook that I missed. I have a bookmark list of my FTFs so I know what I think is my FTF count. If it's off by a few because of some silly games, who cares. Sometimes the cache owner gets a bit annoyed if I do say FTF in my log as they aren't sure who is FTF, but that's not my problem.

I'm guessing that it didn't succeed in logging in you for one reason or another. If you have a funky character in your name (which you don't) or your password it might cause a problem. My site is acting as a proxy between your mobile device and Waymarking.com, and for the most part is just passing data back and forth and reformatting it. Not sure what the issue could be, I just logged in myself without a problem. What browser on your device are you using?

Note: it says 1617 instead of 1625 presumably because it has cached (no pun intended) data. Not sure about that though, but you definitely have logged 10 caches multiple times, so those dups won't show up in a pocket query.