Jeremy

one question here: i see the most use of the chirp as part of a multi-cache. would that have to be listed as mystery too if use of the chirp is required in order to complete it? Yes. It would be a mystery.

maybe they did consult GS and it was turned down, but they still rolled out the product and instead changed the geocache icon away from the GS icon? Garmin didn't tell us about this product. We only became aware of it, by accident, two days prior to the public announcement. Because we had no prior knowledge of the device being released, we have been figuring out how to make them available within Geocaching.com. We'll be supporting them as a new attribute which should be available as early as today.

They will be rewarded retroactively. There's a post somewhere above this one asking folks to actually not re-log caches just to force the icon. Well, the souvenir gimmick for the Original Stash Tribute Plaque isn't showing in my souvenirs list, so I better go refind and place a note on the cache so I can get the souvenir before it gets archived because of all the armchair cache loggers trying to get the souvenir. The key point is "will be" awarded retroactively. So please be patient.

I think it's yet another Groundspeak created geocaching feature that's effectively only available to those that live in the Seattle area. As I see it, every premium member throughout the world pays the same amount for their membership, yet those that happen to live in the Puget Sound area can reap benefits that 99% of us can't enjoy. Yes, it's possible for anyone to travel to the area to get one of the caches specifically created for the event and the souvenir art associated with it, but for those that don't live in the Puget Sounds area it means some potentially very expensive travel in order to participate. If I wanted to participate is would cost me $311 in airfare, and at least $200 additional expenses for accommodations and food if I spent two nights in Seattle. It isn't a feature - it is a series of geocaches. If you can find someone local who can get in touch with us to do a similar concept, we're all ears.

You keep it now but we plan to retract them in future releases. But really, why would you do this? We'll also support the idea where you can hide individual souvenirs if you don't want to see them (or others to see them).

I doubt it. History has shown that some people will bellyache regardless of how much communication there has been. Usually I tend to jump in sooner but I was out last week and unable to get involved. Folks in the office weren't sure what to explain and what not to, though I'm more than happy to be more transparent about the project. I'm not sure what you mean by "perused at the outset" though. If you mean "be more responsive" then sure. We're always trying to be more proactive in responding. However I wouldn't expect us to be in war room mode when we release non-critical features like souvenirs.

Please do not post the list. Thanks! There's really no point in posting the list since a lot of them are test souvenirs and would give you a false understanding of the souvenirs that will be listed. The ones that will become active are the 50 states in the US (and Washington DC), all the states in Germany, many countries in Europe, provinces in Canada, etc. There are souvenirs at the Trifecta (our office, original cache location, Project APE cache), some test ones near our office, GeoWoodstock event, 10th anniversary event, Mega Scotland, 10-10-10. We're also testing out the idea of interesting promotions like GeoCRUSH. How will they be created? We'll be opening a new UserVoice forum where users can submit ideas and vote on them so we can get regions to rally around new ideas for souvenirs. Our art team will then design a souvenir for the region, or look at outside designers to come up with an appropriate design. Keep in mind we're starting slow to make sure that our infrastructure can handle a bunch of souvenirs before we go crazy with them. To answer another question, souvenirs will be awarded retroactively, so don't go re-posting logs to get them now (though I do appreciate the enthusiasm). This is decidedly *not* a replacement for virtuals. The solution for virtuals is a much more complicated idea than awarding users souvenirs for being in a location so will take longer to develop. We do have a plan for virtuals and will be working on small, iterative steps to release a concept and test it with the geocaching community. From past experience it makes more sense to release early and often instead of the "waterfall" approach of throwing a lot into a project and releasing late. For those who think that we don't have a total plan for souvenirs, you are absolutely right. We don't think we have all the answers and we're more than happy to listen to feedback. So feel free to help us develop souvenirs. I do know we won't be calling them souvis though.

There is a topic in Get Satisfaction: http://feedback.geocaching.com/geocaching/...pp_for_the_ipad Closing this topic so you can visit this feature request and follow the conversations with Groundspeak there.

We're just trying to be clear that if you want Groundspeak to monitor issues, ideas and questions, you should go to Get Satisfaction. As a social forum you can chat with fellow geocachers. Currently we're expected to monitor and pick out issues, ideas and questions meant for us here, and it hasn't worked very well.

They go to Get Satisfaction. Peers can continue to answer questions there. Actually the intent is to have more transparency. Organizing issues, ideas and questions in Get Satisfaction has already been more successful. We're just creating one place for customers to communicate with Groundspeak employees.

I understand the concerns with the "like" functionality of Get Satisfaction not having a "don't like" button. If Groundspeak considered the merit of any new idea based on the number of likes I would agree that this is a problem. However, we take in consideration all of the points of each idea before we consider implementing a new feature. I have been watching some more hotly contested and argued ideas in Get Satisfaction and can say that the layout works far better for the decision makers at Groundspeak than the forums. The topics are far too scattered in the forums and many issues are buried within topics. Right now we get posts in Get Satisfaction saying "the issues are clearly outlined in the forums" but from our perspective, they are clearly buried in the forums. This is why we looked at using a feedback tool like Get Satisfaction in the first place.

In the past month we've introduced Get Satisfaction, a new way for Groundspeak and the Geocaching.com community to report problems, submit ideas, and manage the fixes and implementations. This has been going well and we have been able to target the high priority ideas and problems faster and hopefully provide more transparency to the community as we fix and implement these. Since we are moving to Get Satisfaction we plan to close down the following forums this afternoon, and post a link to the Get Satisfaction site to submit new ideas, issues and questions: Geocaching for iPhone http://feedback.geocaching.com/geocaching/...hing_for_iphone Geocaching for Android http://feedback.geocaching.com/geocaching/...ing_for_android Geocaching.com Web Site http://feedback.geocaching.com/geocaching/...k_geocachingcom If you have any suggestions or issues, I suggest submitting them to Get Satisfaction so we can prioritize them. Thanks!

"please stop abusing the features of this site" I'm not pleased to see GreaseMonkey blamed again. Actually it says "if you are a robot" before the binary and it is in binary for robots to read. Learn to love the snark. I'm not putting it in my pocket.

Absolutely! Err. I mean your oldest can absolutely log it. Not that it is bad form

Thanks for confirming the fix. It makes us feel a lot better when we have independent verification

How appropriate. At that link, Youtube tells me "An error occurred, please try again later." It's an old ad for "Rock 'em sock 'em robots". I watched the video, but I'm still getting the 500 error, so it didn't work. Any more ideas? We're looking into this now. Stay tuned...

Bookmark lists are broken and pretty much unusable. There is another thread on this. I was really hoping that the latest update would correct the current problems with the Bookmarks. Instead, it made it worse. The latest update today fixed the bookmark list issue.

The release is up.

We're rolling out a release now that should fix this issue. It should be on all the servers shortly.

I hope ya get my drift here. I do and I don't agree with ya. That is fine, that is your right, but success can be found in multiple paths. Some paths make many enemies, some friends. Just saying that is all. I am happy with where you have brought geocaching. Now that I am done with a year of chemo and the snow is all gone here in NY I am looking forward to the sport part of the game! Happy hiking.... If I'm out in New York sometime I'd be happy to wax philosophical with you. Have fun out there!

Pray tell me that you are not now blackballing people who use NORMAL browsing practices? No. I would have written that if I was.

I hope ya get my drift here. I do and I don't agree with ya.

Thanks. This is very helpful information. We'll likely have some false positives while we tweak the new system but we've already stopped some very nasty robots from hitting the site. In the meantime you should bask in your super human status.

Thanks for the response. It helps a lot to know that someone is looking at it. Bookmarks re a great feature, and I use them a lot, so it was very frustrating when they were not working. We removed something on our production servers to speed up each machine, but when we did it we didn't realize the change revealed an issue with the bookmark page. We'll get it done as soon as we can.

We raised the threshold for super human surfing. Continue to report in the forums if you have been shown the "Whoa!" message and let us know if you are running anything outside of general browsing.