Jeremy

Fellow Geocachers, As part of the nationwide DARPA event to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the Internet, we're enlisting geocachers to be part of a fun social networking/GPS technology challenge. The challenge is to be the first to submit the locations of 10 moored, 8-foot, red, weather balloons at 10 fixed locations in the continental United States that will only be visible during tomorrow's (12/5) daylight hours. The winner will receive $40,000. If Groundspeak wins the challenge with your help, we will throw in another $10,000 of our own money. The full $50,000 prize will go to schools that need GPS equipment through DonorsChoose.org. Tomorrow, December 5th, a group of Groundspeak Lackeys will meet up in the DARPA War Room at Groundspeak's Headquarters to gather information online of the possible locations of the 10 weather balloons. We hope you will follow our attempts to win the challenge and help us along the way by gathering information both online and on the ground. Do you want to help? Visit http://www.10balloonies.com - our official web site for Groundspeak's team. We'll provide up to the minute updates there and on Twitter at http://twitter.com/10balloonies. Also, if you are out geocaching, running errands or taking a morning stroll and spot one of the balloons, send us an email at darpa@Groundspeak.com. The balloons will be numbered, so we need to know what number is on the balloon along with the coordinates that it is at and any additional information (such as "saw from afar." Coordinates need not be exact, (within 1 mile of actual coordinates will do) so an address will work. Even if you aren't in the continental US you can still help! Information will be spreading through social networks, blogs and news outlets. If you hear something helpful for us to find any of the 10 balloons, let us know! With a global community of millions of GPS enthusiasts, we believe that geocachers are ideally suited to this challenge. With our collective efforts, we can accomplish something really positive! Jeremy Irish President & Co-Founder, Geocaching.com Also one of the balloonies

Thanks for bringing this to our attention. We investigated the issue and you should now be able to log in. However, it seems that the error uncovered some unusual activity with your account which seems to indicate you are using an automated program to do something. Presumably this application is scraping the web site which is a direct violation of the terms of use. It would be helpful to us if you could let me know why your account has this unusual behavior. As far as I know, no user normally logs in to the web site every 13 seconds over 30,000 times in a month. You can understand that our site isn't really designed to support this kind of activity - nor should it.

Trimble's Geocache Navigator is no longer available as a free download.

I'll give my perspective on the device since I had a chance to take it out geocaching a few times, though the highlight was taking it out with my wife, 3 month old daughter and 3 year old son last weekend. In the perspective of a parent with young kids, this product is amazing. Instead of fighting with my opinionated toddler I was able to hand this device to him and use my iPhone to look up the details of the cache while we were searching for it. I treat this as a "companion device" with a fantastic GPS chip in it, and it is durable and inexpensive enough that I can comfortably hand it to a 3 year old and let him use it. He doesn't get the numbers but he understood the arrow concept pretty well. I don't expect when he and my daughter get a little older that I'm going to hand a GPS device to him or her and say "have fun geocaching, son/daughter" unless I was comfortable enough with him and her and their maturity level. This idea that parents would be so blase about their kids' activities is ludicrous to me and I expect most parents would just cock their head questioningly at a comment like that. The main negative of this device is the potential for stagnant data and this has always been a concern for me, which is why we took some care into creating an initial dataset that is statistically less likely to point to caches that go missing. As we tweak the base coordinates for the device it should get better, but the update cable is a must for your long-term geocaching enjoyment. The hope is that the cables for these devices will be easily accessible - either at retail stores or local geocachers, to keep the geocache lists up to date. If they gain in popularity I expect that you'll see update kits at local events if you don't wish to pony up the small cost of purchasing one. Once we get an update kit at Groundspeak I intend to have every device sold on Shop Groundspeak to have the latest data on the day it ships.

For various reasons it was important to release the Geomate.jr now and release the cable later (such as getting it in the REI catalog). Unfortunately when you manufacture products you have to make some pragmatic but sometimes non-optimal decisions on release schedules.

The short response is that the Wherigo project isn't dead. It isn't, however, getting the attention it deserves for a couple reasons. First, last year was the year of the iPhone and with it came some intense pressure to bring geocaching to the iPhone. Resources that would have gone to Wherigo shifted to the iPhone. This is, on the whole, good, since the iPhone device is one of the most powerful connected devices with GPS out there today. It is also a lot more accessible, particularly with updates, than the Garmin Colorado and Oregon. It is very hard for us to release updates to the Wherigo Player on the Garmin devices by the sheer nature of the best. A disconnected device gets far less updates than a connected one. (the underlying hope is a Wherigo application for iPhone, but that's down the road a bit) Secondly, resources in general have been tough to come by due to the demands of geocaching. The traffic continues to grow and we end up spending more time on geocaching because it has more traction and it pays the bills. It's hard to develop Wherigo with the lights out. Speaking of lights, however, there is a light at the end of the tunnel for Wherigo. We're currently in the process of putting together more support behind the web based building tool, codenamed Earwigo. In addition to supporting a web tool and opening it up to a broader audience, we plan to open source the Wherigo Builder for some brave soul, or souls, to take over. Otherwise we'll focus primarily on the Wherigo web version so we have one place to manage the projects. Our hope is to have something up and running before the beginning of the outdoor season towards the end of May, but the likelihood is we'll open the web tool before then for feedback. What Nick has done with his Earwigo project is pretty great and we hope to expose it to a larger audience. I hope this helps. In the meantime my goal is to get someone at Groundspeak to "man" the forums along with the great work that Ranger Fox is doing here already. That way you'll know you still have the ear of Groundspeak in the Wherigo forums.

The Field Note page in the iPhone application explains where to find them (under "About Field Notes")

I generally attend the events as well, but the launch was too close to the arrival of my second child. My wife wouldn't be too happy if I left this close to B-day. You are in good hands with Shauna

Thanks everyone! We have a good group for at least this stage of testing. I'll post a new topic if we need any more vict- er, candidates.

Thanks folks! The list is filling up so try and get your requests in soon. I'm limited in the number of AdHoc applications so I have to keep the group small.

We're getting close to releasing the latest version of the iPhone Geocaching application. The new features include localization in 3 languages (French, German and Dutch), Field Note logging, and an improved compass, among other smaller bug fixes. For those who own iPhones and are interested in receiving a free version of the iPhone application with the latest code, follow the instructions below. You must be willing to provide feedback to a mailing list containing Groundspeak employees and fellow testers. This feedback will help us ensure that we have the most stable release for the iTunes store. Required: 1. An iPhone (preferably 3G, though it would be good to have someone with an earlier version) 2. An email address set up on your phone 3. Physical capability (and interest) to move and find caches If you are interested, do the following: 1. From the iTunes App store, use the search tab and search for "udid" (no quotes) 2. Download the application Ad Hoc Helper. It is free. 2. Run the AdHoc application on your iPhone 3. In the "to" field, enter testrequest@Groundspeak.com 4. You are sending an email. Click on the "send" button. I'll lock this post once I get enough submissions. I'll likely stop at between 10-15 users. Thanks for your help!

You're absolutely right. The maze has been generally a US-based exhibit and we should have considered Ontario like we do Washington and New York and included the city in the announcement. We'll make sure to do that in future announcements. I'm not sure it makes sense to add United States to the other locations but I look to folks outside the US to let me know if that is necessary. Most people know California and New York but some of the more obscure US states may need country clarification, especially if the maze goes more global. This actually doesn't look bad... 2009 Exhibit Schedule: Winter: Rochester, New York, United States Spring: Seattle, Washington, United States Summer: Davenport, Iowa, United States Fall: Kitchener, Ontario, Canada

Please stop suggesting Apple's involvement in the context of the Blackberry Storm. There is no relationship whatsoever between the Blackberry Storm, Geocaching.com and Apple. As the president of Groundspeak I can assure you of that. We don't even have a relationship with Apple except that we submitted an application to iTunes. As much as I'd like it to be true, I don't have Steve Jobs on speed dial. (edit: unintentionally too harsh)

This response was so wrong I don't even know where to start. The iPhone Geocaching application is an application built to run on the iPhone, yes, but any web browser should be able to view any cache listing on the geocaching.com web site. It sounds to me like a bug in their web browser - not based on some weird backroom agreement between Apple and Groundspeak. You can always use the WAP site at http://wap.geocaching.com to view and log geocaches. Perhaps this basic design will work on a Verizon phone.

We don't support any political agenda as a company (which I told you in the email).

Yes. We wanted to incrementally release updates. In the meantime you can still log via SMS. http://coord.info/textmark.aspx has the details.

Are you deleting it directly from your iPhone? If you delete it in iTunes and reinstall it doesn't affect the iPhone unless you synch it (which will remove it from your phone). It needs to be completely off the iPhone to be a true reinstall. I'll add - where does it crash? Does it say "locating" or does it crash before it shows anything running?

I'll look into this. My guess is that the update to the mini database that uses the application is causing the trouble, so in the meantime just delete the application and "repurchase" it. It doesn't actually repurchase the application. It will say you already bought it and it will download.

Since you vouched for him I'll give him the benefit of the doubt and reduce it to a 3 day restriction, as long as he doesn't put his foot in it.

Join them?

Well it wasn't good luck for you today. You've been suspended from the forums for 120 days.

THANK YOU! This is my point. Supporting the US Soldiers is not a agenda. Its like supporting your teamsters Union, or your local football team. I live in Wisconsin and Hate football, but I don't hold it against the Packer Players themselves, Its not their fault, its just their job. You're wrong. Just ask pacifists, the owners of companies that don't want unions, or the other football teams. Supporting any of these groups is an agenda. We long ago said that cache listings were off limits for *any* agenda without first getting permission from Groundspeak. It has been long understood that signature items and items in caches don't follow that same rule (though many do find it distasteful to leave religious tracts or other agendas into their caches). As a result we allow flexibility with cache items inside caches because a ) we can't "control" that anyway and B ) it is hard enough to make the cache containers as agenda-less as possible. Since there is a big distinction between the container and the object within the cache container we think that it is not a pot/kettle issue. The solution, already provided earlier in the thread, is to drop a real ribbon in a cache and not to put it or any other agenda on the cache page. If someone is offended by the agenda they can trade it out of the cache. (edit: my b became a smiley)

I agree. But wasn't it Jeremy who invented the Waymarking boondoggle? Kind of as a way to let non-container geocachers disappear frm geocaching.com. Reading that usenet post by Ulmer, it appears as he invented the "Waymarking" concept just as he did the "geocaching" concept (and "CyberStashing", and probably many other concepts). And just like geocaching, someone else (I don't know who) coined the currently used term (like Mike Stum did with "geocaching"), and a third someone took the concept and name and decided to market it (Jeremy Irish). This is my player account. I still play. Dave Ulmer did not invent points of interest. That was clearly invented by God in the Garden of Eden to mark the place of the apple tree. Unfortunately, Eve clicked Go To on her GPS and the rest is history. He did come up with Wonderts, however. His idea is available for public record if you want to compare and contrast the two concepts. But saying that he invented points of interest is ludicrous. Here's a quote from Ulmer in the public archives. The old Yahoo group has more. I was going through some domain grabs back then and registering all sorts of stuff. During that time Ulmer did some things in geocaching (which I decide not to repeat in respect to the guy who started the activity) that made me childlishly register the domain in, frankly, spite. He and I have grown since then and it pretty much just sits unused now. If Ulmer ever wanted to start wonderts up he is welcome to the domain. I was never really excited about the name or the concept, but points of interest have always been, well, interesting.

Less than 4 letters is an exact search. Letters with more than 3 letters is a "like" search. This will change as we implement a better search engine for the site. We're currently building it for Waymarking with the plan to integrate geocaching into the search. This will be more like the keyword searches you see on Google or CNet.com

Likely, yes. Though the water will be tap and likely contain vitamins.