modernman

smegal going on a trip

I just want to clarify some of the comments I made (for anyone bored or interested). I really like what Groundspeak has done/is doing. As someone who was worked on a number of mid sized social networking sites (as a developer so my POV might be a limited) I've seen how hard it is to get and keep an audience. I looked at the alternatives to Groundspeak just to see what other people were doing and geocaching.com is way ahead of the others. Also (as much fun as geocaching is) I can't imagine geocaching growing beyond a niche hobby with a limited audience. Any comments I've made have been to get clarification or to get my voice heard and (hopefully) provide positive criticism. having said all of the above, I hope Groundspeak becomes friendlier to small developers. It's great that gps manufactures are working with Groundspeak; but when I see how many "mash-up" or simple little programs that are created everyday I can't help but think Groundspeak is missing out on a small but dedicated group of advocates. Personally, I could think of a dozen little small apps that I could build and would give away for the android or blackberry platforms, if I had some clear understanding of how to go about this without breaking the TOS. I doubt anything I come up with would take away from the iPhone app (for example). If you stuck it out this long into the post thanks, someday I'll learn the art of brevity.

I was using the search by state feature and was wondering their is an easy way to display number of caches by state (for the US) or by country. I can't think of any reason anyone would want to know this (including myself) but I started wondering about popularity per capita or number of caches placed compared to number of active cachers. Yes it's sad but this is what I think about in my free time. I realize this is a strange request but just in case this info is available could someone let me know. If it's not available would anyone at geocaching.com be interested in sharing this info with the community, or letting me build it?

You obviously feel victimized by your volunteer work and have decided to take it out on members of the forum. Maybe you used to like volunteering but I'm guessing that was a long time ago. If you feel you're being taken advantage of maybe you need to take a break. That's the reality you need to face.

Does anyone know how well these hold up outdoors? I'm thinking of buying some and using them as FTF prizes.

I'm currently in the process of moving all of my sites to OpenID logins. If you use it correctly its secure enough. I wouldn't use it for banking (for example) but for a site like geocaching.com it would make a lot of sense.

If you live in New York you could have just pushed further into the woods, unfortunately, that's what most people here do with industrial waste. Seriously, I'm sure the local goverment offices could eventually put you in touch with the right organization.

I realize your joking however a business case could be made for opening up more, similar to a Wikipedia and/or Redhat model (yes I know Wikipedia is non-profit). See http://oreilly.com/catalog/opensources/book/young.html for one of the best arguments for staying in business while giving away your data. Spoken like someone's who's not been around long enough to remember the disaster that was opencaching.com. I was tempted to use the phrase "crash and burn", but something actually requires at least a little momentum in order to crash. Maybe if they hadn't spent two months deciding on what font to use... Around geocaching.com very long? No not really. I joined in 2005, but just started getting into it the past few months. Around the internet, and open source projects? I that realm I have a little more experience. I've been the senior technologist (Dir of IT, CTO, CIO, whatever you want to call me) for over 15 years. I've taken two companies public and was instrumental in having three others be acquired. I'm not saying this to brag I'm only mentioning it to make it clear I'm not a kid and no idealist. I don't know anything about opencaching.com but since I've never heard of it I'll assume they failed. They could have failed for any number of reasons, bad timing, bad luck, no clear revenue plan, inexperienced management. A lot of open source companies have failed, but no more then organizations based on proprietary business models. Personally I'm a little surprised by the mentality of Groundspeak regarding development partnerships. The way they work seems very short sighted, and I really hope they realize the pitfalls of the decisions they're making. I say this mostly because I don't think the caching enthusiast audience is big enough to support fragmentation, however if they keep putting up hurtles someone is going to get fed up enough to try. One last though (sorry I'm on a role) regarding opencaching.com. When I was a kid I was a big fan of the Roadrunner cartoons . I always wondered what would have happened if Wile E. Coyote stuck to one invention and kept refining it. Failure of one attempt is just a test for when you get it right.

Was this tone really necessary? To be blunt geocaching.com has the potential to make a lot of money, and good for you, I hope you have all the success you deserve. However very few businesses succeed with poor customer service. You got here first and you have the chance to own this small corner of the "interweb", but being first doesn't guarantee countued success or license to treat you customers badly, think I'm wrong? I've got three letters for you A - O - L.

I have that exact model and at the risk of understatement IT ROCKS!!!

Careful. There are some cases of pretty old munitions exploding many years after their date of manufacture. I didn't think that statement through completely. I'm not planing to test my theory by walking in a landmine field. However I doubt (and hope) a nutcase in his basement will come up with anything with a reliable shelf life. Granted my experience with explosive is limited to 4th of July parties and a couple of conversations with a special effects/pyrotechnics pro.

I realize your joking however a business case could be made for opening up more, similar to a Wikipedia and/or Redhat model (yes I know Wikipedia is non-profit). See http://oreilly.com/catalog/opensources/book/young.html for one of the best arguments for staying in business while giving away your data.

When I'm going to intentional to find caches I'll try to take at least a few pieces of garbage on the way out. I'm still pretty new to geocaching but I used to follow "trash out" before I knew anything about "cache in". Unfortunately I've come across some things that were to nasty or too big to remove. For some reason people abandon a lot of really toxic stuff in NYC parks. Some of things I've come across are: Car parts Air Conditioners Refrigerators Cases of beer bottles Bags of trash Empty CO2 and oxygen tanks Medical waste (And a specialty of New York's outer boroughs) Whole cars that have been torched

The only problem I have with your first point is that it doesn't come into play until the bad guys use a geocache for a bomb first. That hasn't happen and most likely won't happen unless/until geocaching becomes so popular that almost everyone is doing it. Using a geocache to hurt people still wouldn't make much sense since explosives and triggering devices don't last forever and would most likely become duds or detonate when no one is around.

I don't have a problem with Groundspeak trying to make a buck for the service they provide. However some of their policies seem very retro. The fact that they have a "by invitation only" API, aren't addressing the issues with pocket queries, seem to ignore platforms other then the iPhone, and most importantly don't offer RSS feeds makes me wonder how long it will be until they have real competition. I'm hoping they see the light and become more open soon since I don't think this hobby has a big enough abundance to handle fragmentation.

Cool idea. I gave up on bookcrossing since I don't like parting with my books.

I'm under no illusion that what I'm suggesting would be a perfect solution, or would bring about world peace, get geocaching made an Olympic sport or prove the existence of aquaman. The upside of what I'm recommending is that it has no negative impact (doesn't make geocachers look bad), would take very little effort, and could potentially have some positive impact. If you look at more organized groups such as the boy scouts or running clubs they usually put more effort into community outreach then may be needed. Some scouts were some group activity in a park near my house and I think they had more signs posted then people attending. I can only assume these groups put this effort because it's helpful.

if you're just looking to share info. and don't care much about what the site looks like I'd recommend blogger. If you want something more advanced wetpaint.com offers a lot of services.

Having been friends with some very good cops and a few bad ones, I'm glad that most bad cops are also very lazy. I asked my neighbour, who is retired from NYC mounted unit what his take was on geocaching (once I explained it to him) his reaction was "if they're not having sex in public, doing or selling drugs, or destroying something I wouldn't have time to care". Imagine if this guy really was on the lookout for geocachers? How dare people be out in public doing something completely legal.

Hah true.. although I think here it's more the sheer numbers of very smart, very odd people all piled into a place that was picked to be remote and was secret until after WWII that combines for some hilarity. The grocery store is constantly packed with these oddballs behaving oddly (totally rationally to them)... today we were walking by a park where this dad was putting his baby down the slide catching him at the bottom... totally normal until we remarked "good catch!" and he replied that it wasn't really necessary and rattled off about the coefficient of friction... We walked on with a smile and an "only here!" I just felt the need to reply to this (no real point). My brother inlaw is one of the type of guys you're talking about (yes he is a rocket scientist). I was playing with lazier pointer watching his cat go nuts trying to catch the dot. He comes into the room ask to see it, stares at the dot on the wall for a few minutes and tosses it back to me with the comment "you got ripped off, it's not a real lazier the beam spreads slightly". Every time I use it in presentation I have to keep from laughing.

Are you suggesting we simply inform land stewards we are using their land instead of asking permission? I'm not suggesting changing how we ask for permission. I'm suggesting that some sort of simple FYI type document could be created that we could ask geocachers to give to whoever is managing the land a cache is on. Since my post might not have been clear I'll use an example to illustrate. I want put a geocache on property that's owned by my township. I track down the person authorized to make the decision, he says it OK, then goes back to doing whatever he does and forgets all about me. A few months later a field worker is laying raccoon traps, spots the geocache, calls the marines, police or aquaman who destroy the cache. OR The field worker finds a geocache while laying raccoon traps and is about to call the marines, police or aquaman and remembers a politely worded letter with some eye catching graphic attached to the bulletin board in the break room, realizes it's a geocache.

I bought a few extra travel bugs last time out. Send me a PM, if we can figure out a way to meet up I'm more then happy work something out.

I never thought about stickers going bad. Usually I keep a bunch of stickers in my wallet as a backup in case I have some time to kill when I'm not intentionally looking for caches.. I never take anything when I leave stickers but I usually will add some. Is this really a bad idea?

I'm new to geocaching as well but as someone who's been following "trash out" way before he knew about "cache in" I think the gloves are a really brilliant idea.

Wow I was not expecting this sort of response when I created this topic. I'm going to chime in with a couple of thoughts. Please keep in mind if you don't like my opinion is worth exactly what you paid for it. If a member of a bomb squad makes the call to blow up a geocache I can't fault him/her for making a judgement call. With any activity it's very easy to second guess someone else's decision. If it was my cache I would probably be a little annoyed and feel bad that it caused a bunch of drama and expense. The main idea I came away from the article at http://geocartablog.com/?p=1212#comment-874 regarded "geocacher outreach". Like a lot of people who are "fully integrated" into the internet I have a tendency to assume everyone is as connected as I am. I caught myself saying "just google it" to my 80 year old neighbour last week. My question (to anyone interested as well as myself) is 'have geocachers done done a good job reaching out to the people who manage the public spaces we play in?' The the same way people have created standard geocaching labels and info sheets do we need to create a "land manager docuement" (for lack of a better term). If so is anyone reading this willing help to create one?