pppingme

And thus the reason so many cache owners don't repair their caches when they are broke, CAUSE THEY DON'T KNOW THERE'S PROBLEMS. It is a cache owners responsibility to watch for problems, ignoring the only thing that gives them a status of their cache is about the lamest advice you can give.

The friends feature is at least a couple years old now. In internet terms, this is VERY OLD, this isn't something in its infancy, by all appearances its something thats been abandon by GS. When it came out, GS hinted that it would be developed more, but nothing has happened to it at all. Actions speak louder than words, here's an action to consider: I looked at Jeremy's forum posts for the last year. ALL are about Wherigo, the iphone app, the Wherigo player on the Colorado and Oregon, in other words, all about expensive toys, NONE about actual site issues or more importantly site development. This is the clearest message you can get, when Jeremy himself doesn't even talk about site development anymore. The reason that features like friends isn't more developed is because GS is spending their resources on things like Wherigo and Waymarking, both things that came out or were more extensively developed after the friends feature was introduced. The real sad part here is that they are spending all this time and resources on something that by all appearances is a flop. Here's some quick stats, there are NO Wherigo caches within 50 miles of me, only one within 100 miles, and only three within 150 miles of me, and the one thats within 100 miles, can't be found with an Oregon, the file apparently locks them up, reading through the forums, this seems to be a common problem. I could say similar for Waymarking.

Here's two PQ's that my help: Unfound caches, regardless of age: http://www.geocaching.com/pocket/gcquery.a...bd-7f6999133240 And less than a week old caches, may contain finds and depends on cache owner setting placed date correctly: http://www.geocaching.com/pocket/gcquery.a...b9-856c27a02c6b Hope that helps. Just save them then you can preview them any time you want to look.

I've found quantcast's estimations to be wildly inaccurate. They seem to be heavily biased to what "marketing america" deems to be the ideal customer. As a side note, I noticed a couple weeks ago that there were quantcast tracking tags on a lot of the GC pages now. I'll leave it as an exercise for others to think about why this would be but every scenario I can think of may be good for Jeremy and his buds ($$$) but not good for users.

Cache O'Plenty, thanks for your response. It appears that I was trying too hard with my original approach. After rummaging through these threads, other info on this site, and a ton of nearly useless T-Mobile info, it would seem that all I should have to do is send a text message to <10digitphonenumber>@tmomail.net or <10digitphonenumber>@voicestream.net. But it still doesn't work, nothing comes through, and the foreign "tech reps" at Voice Stream are useless. Yes, my phone (Samsung t339) supports text messaging, and it works since my kids send me text messages, so I'm pretty sure I don't have to activate anything. So I am still Instanotify-free. Nuts! For t-mobile there is a way to get a "friendly name" in place of your phone number, you'll have to dig around on the site to find it. From what I understand, if you implement the "friendlyname@tmomail.net" your 10digit@tmomail.net is automatically disabled. So I wonder if you did this and don't remember?

And to think you were worried you'd have to go find them all again

One of the issues is that ROT13 is a very widely accepted standard, used way before geocaching was even a thought. Although technically there is no reason that there couldn't be a ROT5 or a ROT18, they just aren't really accepted as standards. With so many users running software external to the site (with rot13 decoders built in), its not really something that would be a popular change. Numbers are probably best to either spell out or express in other terms like the roman numerals suggested (not my favorite idea). Even with coordinates, expressing them as numbers probably won't be an issue because realistically to most people coordinates don't mean anything. I don't know very many people that can look at a coordinate and say, oh, thats at the edge of the park, so most people still have to plug the coord's into their equipment before they have any real meaning, so encoded or not, coords are pretty useless without more work.

Huh, I pointed this out a month ago and got a rude response saying it was a known problem and they were fixing it. Keystone's reply doesn't appear rude to me (which they often do), but what is unexplained is why Keystone said Groundspeak is looking into it when he isn't Groundspeak. So, Keystone apparently was misinformed. http://forums.Groundspeak.com/GC/index.php...=209905&hl= I should add, I didn't say the rude response was in the forums, but to that I'm not going to exclude or defend any particular name either. I do find it interesting though that actual staff doesn't even seem to know about it until now yet some forum moderator who isn't staff says its a known bug.

But you never addressed what is a privacy concern?? I'm still curious what your thinking?

Where's the problem? Your home coord's aren't visible to anyone except reviewers and such (or are they the problem?) Your email address isn't visible unless you want it to be. No where is your email address visible. No where is your real name visible. Since you log caches online after you find them and there is no indication before that your going to look for one, its unlikely someone is staking out a cache waiting for you. Anyone that sends you email still doesn't know your email address or IP unless you reply, and its easy enough to ignore those. The only real issue left is events, so don't attend. Where do you think there is a privacy issue? The only thing I can see is a problem with reviewers/staff, which I'm not saying isn't a legitimate point, but its the only one I see. I'm real curious what other privacy issues you see?

Huh, I pointed this out a month ago and got a rude response saying it was a known problem and they were fixing it.

Its already there. Just check "I haven't found" and you get a PQ without your found caches.

The real issue here is being able to download an already generated PQ that for whatever reason didn't get delivered, be it GC is having mail issues, be it that some ISP randomly started marking everything as spam, be it that gmail finally blows up, what ever the reason. Email delivery is always going to be a sore spot here. At least once a week someone is starting a new thread complaining about not getting GC emails. A good percentage of these may not be GC's fault directly, but its a big enough problem that GC needs to address it.

Cache data does belong to the cache owner, period, at one time GS did acknowledge this in the TOU and I believe they still do. The cache owner "grants GS a license to list/distribute the info" (I'm not looking right now so may not be exact wording of the TOU, but you get the gist). A BM is simply a list of caches, nothing more, really nothing to copyright or control. A PQ is actual cache info (not just a list of caches, but also their description, coords, etc). This is an original work of the cache owner (and by copyright law, their info to control as they see fit). When you submit a cache, you "grant GS a license to list/distribute", your not giving up your ownership rights. As a side note, GS would have serious liability issues if they claimed copyright to the cache info, after all, if its theirs, any problems related to it (think bomb squad, and the fact that most are now charging for false calls) is also their problem, as a "listing service", its not their problem (think google, just because it lists bomb creation instructions doesn't make google liable if someone uses those instructions). GS never claims copyright, they just claim control over distribution of the data, as granted by the original cache owner in exchange for accepting the listing. GS is strictly a listing service, beyond the layout of their pages and original software they have written to support the site, there is nothing for GS to copyright. They can't claim copyright on something they didn't originally produce or where copyright wasn't specifically assigned to them.

Bookmarks can be shared easily, Edit the book mark and check the box that says I want to share. After that, anyone can click on the bookmark tab on your profile and there is an option for that person to build a PQ off of your BM or they can just look at the list directly. So once you put together the BM, anyone can download it. If you also click the make public check box then a link to the BM will show up on every cache page thats listed in the BM. I won't touch the issue of sharing or posting PQ's and addressing that the data really belongs to the cache owner and gc is just a listing service.

This was discussed and promised about two years ago, the idea of having a way to download the last run of a PQ in the event there is a problem with the email. There have been no visible signs that they intend to actually follow through.

Real easy, when your typing notes into GSAK, if you look there is a log cache button, when your in the field (away from internet) just click save, when you get home, open the note again and click log cache. When you do that, it will open the logging page on the GC site, and just paste, no other typing needed. If your doing a lot of caches there is another way that may be easier but involves downloading another macro, I forget the exact name of the macro but it takes advantage of field notes. You'll find more info on the GSAK forums.

Since you got your my finds PQ, this makes me wonder if you have an alternate email address on the PQ that you didn't receive (the my finds pq can't be redirected to another email like other PQ's can be). Its toward the bottom, one of the last settings. As a side note, here in about 3 hours, you can run all 5 again, the clock starts over at midnight (pacific time), not every 24 hours.

If your using GSAK, then why go through the site at all with bookmark lists and ignore lists? Here's what I do: I get ALL caches in my PQ's, I don't do any filtering at all at the PQ level (except found/not found) When I download caches to my equipment from GSAK (2 gps units, pda) I filter on whatever criteria I want but I also filter so userdata "does not contain" "unsolved", so there are never unsolved caches on my equipment. I have one filter that filters for Puzzle/Unknown and for the userdata field to be blank. I check this after loading new data, it should always return nothing unless there is a new puzzle cache that I've never seen. If its a puzzle that I need to work out, but I'm not going to do it right now, then I put "unsolved" in the userdata field (so it won't show up in my normal gps/pda downloads). As I solve them, I change the userdata field to either "solved" or some other one or two word note (it doesn't really matter what it is as long as its not "unsolved") and either set corrected coords or child waypoints as needed. If it seems to be an on-site or gather info, or similar type cache, then I put "onsite" in the userdata field. This seems a lot easier than messing with bookmarks, ignore lists, and still loading everything through gsak, its also keeps the PQ's simpler. Even with your method, you still have to do corrected coords or child waypoints on the cache after you solve it on the site, something that could easily be forgotten. Doing it this way also allows me to work on a puzzle at any time (assuming internet isn't required for the puzzle itself) on my laptop without an internet connection, since I never need to visit the site.

Except that RFID readers are in the hundreds of dollars, aren't really "field tough", and the tags don't have processing power, so they can't "sign" data, they can only return data thats already stored in them (their "ID"), so you still have the problem of once one person gets the key, it can be shared and everyone has it. RSA keys can be bought for $5 and don't have much more than a watch battery in them (in fact, the current designs really intend on replacing the key, not replacing the battery). Using RSA keys doesn't require the cacher carry any extra equipment, beyond an accurate time source, which they probably already have (their gps receiver) and something to take notes. 30 seconds to wait for a key change isn't that long, with a group, by the time the cacher gets the key in their hand, writes it down on their PDA or notepad, then hands it off, its probably been 30 seconds.

A couple points to consider: (I do let gsak accumulate logs, and I try to carry 10 logs with me, not the standard 5) For areas I travel to frequently (twice a year) I still run regular PQ's, even though they aren't local to me. For a new area that I don't have accumulated logs, if a cache has a lot of recent notes without finds, there's a good chance (although not conclusive) that there is a problem with the cache, and I would probably have gsak filter these out. If there is one or two that grabs my attention, you can always manually download a gpx for that cache, manually downloaded .gpx files have 20 logs.

Manually putting coordinates in my GPS, since I carry two when I go out. I haven't keyed a coordinate in several years, except for one's that I have to do onsite (like simple 2 stage multi's or solve onsite puzzles), and I'm not about to start now. When I'm out and about, I hit "nearest" on my gps and decide then if I want to grab a couple caches. I'm not about to manually key 2 dozen or more additional coordinates in my GPS every time I reload it (I do clear my gps between every load so there is no chance of me walking around with stale data). Plus when you include all of the other manual coordinates I've figured out, like trail heads, parking, etc for caches I haven't found yet we are probably in the range of 50 to 100 coordinates I'd be hand keying.

Hehehe, that would last a long time on a Gladware container. Verisign makes a waterproof one, but I think it would be pretty easy to make the regular key ring (not the card) waterproof.

As long as you don't clear out your logs or old data, GSAK will keep track of this for you and there is a column just for last found. If you don't have the column on yours go to the options screen and be sure its checked.

Without looking, I probably have more than 2 dozen puzzles that I've solved but haven't found yet. For puzzles that are solvable without an onsite visit, its not unusual for me to be working on them at two in the morning, not a good time for finding most caches. I've also sat on puzzles for more than a year between solving them and actually finding them. If its a simple puzzle, I'll probably solve it as soon as the cache is published but may not have a chance to find it for a while.