Crude

fyi, I love woot.com for cache items. They have awesome Tuesday deals. Most caches around here are too small for trades or too cheap to keep the contents dry. Single use rubbermaid isn't going to last maybe 10 open/close attempts. I do it for the find, the only reason I open the container is in case the owner verifies the finds on the log....but that's rare I'm sure as most logs are soaked or full. Ammo cans are a treasure!!!

This is becoming a problem. I cache with a droid, so now before I get out of my truck I check the cache location on the assessors page to see who owns the property I'm on. If it's county property then I proceed if it's anything else I check for no trespassing signs, fences, anything that would indicate an unfriendly owner.

From an LEO's perspective it doesn't have much to do with it. As a civilian my rights are under constant attack. It's my opinion that playing it safe vs sorry is the best way to protect my right and the rights of others.

I am armed because I can be. I included that little tidbit only so others know why I'm not confrontational when addressed with disrespect. Let's get back on topic please....

Seems that I meet all sorts of grumpy people while geocaching. This is our second year and we have found less then 60 caches to date but I've found 3 people now just all to eager to pee in my cheerios. I'm 6'2" 220lbs so eager is an understatement. So far I haven't done anything wrong from my vantage point. I've been yelled at for stopping in the driveway of an abandoned house to let my gps lock. The house was another 500 ft down the driveway and this guy drives up and starts yelling at me that it's his deceased relatives house and I had no business in his driveway. Then I was once parked on the street to do a park and grab at a nearby park and when I came back some guy was mad that I parked in front of his house and I did not live on that street. And today some lady drives up as we were getting out after parking in a field entrance claiming she was the owner and we had to leave or else. According to the assessors website the owner lives a state away. I'm a pretty courteous guy for my demeanor and I always have at least my wife along, some times friends like today. I'm always armed so I'm forced to stay unconfrontational but I'm about leave my restraint at home just so I can say nuts to it and wreak some havoc on some unsuspecting soul just to see what their plan was in case I wasn't so peaceful. I mean seriously. That kinda attitude is completely unwarranted unless you're trying to stir up trouble.

GPS status is kinda nice, it gives you a compass, but in addition is gives you all kinds of gps related info including altitude and speed

I found a crowbar..Gordon Freeman style. For that reason and that reason only I picked it up. And it's still in my truck to this day.

Just because the iphones gpsr sucks doesn't mean they all do. My droid is accurate to 4 ft. My omnia only had problems in thick vegetation.

If you want to stay with Sprint then I would agree the Hero is their best phone. I know that all carriers have announced or leaked new android phone by this summer. You'll have to decide if you want it now or if you want to see what the price/functionality difference between the two is. Price wise sprint is one of the cheapest carriers and that's worth some thing on it's own. Some times I wish I had never gone to a smart phone. My cell phone bill went from $50 a month to $100 a month just to accommodate all the other features smart phones are capable of. So it's not a bad thing that you use your phone for talking. If you want to geocache with the Hero it's certainly capable. As Rob pointed out it will get you into the GZ without problems. The hero is expected to get updated to android 2.1 later this year. So it will run the same programs the other android phones run as long as the hardware can support it. I think you'll like the hero. It's a very fun phone!

phones are a hobby of mine....who's your carrier and what state are you in? Does it have to be sprint? What kinda of voice/data/text usage do you do. Are you interested in sharing the phones data connection with a laptop (aka tethering)? PS hi Rob, bornl33t on Ao PSS Rob what Phone is that? My droid is accurate to 4 feet? I would feel confortable placing a cache with the coords it gives me?

Honestly....I have no clue. I can tell you I used a Samsung Omnia (winMo) and now a Droid (Android) for geocaching with great success. I like the droid better because it updates faster giving me a more precise reading. It seemed like the Omnia would jump around a little also. For instance, I would stop and wait for a clear lock while the Omnia got there my coordinates never stopped moving. On the Droid when I stop the coordinates lock and it's very accurate. I have yet to use an actual GPS for geocaching which is part of the allure...it's very cheap

HTC seems to be the market leaders right now. Samsung a close second. May I recommend you try an Android phone? I think you would be pleasantly surprised by the way it works. I came from WinMo and imo android is a much more user friendly platform. I understand that there are pros and cons to each OS so there may be something on winmo that isn't available on android but at this point I would think that unlikely...just a suggestion.

Also, the omnia doesn't have agps. Subsequently a lock can take some time.

I think the speed at which android is gaining popularity is catching entities like geocaching.com off guard. Now it gets interesting.

Where are you located? Leatherhead is a little to specific.

Honestly, I never use the keyboard. Swype on the touch screen is so much faster there's no comparison.

If/When I put out a cache it's my money that gets me the container. It's my effort to make it into a cache and load it with loot. It's my time I go out and place it. And again it's my time and money to maintenance the cache. The database that GC.com provides could easily be paid for by adds. To put this into perspective. GC should be paying you for the coordinates that run their site. GC should make their money....so should everyone that has a cache out there though. I'm fundamentally opposed to charging for geocaching, it's not right that so many contribute and so few make a living off it.

I would consider this and over reaction also, oh the irony.

Ok, after much reading I figured it out. Toms app is parsing urls for information available in gpx files. Groundspeak wants you to pay for a premium membership to get this information to your device and so Toms app is undercutting Groundspeak. If Tom and Groundspeak come to an agreement it will affect his program in one of two ways. It will continue to be free but will be much much more basic. Or it will check for a premium membership first. Also since the urls change it's likely the program will be rewriten to use GPX files. All of this assuming Tom is ok with this kinda work. I switched to Android a while back and I miss Tom's program...I wish Android had something this comprehensive.....preferably at Tom's price.

It kinda depends....the original firmware disabled the GPS. Verizon did this to force you to buy their verizon navigator. After verizon lost a lawsuit regarding the same issue in the black berry devices verizon later released new firmware that enabled the GPSr (the omina does not have a-gps). The problem is that if you're familiar with winmo the option to enable the GPS is kinda hidden. I haven't used a winmo device in a while so I can't help you there unfortunately. I will way that the Omnia started to ship with the new firmware around August of last year. So if your Omina was purchased after August it's likely you just need to turn it on. Oh yeah, if you have a Verizon Omnia it's actually the i910 the i900 was the european GSM version.

I work in a cold storage warehouse. The area I over see is generally 0F I spend most of my day in this temp with occasional trips into temps around -15F. Of course as a human I occasionally need to visit the break room to warm up. This would be a difference of 70-85 degrees..and my Android with it's capacitive screen is in my outer pocket. I haven't noticed anything strange beyond the cold fingers when I try to use it I should also point out that part of the allure of geocaching is the fact that it's free. Should we ever come to a point where I would be charged for the hunt I will start putting caches in gum ball machines

LOL I picked up a crowbar from a cache this summer...the nice kind....like Gordon Freeman nice. It's in my diesel truck now, incase I have to go all Gordon on some body...LOL

mention of unauthorized software deleted by moderator The reason why Groundspeaks apps is generally better is because they can access the cache DB directly, where as apps like GeoBeagle must go though the lousy web interface (lousy on a mobile phone.) You mean parsing. If the developer isn't granted direct access to the data base the developers app will have to parse url for the required data. The xxxxxx program for winmo did an excellent job of doing this in the background showing only data that the user is looking for. This is a problem for Groundspeak as they have no control over the user interface, which means they cannot advertise or in any way influence the user experience. So as long as Groundspeak will not make a program for android this would be a great solution with only one problem. Small changes to the way geocaching.com creates it's dynamic websites can cause the urls to be different enough to make the developers program to well, not work. This means the developer needs to constantly monitor it's program and update it as Groundspeak updates it's websites. My feelings are that Groundspeak's database is populated by entries that the geocache community created. The only input Groundspeak had was to provide a platform for the users to share they're coordinates and experiences. What do you think is easier to replace? The platform or the data?

I'm guessing if you cache in the winter you aren't going for low lying caches right? How do you know till you get there unless your query to the GC database excludes the ones that aren't marked as winter caches? I don't know about you but iowa is covered in layers of snow and ice. Finding caches on the ground would be next to impossible to find. I have thought about a map gas burner for thawing ice on the double. I won't have a chance to try winter caching until after I get back from mexico so keep the ideas coming. I should also point out that there is alot of hunting this time of year. I'm not completely sure what's in season but judging by the look of almost every road sign out here in the country some hunters will shoot anything...

Anyone cache in the snow? What's your approach? Do you drive up in a warm car or do you bundle up and see how far your can wade through snow drifts? What about caches? Do you only set out for winter marked caches? How about about gear? Do you bring anything unique?