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And then a new puzzle came out that requires you to use the final coordinates of three puzzles that were published two years ago. Did you keep them in your GPSr, or in a separate file? Do you solve the puzzles again? I prefer GSAK (but it's off topic). Back to topic, I would support the idea of a geochecker from geocaching.com. This would probably be really easy to set-up and it would give several hits to the site, which is good money for Groundspeak. The geochecker could be enabled with a checkbox, and you could choose to make it "exact" or "approximative" (i.e. within a range). That would be nice! I know it exists from third-party sites, but I'd like to see it on the same server that my final child waypoint has been already entered.

But that's the beauty of the actual system! You *can* use it for free! Every time you click somewhere on the site, they get some money out of the ads. That's probably better than the 30$ you would give them...

Technically, that would never happen. Who's the FTF? The one who logged first, or the one who found it first? How could the system differentiate? If the checkbox would be there for everyone, then everyone would be FTF (what's preventing you from checking it off). You can track your FTFs with GSAK (there's a checkbox for that).

I second. Please don't be turned down by the number of people who found your cache. They may have enjoyed it more than any other caches they ever found. That is worth everything.

I can live with Google Maps. All I would be missing is the GE tools. But hey, there's a scale at the bottom of the map, so I guess I can still have an idea of the distances on the map. No big deal to lose GE KML support. I understand Groundspeak would prefer us to use Google Maps which requires us to see some of the ads (and therefore add some hits to the pages showing them). GE was just like running unlimited PQs, but without any monetary input of any sort (except a tiny part of the Premium Membership).

Just so everyone else wondering know, here's how it works: - start GSAK - import the "My Finds" PQ (to make sure you're current in your stats) - run the macro When the macro finishes, it will display the stats in your browser. No need to copy the source code as it's already in your Windows clipboard. Just go to your profile page, click on "My Public Profile" and "Edit your profile". Triple-click in the field (to select all), or right-click in the field and click on "Select All" and do a CTRL-V (to paste the content of the clipboard). Click on "Save changes" and you're done.

Nice series of videos. You forgot to mention the automatic way to save tracks on the microSD card (60CSx). You can't use these saved tracks in the field, but that can be a very nice feature when mapping local trails. The saved trails have no limits on points and size, unless you run out of space on the memory card (which won't likely happen as it's saved as a GPX file, one per day). You can access the tracks by putting the GPSr in USB Mass Storage mode when plugged in the USB port of your computer.

You have your own needs and others may have a different need. Of course, five PQs of 500 caches is more that enough for the usual days where I'm home. When I go from Ottawa to Quebec City, I don't know if I'll be going on south or north side of the St. Lawrence River. And I don't know if I'll have the opportunity to stop in Montreal (there are about 4000 caches, just on the island). And I might take a different route when I'll come back. What you want is to not miss any opportunity. You won't die if you're missing one, but since you're in that hobby, you want to find the caches when you go by them (otherwise, just go fishing). Really, the future might be for live applications connecting to geocaching.com (just like the iPhone utility). That's with the current business model of Groundspeak. Unfortunately, not everybody have the money for these tools, though. This would be much more expensive that an upgraded fee for a Premium membership could ever be. I don't know if having larger PQs would raise the fees for Premium Members, or if it would introduce a fee for everyone (no more free access), but that's a Groundspeak call (when they will think enough people requested it). I don't see what larger PQs would remove from people that are fighting against such a change. Really, there's no reason to not want larger PQs (other than maybe having to pay for a service you're using). Not a lot of things are free in life.

In fact, all Garmin GPSrs with external memory support (microSD card) can support unlimited number or POIs. I've got 12000 loaded in mine, and I've seen much more in other people's units.

1000$ And some unactivated geocoins.

A find is a find. Once logged, your find is always yours, no matter if the cache gets archived or not. But... The owner of a cache can delete logs. If it happened, you would have received an email from geocaching.com that would say your log on cache ABC has been deleted. When it happens, you can send an email to the cache owner and inquire about the reasons for such an action. Usually, CO are respectful and will ask you to remove hints/whatever before deleting your logs, but you never know. If you can't have an agreement with the cache owner, just log a "TFTC". If that gets deleted, then you can escalate the problem to reviewers.

This wouldn't work (statistics-wise). At some point, all posts would be equally rated. Sun has a really good rating system on their support forums. Only the OP can rate the answers to his/her question. That makes it reliable as the person who ask the question gets to rate the possible answers to it. Otherwise, people will just rate based on who responded. That is just silly.

And there being 7 days PER WEEK...7x2500=17,500. In all honesty, I'd prefer one PQ per day of 2500 caches. Same amount of data per day per user, but less tweaking with dates/distances/etc to optimize them.

I'm not sure about your question, but all caches that are not premium members only can be found by anyone (who has a free or paid account at geocaching.com). You can log these caches as found, or you can leave notes on them if need be.

But of course, don't forget that geocaching is an global activity, while some of us have night and are sleeping (or doing nightcaching) others have daytime and are out caching. Absolutely! Unfortunately, GS made the member fees an upgrade to the free version. You just get extras, not reliability.

Unfortunately, many "geocaching" systems are available. If your Letterbox is not listed as a Letterbox on geocaching.com, there is always a possibility that someone will publish a cache on that website at your coordinates (or close by). To avoid such a thing, you would need to publish your Letterbox on all the possible websites, which is a pain. And it's not even guaranteed all systems will have a proximity rule. Now, for geocachers to take things in caches, there's not much we can do. I wrote a note on my stamp in my Letterbox to let others know the stamp must stay in the box. Other than that, once your cache/letterbox is out in the wild, it's not under your control anymore and you have to trust the visitors.

Well, although I'm not a fan of challenges, I guess there's the GREAT WHITE NORTH GEOTOUR. I don't know if it can be seen as "similar" to the one you're describing, but it requests some travelling...

"Enlarge the PQ" Sounds like spam... Although this is something desired by a number of people, including me, Groundspeak has made it clear in the past (and present) that they're not looking to change the feature any time soon. 500 it will be.

GC.com is not the only place to list a cache. If you find it too restrictive go elsewhere. Of course. You can learn to be a sheep and live like a sheep. Or you can see a trend and question it, in order to improve it. It's your choice in this free world.

Isn't there already an attribute for that? You can also use it in your pocket queries to add/remove them from your caches.

I'm not sure you can really delete the log of someone who found your puzzle cache without solving the puzzle. That being said, we can predict a day will come where the hidden final coordinates of puzzles and multis will be made public. The choice will be to the user to either do the work or just go and sign the logbook. No need to say this will be the end of puzzles and multis (and geocaching, in my opinion).

From the guidelines: Unfortunately.

I guess you got the sense of my post. It's true they have a very good uptime. Unfortunately, the 0.001% downtime is what clients see (I know, I'm in that business). I don't know how to say that in English, but "le passé n'est pas garant de l'avenir" (loosely translated by "past doesn't make future"). What never happened can happen anytime, and that's why you have to be prepared. I think they learned some lessons and they will react appropriately (based on the revenues they have). A revised model could give them more money to react in a better way, but it's a choice they will make.

Wow. I guess Groundspeak, as a company, is responsible for the service they're offering. I also guess some people in that company must make a living out of it. It's great they came back to fix things up, but don't forget it's their business and that's what their clients were expecting them to do. They can charge overtime if they wish. You might also want to note that a better model would have prevented the need to come back. If everyone's philosophy about the "life and death situation" is identical, I'll be happy to sell all of you a service to mow your lawn. That will be 30$ a year. Pretty cheap. I'll also provide the lanwmower and the gas. I'll probably never show up, but that's ok with all of you as this is a non-critical situation and no life is in danger. I accept checks and paypal.

Please note the default DNS TTL is 12 hours. Even when someone chooses to manually lower the TTL for a domain, it doesn't mean the TTL will be propagated as is. There are ways to enforce longer TTLs so our DNS servers can cache for a longer time.