jeff35080

That's what licensing is and what's being quasi-discussed in this thread.

I gotta agree with KA on this. We are actually having some pretty good dialogue with TPTB. Let's not get this thread locked. I understand that people are missing the update @ Buxley's, but these discussions can actually hasten the return of such 3rd party services.

Argh!!!! I'm being ridiculed in public by someone that has actually done a 'ride along' with me Besides.... you have seen me do the YMCA dance... and dang it... I look sexy when I do it Hmmmm.... it may be time to go frog gigging

To keep this geocaching related.... if I were to receive a call of 'suspicious' persons (who were geocachers). I would ask for ID. 99% of the time these persons would produce a govt ID i.e. DL, state ID, etc. The other 1% of the time the person would have no ID with them and they could give me their name. I didn't exactly post what I was thinking last night as I was a bit tired. You are correct I can't make anyone give me a physical ID card/paper but I can make you give me a name. If you refuse to give me a name that I can verify matches your description through the use of local, county, state & federal files I will arrest you and take you to jail. Once at jail, you will be fingerprinted. You won't get to leave jail until you can be positively indentified. In 14 years of law enforcement I have only encountered one person that refused to give a govt issued ID or their name. Anyways... happy geocaching and remember the police are your friends and a lot of us are very active geocachers Cheers!

As a duly sworn law enforcement officer, I have to break it to you.... if I ask you for ID, you will need to produce it for me. If you can not or will not provide ID, I can consider you to be impeding my investigation and will take you to jail where you will be booked and through the use of fingerprints and other methods, we will attempt to ID you. Trust me, I'm not out to violate anyones' civil rights, but you do have to provide identification should I request it during a lawful investigation. Typcially this ID will be government issued i.e. driver's license or state issued ID card. Happy geocaching!

Although I don't think you would sue me for providing the AGA with data derived from gc.com, I am still afraid to do so. I welcome the opportunity for the AGA to be able to 'license' data from Groundspeak that I can display on our web site. If a list is being made of those that wish to access such data, please add the AGA to the list and make me the point of contact since AlaCache.com resides on my server and my IP address. I look forward to working with Groundspeak to be able to access any data through an amicable licensing agreement.

That is a valid point. I wonder if there are persons that are already doing this....

Cool! We have some awesome dialogue here... and, as far as I'm concerned, very positive dialogue. To expand further Elias, I would like to suggest that Groundspeak work closely with someone such as M-Class or others who have written some very clean code that should be unobtrusive to gc.com By working with a small handful of developers, gc.com could have access to code and check to ensure that it would meet any requirements set-forth for regional groups to use i.e. number of accesses, method of access (when the issue is decided and finalized). It would be nice for regional/state/local groups to have 3-4 'choices' of software that would bear the Groundspeak 'Seal of Approval'. The software developers could 'sell/license' their code to state groups. In return, these developers could possibly have to pay Groundspeak a 'fee' for approval of their code. I realize that M-Class did charge a nominal fee for the use of his services, but it probably wasn't enough to cover the costs of development and/or bandwidth. Like I said, I have software that can access gc.com and scrape data in a myriad of ways, but I have always been afraid to actually use it since I value the good relationship the Alabama Geocachers Assn has with Groundspeak. I'll admit that I'm tired and somewhat rambling with thoughts that probably don't make much sense, but I am glad to see this discussion take a positive turn with input from Groundspeak. Thanks for the candid and sincere responses!

I'm glad you were able to read between the lines Hopefully, this will all work-out where it ends-up being good for everyone Please, keep us posted!

Did you have a legal and binding signed contract or simply a verbal gentlemen's agreement? If a legitimate entity such a state organization would be willing to sign a contract for service that defined exactly how, what, where and when the data would be extracted would Groundspeak be willing to work with such a group?

Huh? That statement is completely false and ludicrous. I have several caches hidden on private property. Geesh...

Don't ask, don't tell? I've been following this thread with quite a bit of interest. I'm the webmaster of a statewide association and have some code that would allow me to do exactly what others have done. Some of it is open source with some modifications by me. I have NEVER utilized this code to access gc.com, although I was planning to do some 'off hours' scraping for the benefit of our state association. As the webmaster and as a member of a state association, I really would like to know how we (the association) can find a way to 'license' data from gc.com for use on our association's web site in the form of statistics. Will gc.com ever license those of us that want to use the data for good, not evil? It may be time for gc.com to consider how to license data such as this to legitimate groups. I know our state association would be willing to work with gc.com to come-up with a way for us to have 'live' stats at a fair price and not at the expense of hurting the performance of gc.com Now... back to the lively discussion

Hmmmm.... bootron.... a new member of the Groundspeak staff? Welcome aboard!

May God bless this cacher's family and allow him to log many caches in Heaven.

Yep, that snake gave me quite a jolt I was already paranoid because there were muggles in the area and here I was in full uniform trying to find the cache. Once I found it I was trying to be as discreet as possible when all of a sudden... there's a snake After I realized what it was I laughed my *** off. It was a really cool surprise and the cache page made perfect sense

Good find! I have found beacons, but never an arrow. Congrats!

I voted. I like girls.

Here's a 9/11 Memorial Cache we had here in B'ham: http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_detai...89-ccba90dab748 I sure wish mtn-man would let me adopt it to keep it alive (hint, hint )

Tiny?

That's a good link. Get a cable off eBay and you can download to your heart's content. I bet I have taken thousands of pics and never paid a dime to get 'em onto my PC. Plus I can upload my own ring tones for free and I got rid of that darn flashing banner. My phone now works as it should without the Verizon advertising Have fun!

I love my 8900 and have hacked the heck out of it. I love being able to download pics from the phone for free and was sooo happy to get rid of the annoying Verizon banner on it.

http://www.engadget.com/entry/5203323676608533/ I sure hope they don't take away our maps

Seems to work well on a Audivox 8900 with an Openwave 4.x browser. I was able to log in and post a note to one of my caches.

They posted a note because they were the hider of the cache.

You may want to post in your appropriate regional forum in hopes that an honest, local geocacher finds it.