SpongeRob

WPWU826

September 16, 2003

Does no one have a copy of this letter? Surely if somone reposts it we can obviously continue discussing it. I'll try to find out from the person that told me to check it out.

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SpongeRob

WPWU826

September 16, 2003

I really don't care who posted it, I'm kind of curious what was in it. Anyone by chance have a copy of it?

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SpongeRob

WPWU826

September 16, 2003

Any idea on what was in the letter? Somone emailed me to check it out as a possible article on keenpeople.com

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SpongeRob

WPWU826

September 15, 2003

www.keenpeople.com has a cache rating system that also includes a counter on it. Get 2 features for the price of one. Oh, the price. Free

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SpongeRob

WPWU826

September 11, 2003

The thought has crossed my mind but with other wildly successful sites like Navicache.com It's doubtful the user base would relocate regardless of features. Most people are too lazy to switch sites when they already have something that works. What we need is more features not another site.

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SpongeRob

WPWU826

September 11, 2003

quote:
My 2 cents, FWIW. We were paying members of GC.com for one year.

quote:
Were GC.com (or anyone else) to include a stats page as part of a membership, we would reconsider being paying members.

This was my point in some earlier posts. Figure you have to have around 1000 paying members which results in 3K a month (at least). This does not include any "Gear sales". It's an online community of which voulenteers are your employees. So Jeremy pulls in the bucks and when the community asks for things we're told "It was never designed to be played this way". Get off your butt and respond to your CUSTOMERS Jeremy.

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SpongeRob

WPWU826

September 5, 2003

quote:
Translation: He's going to work on the code for the stats at work, and plans his caching adventures there as well.

Ok, that's a little scary.

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SpongeRob

WPWU826

September 5, 2003

And as far as the stats go, my philosopy is that the users own the stats. It's their data.

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SpongeRob

WPWU826

September 5, 2003

I should have enough time to take the task on. I work a 40 hour a week job. Have 3 kids and enough time to maintain keenpeople.com and still get out to geocache. Keenpeople.com can host the stats. The data of course necessary for the stats. What I need though is the source data.

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SpongeRob

WPWU826

September 5, 2003

quote:
How about you get over it?

I would if I was in the minority.

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SpongeRob

WPWU826

September 5, 2003

if youre refering to ...

quote:
Scoring, as a result, is pointless. Simply with find counts people have issues with only getting one find for a multicache. Others complain that Jack is logging his own cache to bump up his *score*. The pitch of competitive whine is more than sufficient without thrusting upon everyone ranking on the site.

Not that I'm ignoring the rumblings in the forum, however. We have been considering two concepts which could find its way on the web site, depending on interest:

1. Users check a box that says "Yes. I think points matter." Only those people become ranked in the system.

2. People can join groups and see rankings of their stats on the web site as a group.

I prefer #2. Both are opt-in and in this situation if everyone understands the complexity of "scoring" and doesn't come b!tch to me if someone cheats, we will consider adding it.

I understand *HE* thinks "Scoring, as a result, is pointless" others do not. Some of the others include paying customers who really want this as a service. Inclusion, exclusion what does it really matter. For those who want points read it. For those that don't then once again... get over it.

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SpongeRob

WPWU826

September 5, 2003

Sorry about that I must have read it wrong the first time..

from http://www.geocaching.com/about/

quote:
As of today, there are 66967 active caches in 184 countries.
In the last 7 days, there have been 43600 new logs written by 10407 account holders.

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SpongeRob

WPWU826

September 5, 2003

I have offered to pony up for some time. www.keenpeople.com has both SQL and PHP services at my disposal. I could easily extract summary data and publish it on my site. It has currently over 1GB of available space. Which based on the 96K users on Geocaching.com should be plenty of space for such a task.

I have asked repeatedly to do a point system and/or stat system. I've been turned down. I've already implemented a cache rating system on www.keenpeople.com which many people use today - free.

I'm willing to pony up resources, time and development effort. All I need is DATA!!!!

If somone wants to assist, great. So long as it does not become extremely cost prohibitive I'm willing to do it all for FREE!!!

How many times do I have to offer?

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SpongeRob

WPWU826

September 5, 2003

quote:
In any event, my point had nothing to do with stats. If you think geocaching should be run the way the guy who created it thinks it should be run - and that's what you implied with the bit I quoted - then you think we should only be hunting virtuals. I encourage you to archive all of your traditional caches.

Neither did mine. My point is that the community controls geocaching not one individual. I encourage you to expand your narrow vision.

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SpongeRob

WPWU826

September 5, 2003

quote:
Go over on alt.rec.geocaching and ask Dave Ulmer how HE thinks it should be played. You'll be begging to have Jeremy back.

Regardless of an individuals view on this, I think the majority of people here have spoken on what they want.

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SpongeRob

WPWU826

September 5, 2003

Ok, I'm going to throw my two cents in here.

For those of you that like the stats that's great. Read em, and love em. For those of you don't then don't read em, go out on your own and forget about the people who like them.

Now, as for the stats page itself. Regardless of where it's housed you need one thing. Data. To date Jeremy has kept this data to himself. It's not surprising either because after all it's his site. What annoys me is that for those of us that fork out the $3.00 a month (of which there are probably thousands... you do the math) you don't get a whole lot in the way of upgrades to the features of the site.

*I* have volunteered my time to Jeremy to create stats pages or point scoring. I was told "The game was never intended to be point based." - That having been said it's clear Jeremy perceives that Geocaching is HIS game (although the site lists a different creator) and not that of the users. I've been working with websites, SQL and databases for over 14 years and I *volunteered* my time to get stats up.

I also emailed Dan about his stat page and taking it over before it went down. I received no response from him. The scuttlebutt I heard was that there was talk about integrating it into gc.com.

Bottom line - we've all sat here and talked about it yet the one person that has the power to either appease or displease remains silent. I see Jeremy pipe up for lesser conversations why does he avoid this one?

Where's Jeremy in all this? Your customers are calling...

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SpongeRob

WPWU826

September 5, 2003

Wouldnt it just be easier to do the stats on GC.com where the data is?

Seems really silly that since they have all the data there that they don't have the summary data published.

How hard can it be? I'd even be willing to lend my database skills to get it done. You would think that with all the cash they pull in they could at least add new functionality.

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SpongeRob

WPWU826

September 4, 2003

I was not exactly sure what conference that's why I was trying to get more information. I'm aware Dupage FP has had issues with cachers before. I was refering to the FPD itself. I only heard that there was something upcoming, nothing specific. Trying to find out more information on it.

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SpongeRob

WPWU826

September 3, 2003

Has anyone heard anything about Dupage County speaking unfavorably about geocaching at an upcoming conference? I heard about this through a reporter but dont have any details at this time. Has anyone else heard anything about this?

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SpongeRob

WPWU826

September 2, 2003

I maintain a FAQ of Known Garmin eTrex Issues . Hawk-eye was also nice enough to give us permission to post his article on the site which should be online very soon.

Thanks.

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SpongeRob

WPWU826

August 28, 2003

You can do a few things actually.

If you go into your legend main menu theres the setup page. You can then change the MAP Dataum to UTM and then your waypoints will show as UTM. Change the unit back to WGS84 and then you're converted automatically.

IF you have mapsource, you can also configure mapsource for UTM also. Mapsource will also do the conversion based on what was input to convert to what datum you want to use.

lastly, there are a few places on the internet where you can do some conversions online. Just have to use google and search for WGS84 to UTM.

I opt for mapsource personally. It's quick to change without a lot of button pushing. The legend also will do the conversion too but the click stick can be a hassle for entering a lot of coordinate data.

- Rob

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SpongeRob

WPWU826

August 28, 2003

Geomama,

I have written two tutorials on Keenpeople.com that show how to make a custom map. You can do it several different ways and then upload the map into your Garmin Etrex (depending on model). The tutorials on keenpeople.com show you how to map it out using tracklogs from the etrex, or you can use topo or aerial data from the USGS. Please feel free to check the site out.

Additionally, once you complete your map, feel free to upload it to our site where others can download it and use it on their GPS.

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SpongeRob

WPWU826

August 28, 2003

I get this a lot from users of GPI. This is how to do it with Win2K and XP.

1. You'll want to go into any explorer window then go to "FOLDER OPTIONS"

2. From there pick the "File Types" tab at the top.

3. Scroll down to the GPX extension (which should show easy GPS)

4. Click the "CHange button" and select whichever application you want to associate it with.

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SpongeRob

WPWU826

August 26, 2003

Not sure how easy that would be to do. You would have to "Merge" the GPS data into the video stream going to your video tape DAC (Providing it's a digital camcorder). I'm not aware of any consumer video cameras that can take multiple video streams and merge them into a single stream.

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SpongeRob

WPWU826