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Interesting ideas all around. My 2 cents. I like the comment of Dani+Iris. Yes, it's tedious to maintain a physical location (although in my case it's not too bad honestly). On the other hand, there's plenty of examples of cartridges being (re)used outside of the original cache (the Hangman series in the US, the reverse Wherigo from Waldmeister). To attract a crowd for playing Wherigo's (isn't that what we all want), I feel the app/player experience is key. We (as builders) are obviously quick to point out the flaws/features requests of creating a Wherigo. But, in the end it's still the person that's loading a cartridge on his smartphone who's the boss. So what is it in Wherigo that can attract crowds over the myriad (successful or not) alternatives that have been launched? (I wish I had the answer to this.) Trying to dissect some of the ideas that were posted by Ranger Fox and others on the subject. 1. In general - I like the idea of having a map centric approach. It will put limits to how you can develop things, but I think it will give a much better experience for the player. - Videos: I do see use cases (eg. interaction with an NPC) but I would be deterred by the extra effort needed to create videos on top of building the cartridge. So for sure not a critical/v2.1 item for me. From that respect, Audio is more important. - Formatting of items to make it more appealing: text with different fonts/colors/..., different colors for the zones (if you still have those), ... 2. On Zones - Having a more 'stable' zone experience dealing with GPS-jitter - For most purposes, just a point is sufficient, but having a shape can be interesting (eg. I have one built on a roundabout, the zones are like a piece of a pie forming a complete circle; it's nice to have rectangles if you want to have a "gameboard" like experience) - I like the idea of having a picture/icon showing on the map, instead of just the zone shape. But we need to think about how to do it with overlapping zones/small zones (compared to the minimum picture size) 3. On NPC / Items - I like the idea of having a picture/icon showing. But we need to think about how to do it with many items on the same spot/in the same zone - I like the idea of not being forced to have these NPC/Items in a zone (or the inventory) for them to show up - Taking this one step further: what's the difference between a zone and one of these objects? From a logical perspective, not a lot (especially if you don't have shapes for zones). Only the options you have to interact with the Object might be different ("add to inventory" or "use" for Items, "talk" is typically something for NPC). 4. Online or not? - I do see the advantage of being able to play it offline. Trust me, as a European without decent/affordable data plans outside of Europe, it can become costly when visiting the US or other territories. - I like the idea of having a neatly integrated system with APIs to load a cartridge, post a "log", mark completion, ... 5. On Groundspeak/GC links - With the adventure labs, it's going to be difficult to sell a tour guide like Wherigo platform on them - From the GC posting guidelines: "specific apps" are not allowed. So they can easily block/disallow them. https://www.geocaching.com/help/index.php?pg=kb.chapter&id=97&pgid=297#mobileapps A small remark on this: yes, it's (more) work to create a Wherigo than just drop a pill bottle behind a tree in a forest. But I am sure some people put equally (if not more) time in building great cache containers, multi's, gadgetcaches or mysteries. That being said, to buld a community, you'll need "many" cartridges (of high quality), so you'll need many builders too. SWIPEE

Who's going? Arrg...

OK, I should be getting my tax cash back in a week or so and plan on ordering a GPS system. Dell has these on sale and I think, if I talk to the right person, I can get them to match Amazon's price, which would be bonus to me as I can use my preferred account with them. I kind of wanted to stick around 200-220, but if I could get Dell to match, I'd have a hard time not pulling the trigger. My goal is to use this mainly for geocaching, some summer hiking/camping and some photo outings. For travel on the road, I have a TomTom, so maps aren't a big deal to me. So, I come to you the geocaching community and ask... sell me on this piece of electronics and tell me why I should spend nearly 300 bucks on a GPS unit? And if not -- which one should I get and why? Thanks for any thoughts/help!

I'll add one that's been present for several years now. When a PNG or GIF image is uploaded to a cache page, the contents of the file are quietly changed to progressive jpeg with no warning and no change to the file suffix. There are plenty of puzzle caches that rely on these file formats, for example where the solution is encoded in RGB values, yet this behaviour isn't even documented in the Help Centre, leaving unwary COs oblivious to the fact that their carefully crafted PNG or GIF file has turned into a jpeg without even the .JPG extension to suggest anything's changed. The only explanation given for this is that, for players on slow internet connections, it looks prettier for images to gradually come into focus than to be built up raster-fashion. Talk about form over function!

Come watch Geocache Talk on Sunday night - this podcast show's topic is desirable attributes, which may include talk related to identifying gadget caches At this point though, the Field Puzzle attribute is most relevant to identifying potential gadget caches.

Be welcome! I would suggest that you do some caching for a while, attend some Events and talk to folks there... I bet all (almost) your questions will be answered just by playing. On the other hand you may be interested also in some geocaching based books and movies or series, like Splinterheads, Dark, etc. Some rare geocoins would be good things to leave in the caches, or memorabilia from pop culture, like the original artifacts in the APE Cache series, from Planet of the Apes. Enjoy and be inspired. PS: I have done a lot of covers for the portuguese versions of Goosebumps, from R. L. Stine.

Thank you whoever you 4 are. This is the way we should all strive to talk to land owners. This came in to Groundspeak today and I thought thanks were in order. It is so nice to get emails like this. It really helps things when cachers are professional in their dealing with land owners and managers. Thanks to all that do this, not just these 4 people.

I've been checking and couldn't find a thread for this type of WM. How many times can we see a satellite and we have not had time to talk with a partner, or even two partners saw a satellite, but someone who also saw it (and is within the distance of being able to share WM) is left without being able to register it? Well, here we can write down what we saw or did (especially those that were not published)

Talk me out of returning my Colorado and getting a 60 CSx. I'm really disappointed about spending the cash and none of the geocaching features work.

Hi i want to activate one of those geocoin. Can, someaone please, tell me where should i go to get the activation code. PL

I can't seem to get my new (Christmas gift) Garmin 76CS Plus gps to (Interface) send lat. or long. to my new Raymarine DS 500 X fish finder. On their own, they both work perfect, but I am at my witts end and I need some help. I have read both owner's manuals from cover to cover and it seems to be so easy to make the gps send text to the fishfinder. I have hooked everything up the right way ( I Think), I set the gps to send NMEA text and the fishfinder to receive NMEA in. The Garmin gps only has four wires out of the power/data cable ........... {Red=Power} {Black=Ground} {Brown= Serial Data Out} {White=Serial Data In}.......... The Raymarine fishfinder has alot more wires, Seven to be exact..........{Red=Power} {Black=Ground} {White=NMEA Input+} {Green=NEMA Input -} {Yellow=NEMA Output+} {Brown= NEMA Output -} {Grey=CGND}. I used the {Brown, Serial Data Out} wire on the gps and hooked it to the {White, NMEA Input+} on the fishfinder and nothing happend. Do anyone of you know what I'm talking about? I need some interfacing help here. I will try to talk to Raymarine after the holidays if I still need to, but they are vacation till Jan. 2nd.

Can anyone compleatly decode the geo-talk abreviations found in log books, I figured out tnln, and ftf, and dnf, but that was it? What is some of the other abreviations used?

Yeah color me unimpressed lately with HQ. I definitely see them less as stewards now and more of a corporate machine that does not care about us, only about the bottom line. They talk a good game, but killing benchmarks and then messing up the search function and telling us "Sorry, we are on vacation and will get around to it when we get around to it" has me completely put off. At least I can go find a ton of adventure labs with little to no effort from a parking lot somewhere. What an adventure.

We are fairly new to the geocaching world and have become VERY addicted to say the least. We enjoy hiding as much as we enjoy finding. We are wanting to put out a multi cache. Ive been doing research on different caches to see how everyone else does theirs. I haven't found all that much about how to list them and how they need to be done to get approved. Say if I want a 4 stage cache, how would I go about inserting all the coords. We are going to do a trivia one and the answers to the questions will be the key to the next one's place. Do we just put in one cache's coordinates? Im really a green pea here that needs some help. Thanks in advance!

Atlas, I understand your collection. I also know you realize the difference between using them and collecting them and are prepared to use bespoke software if you can get it at all. (Good luck with that Magellan stuff that required online registration, for example.) Mineral, close call! The 600 was actually the last device that I purchased when it was substantially discounted. The 450 it replaced had gotten crash-happy. The 600 at least rebooted more quickly when it crashed. By the time I purchased it, my own geocaching was largely limited by my own health and available time to business travels when I was "stuck" out of town. South SF Bay had enough geocaches to keep me occupied and there was enough flat land that I could choose my own adventures to tailor my days to my pain level for the day. I think I probably have a thousand or more finds that I've not even logged when I cached in part of a group on GeoWoodstock weekends, but I'm pretty much a former geocacher at this point. Thanx, user13371. For a few years after my surgeries, I was "frownie face" most of the time. While I still can't predict how much time I can devote to software just due to the nature of spinal issues, I do have some random lucid hours from time to time, so I can still pop out a release or two a year even if working from the bed or something. It's just the nature of my disability. The removal is in https://github.com/GPSBabel/gpsbabel/pull/961. Once I get that build green, I'll push it and it'll be gone in the nightlies and all future builds. For some reason, the doc build is silently failing on my machine right now and I don't feel like debugging that. I'll just "spray and pray" in the build cluster at Github. Once that PR is submitted, it shall be done. In vaguely related news, the birthdate of GPSBabel's original code turns drinking age this week. It was just before the Christmas holiday in 2001 when I was still in a neck brace from my very first spinal surgery (the morning of 9/11) when I started geocaching. I had a DNF from mistyping the coordinates in my Map330 and I started writing code to talk to the device from SCO UNIX after being frustrated with the tools available at the time.

FYI, It would seem that the OGA talk list RSS feed has been locked out. A shame that the general public can no longer see what is going on unless they become an official member.

I have a real problem with muggles. Not the ones that catch you cacheing as I have only found one cache so far. No, I have problems with them at work; I am afraid they are going to catch me printing out the caches that I am going to look for this weekend! I have to hit the print button and run down the hall to get the printout off the printer before someone sees it. Oh, I could explain what I am doing, but half would think I am crazy and who knows what the other half will think.

I occasionally look through my old finds, and noticed that I am the last one to find dozens of caches. In fact, I made a spreadsheet of caches for which I am the last to find, and I have now recorded 130 caches. I was thinking this could be a good Challenge Cache. Of course if you just went on a big Geo Trail and found 100 caches that might be unfair, so I could put certain date parameters on it like one of the following: "To qualify for this challenge, you need to be the last finder on 100 caches and the most recent "last finder" cache must be at least 30 days ago." or "To qualify for this challenge, you need to be the last finder on 25 caches and the most recent "last finder" cache must be at least 6 months ago I would like some feedback if the community thinks this would be a good idea for a Challenge cache. If people think this would be a cool idea, who do I talk to about writing the code for it?

The moderator may move or delete this, I don't know, but our magnetic compasses (if we carry one) are as much a part of our gear as our GPSr. I am curious as to what make and model magnetic compass people are using. I have a Suunto M3G with the global needle (I am in Ecuador). Turns out the little Silva starter compass I carry every day in my backpack worked just fine. But I like the larger dial and needle and the luminous dial on the more expensive model. Looking through the catalogs, you sure can spend a lot for a compass! I Remember years ago Silva was the only game in town.

A lot of talk here about COs not using the OM log. My irk is when COs use the OM log to say. "I'm going to fix the problem." Case in point, a location I pass frequently when traveling where the cache has been missing for 8 months and the CO is doing nothing but posting bogus OM logs.

Another way to work around it would be to block cookiebot.com, say at the firewall or HOSTS file. I've done this for a few years, and the site works fine for me, including the message center. Also keeps the site from asking me about cookies, don't ever talk to me about cookies.

Not a naive assumption, but, yes, I did take for granted that you hadn't talked to the COs because if you already had reactions from the COs, I would expected you to present those in order to make that the topic. The responses you've now told us about are the real problem that we can talk about solving. It's far less productive to start with the unsupported claim that the NM attribute is useless because you don't think it's being used correctly. But, I see, this way you got to call someone innocently trying to help you with your problem "naive", so that's always fun.

I am glad our countless hours of research through logs and plethora of photos mean nothing to HQ and zero attempts are being made to keep our data available in an archived format. All this community talk is nothing but lip service to the corporate machine and bottom line.

If this is based truly on non use (vs cost cutting which I believe it is) then get rid of other things in geocaching that get little use such as caches that require special equipment such as Wherigo or project APE caches. You guys talk out both sides of your mouth!

Looks to me that the proposed category is very similar to the elongated coins category (aka Penny Smashers) in the aspect of an automaton creating/selling a touristic token. T0SHEA told me (not a week ago) that we should strive for inclusion if we have similarities to another category. So you should have a talk to the category leaders / officers first if they are willing to expand their category to accept these touristic tokens also.