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Weekly Cache Notification Overhaul


Jeremy

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I am from Germany, so I cannot use the SMS notification service Groundspeak offers. So I use the forwarding service of e-mail provider to read cache notifications on my cell phone to be ready for a FTF.

 

Problem is, that an SMS is very limited in length (160 characters). So what I would very much like to have is a very short notification mail with all important details like name, coordinates, distance, type, size, difficulty/terrain and owner and not a space consuming intro like "This is an automated message from Geocaching".

 

That would be great!

vanguard

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I agree. It is easy to run a PQ to find out all the events within 200 miles of you. I would think that the point of the weekly notice would be to remind people about "local" events. 200 miles is not local. It would be interesting to see a survey that shows what percentage of cachers "typically" travel 200 miles to attend an event. :D

 

95% of the events around here are at least 90 miles from my house and a good many of them are in the 100-150 mile range....so I love having the 200 mile radius for events. Before I have to do seek a cache and then find events by state to see if there were any going on.

 

For us 100 miles one way travel is local and anything over 150 mi we have to think about it.

 

I like the Tips and like having all Mega Events on the notification email. It would be good to see it be customized. Thanks for the good work! :D

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I just got my new cache notification. It might be nice to include the Difficulty/Terrain & cache size for browsing through the list.

 

Ex.

 

7. (GCZ2J1) Stick Island (Traditional Cache): 1/5 Regular

Location: New Hampshire, United States

Date: 10/26/2006

Posted by: adventurebound

(link removed for brevity_

27.7mi NE (44.6km NE)

 

I gotta say, though... MUCH nicer than the old bot mails. I like it!

Edited by New England n00b
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I like the new & improved weekly notification. The separation of the events from caches is great. I appreciate the inclusion of events that are farther away and mega-events.

 

One suggestion: Please omit archived caches from the notification email. Newly published caches shouldn't be archived in their first week, but it does happen. There were 19 caches listed in the notification email I received, two of which were archived when the email was sent.

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I'm still receiving a message from the LoBot Mailer with the weekly notification message attached stating:

 

This message has been processed by Symantec's AntiVirus Technology.

 

Unknown00000000.data was not scanned for viruses because too many nested levels of files were found.

 

For more information on antivirus tips and technology, visit http://ses.symantec.com/

Edited by TotemLake
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Okay, I tried it. Got a couple before the change and now the first two since the change. I think its alright... kind of redundant if you already read the forums and get the insta-notify, but for folks that aren't quite that active I could see it being very useful-- especially the recent news part at the top. Tip of the day would be nice, as was suggested early on. Even caching tips, hiding tips, etc... beyond site tips would be cool.

 

So far, I think its pretty decent for the average cacher-- but since I do read the forums and check the newer local caches, there's not much in there that's new to me.

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Thanks for everyone's feedback! There are a bunch of good suggestions. We'll try and incorporate some of them in the next mailer.

 

We'll also try to find out why the emails are incorrectly flagged as viruses in some cases. Since it is straight text it's pretty odd to see that.

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2. The forum link "http://forums.Groundspeak.com/GC/index.php?showtopic=147765" included in the mail doesn't work.

Since I just copied that link into my address bar and it worked fine, I'm guessing you mean it wasn't a "clickable" link. Since it is a plain text email, making the link clickable is a function of your email client, and not anything that the sender has any control over.

 

No, the problem wasn't with the link being clickable. Rather, I was getting a "page not found" error when I clicked on it. Tried again today using the same link from our second notification and it works fine now. Probably some sort of transient error.

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Where do we report problems with the new Groundspeak LoBot Mailer? We just received our first weekly update with the new mailer and see two problems:

  1. It's sending us updates for California even though we live in North Carolina. The old mailer send us updates for North Carolina just fine.
  2. The forum link "http://forums.Groundspeak.com/GC/index.php?showtopic=147765" included in the mail doesn't work.

Thanks,

tobysowners

 

I received our second notification today from the new mailer. We're still getting notifications for California, rather for than North Carolina. Any idea on how to "fix" this? Is there something I can set/update in our account to tell the new mailer that we live in North Carolina?

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I received our second notification today from the new mailer. We're still getting notifications for California, rather for than North Carolina. Any idea on how to "fix" this? Is there something I can set/update in our account to tell the new mailer that we live in North Carolina?

 

From the GC.com Home Page click on My Account.

(Make sure you were logged in).

 

Right hand edge. Center of page. Update home coordinates

(bottom line in the Search Options box).

 

Are those your current North Carolina coordinates?

If not, you need to enter the correct coordinates.

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Where do we report problems with the new Groundspeak LoBot Mailer? We just received our first weekly update with the new mailer and see two problems:

  1. It's sending us updates for California even though we live in North Carolina. The old mailer send us updates for North Carolina just fine.
  2. The forum link "http://forums.Groundspeak.com/GC/index.php?showtopic=147765" included in the mail doesn't work.

Thanks,

tobysowners

 

I received our second notification today from the new mailer. We're still getting notifications for California, rather for than North Carolina. Any idea on how to "fix" this? Is there something I can set/update in our account to tell the new mailer that we live in North Carolina?

 

I received an email today from a cacher in Idaho who's having the same problem (She's receiving caches from Kentucky). Any word from the home office on this bug?

 

Bret

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Late to the conversation, but never shy with an opnion, here's my $.03 (adjusted for inflation).

1. The new layout is excellent, and much easier on the eyes.

2. Customization of the info received would be sweet.

Perhaps a good way to satisfy the needs of those of us who live in areas with differing densities, is to offer the new listings by a radius or finite number?

3. I'll third the suggestion of a 'site tip of the week'.

4. Perhaps some links to 'geocaching in the news' would alos be an appropriate topic for the weekly emailer?

 

Keep up the good work, and keep those hamsters well fed. :)

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I'll bet the bug is that the home coordinates aren't set, and that the individual has the incorrect state listed...

 

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If they are correctly set, clear them and turn off the notification. Log out, log back in, turn the notification back on and reset state and coordinates. My experience with upgrades is sometimes the switch is turned off even if the indicator is clearly on.

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Where do we report problems with the new Groundspeak LoBot Mailer? We just received our first weekly update with the new mailer and see two problems:

  1. It's sending us updates for California even though we live in North Carolina. The old mailer send us updates for North Carolina just fine.
  2. The forum link "http://forums.Groundspeak.com/GC/index.php?showtopic=147765" included in the mail doesn't work.

Thanks,

tobysowners

 

I received our second notification today from the new mailer. We're still getting notifications for California, rather for than North Carolina. Any idea on how to "fix" this? Is there something I can set/update in our account to tell the new mailer that we live in North Carolina?

 

You didn't select home coordinates and you put your state in the field where there should be a zipcode. You shouldn't have received an email at all so it may just have taken your state name and found the closest zipcode.

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I'll bet the bug is that the home coordinates aren't set, and that the individual has the incorrect state listed...

 

We no longer send notifications out if you don't have a home waypoint (or at least a postal code). We may re-add it in the past but most states have way too many caches no for it to work well.

Edited by Jeremy
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The new mailer sent me notifications for an area thata I have not requested and none from my requested area.

 

Check the postal code for your account. For privacy reasons I cannot post it here so you can verify it, so check your account. Also, add home coordinates to get a more precise point of origin.

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I have not received any notifications since your overhaul. I have been told that my ISP won't accept bulk emailings with NOREPLY listed as FROM. A reply to my foreum post was that geocaching.com has always sent email as NOREPLY. My ISP refuses to whitelist geocaching.com so now I have changed my email with the hope that I receive notifications this week. Could it me your overhaul has caused me to be dropped from the notifications?

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Something that would be very useful to me, but might not be as interesting at all to some, is a weekly list of the caches that I have disabled, sorted with the longest disabled first, and the most recently disabled last. Keeping on top of disabled caches is not all that easy, and if I was getting a list weekly, I'd probably remember them easier. :huh:

 

--Marky

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Guys... I deleted your posts since they contained your direct email contacts. I'm sure spam harvesters know how to get around these forums by now.

 

We're aware that the emails are going out as a bunch of nested files for some reason but we haven't determined why. We'll continue to work on it. Based on the errors you aren't getting any virus flags - your virus checker is just choking on the number of files sent out via the single message. We're not doing anything particularly odd with the emails but there may be something on our end that is modifying the email somehow.

 

For clarification, as I understand it the larger emails sent to users in any case are sent in packets - or several packages of data. In this case the packages are too large for the virus checker to process. Someone can help me clarify this further.

Edited by Jeremy
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Something that would be very useful to me, but might not be as interesting at all to some, is a weekly list of the caches that I have disabled, sorted with the longest disabled first, and the most recently disabled last. Keeping on top of disabled caches is not all that easy, and if I was getting a list weekly, I'd probably remember them easier. :anicute:

 

--Marky

 

Although I do not own many caches, I keep forgetting about an adopted cache I have disabled, this would be another handy reminder.

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Guys... I deleted your posts since they contained your direct email contacts. I'm sure spam harvesters know how to get around these forums by now.

 

We're aware that the emails are going out as a bunch of nested files for some reason but we haven't determined why. We'll continue to work on it. Based on the errors you aren't getting any virus flags - your virus checker is just choking on the number of files sent out via the single message. We're not doing anything particularly odd with the emails but there may be something on our end that is modifying the email somehow.

 

For clarification, as I understand it the larger emails sent to users in any case are sent in packets - or several packages of data. In this case the packages are too large for the virus checker to process. Someone can help me clarify this further.

No problem by me. For the record, I don't have any Symantec product running on my system. I ran CCleaner to be sure and I'll let you know next run's results. You might be interested to know this is repeatable across three systems, one of them being Symantec free at installation.

 

To be sure it isn't my AV causing the problem, I'll exit my AVG prior to downloading e-mail from this particular account.

 

I just did something different instead. I had previously set my client to keep the original copy on the server. Since the existing message didn't go through my system, and the ISP doesn't use Symantec per a previous reply back to my complaint from them, the behavior exists in the original message sent to me.

 

If you're using a Symantec product to scan outgoing messages as an added security measure, you might want to include a keyword exclude for the weekly notification and see if that works.

Edited by TotemLake
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2. The forum link "http://forums.Groundspeak.com/GC/index.php?showtopic=147765" included in the mail doesn't work.

Since I just copied that link into my address bar and it worked fine, I'm guessing you mean it wasn't a "clickable" link. Since it is a plain text email, making the link clickable is a function of your email client, and not anything that the sender has any control over.

 

No, the problem wasn't with the link being clickable. Rather, I was getting a "page not found" error when I clicked on it. Tried again today using the same link from our second notification and it works fine now. Probably some sort of transient error.

 

I had a problem with a few of the caches in the most recent mailer. I use gmail. For some reason, a few of them glommed the -distance from my home coordinates- onto the end of the URL. If I copy pasted it into my browser it was fine, but if I just clicked, it gave ugly SQL errors. This was only happening to the ones that had whole-number distances. 14mi, 15mi, like that. The ones that had decimals, 7.1mi 8.5mi, etc, didn't seem to connect.

 

An html br tag after the url might be nice...

 

Thanks for reading.

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An html br tag after the url might be nice...

They are not HTML emails. They are plain text. Thus, adding an HTML code would be an incorrect solution. There is a carriage return/linefeed combination after the URL. Any linking of the distance onto the URL is the fault of the email reader, not the email itself.

 

Edit: Ahhh I now see there is an option to get HTML emails. I just changed my setting to HTML so next week maybe I'll see what the problem is. In the meantime, maybe you could set yours to plain text and see if the problem goes away for you.

Edited by Lil Devil
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Perhaps it's too late now, but I would suggest more radical changes to the weekly notification e-mail.

 

Rather than a list of caches, I'd rather see a link to a search query result showing only new and amended caches (obviously, centred on my home coordinates). A second link would be similar, but only showing Events. A third one for Waymarking. The wording of the text above the links would reflect the latest news (e.g. "Since the last notification, there are 15 new caches, 2 disabled caches and 1 archived cache within 37 miles of your home location: click HERE to display, or use <Latest news> on your profile page"). I'm assuming that <Latest News> is a new button is on a profile page which performs the same search whenever used. The 37 miles limit in the example wouldn't apply to the search results: these could be virtually unlimited (or customisable, again).

 

If there is nothing to report within a week in your area (customisable distance), the link wouldn't appear at all: so you would know to not bother checking.

 

The purpose of the notification would be;

1. A summary of any Groundspeak announcements and brief notices

2. Heads-up that something has happened in your area (new cache, archived cache etc).

 

It would not be an arbitrarily-defined and tedious list of cache names: these tend to be fairly meaningless in my experience, and I'm another that doesn't get to the foot of the list. Why waste the bandwidth when all we need is a reminder to have a look at the site?

 

HH

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Here are my two cents:

 

Make the notifications more customizable (i.e. event distance, what is included, etc).

 

Yep. I just got my notification, and this event was listed first:

1. (GCY9BW) TurkeyTrot Tree (Event Cache)

Location: Michigan, United States

...

145.9mi NE (234.9km NE)

Yeah, it looks close, but it's on the other side of Lake Michigan. Streets and Trips puts the actual distance at 340 miles away. I doubt I'll be making this one.

 

I'd really like to have just some bare-boned preferences for the notification, like radius and states to include. Just reading through I see several other Michigan events, Iowa events, and Indiana events. After the first dozen, I just end up trashing the email without reading the rest because it's too much trouble to pick through it and try and find the information I could really use.

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I have a question about the distance to events... how is that organized??

I asked becuase I would have have thought they be listed closest to farthest... but looking at the one from yesterday it lists 6 events and they don't seem to be in order.

Numbers 1 and 3 are 140 some miles away, number 2 is only 16miles away, 4&5 are 180 mi, and number 6 is 160 mi. Anyone else notice this sort of thing ???

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I didn't make any changes and the message still comes nested wtih the Symantec message.

 

I'll turn off the notification for next week then turn it back on and see what happens.

I have cycled the option off and on and even asked for HTML format. I'm still getting the same Bot sent Symantec message with the original attached.

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I have two accounts. One I set up for HTML and the other for plain text. The mailer looks the same in both cases. Is there supposed to be a difference?

 

There's currently no HTML based emails that go out. The account selection is a placeholder for future emails.

 

The issue will remain with these emails until we can determine why they are coming out the way they are.

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I've not read this whole thread (no time) however I was wondering what the reason behine the events not being in distance order. I tend to ignore the events as I can't be bothered to hunt out the close ones. I do get the Notifications for those close enough, but would like to see them sorted on the email too!

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