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Geocaches Near Me, On iPhone


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Little bit of self promotion, please excuse me. [ deleted by moderator ]

 

..your link wants me to download iTunes? ;)

 

That's because it's an app for the iPhone, and the only way you can view/purchase/download those apps is if you have iTunes installed on your computer.

Edited by robertlipe
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Little bit of self promotion, please excuse me.

[ deleted by moderator ]

 

..your link wants me to download iTunes? ;)

 

The link launches the iTunes Store and allows you to purchase the OP's $0.99 iPhone app.

 

From the description, all it does is launch Geocaching.com in the Safari browser using your current location to show nearby caches.

 

Since I already have the Geocaching app from Groundspeak...this does nothing for me.

 

If you already have GPS software on your iPhone (like the FREE app from MotionX, GPS Lite) you can get your GPS fix and note the coordinates, then launch Geocaching.com yourself and enter the coordinates. This is a faster method...and for $0.99 not a bad deal if you don't already own the Geocaching app from Groundspeak.

Edited by robertlipe
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What's the name of the app? Seems kind of dumb to just post a link.

The link is only useful for people who have the ability to use the app in the first place.

 

It's called "Where U @" according to iTunes.

Edited by dakboy
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What's the name of the app? Seems kind of dumb to just post a link.

The link is only useful for people who have the ability to use the app in the first place.

 

It's called "Where U @" according to iTunes.

 

Hiya.

 

Its actually called 'Geocaches Near Me'.

 

Very simple, and useful which is why I built it. :-)

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... a tonne of email. Sounds like lots of people are loving my humble contribution....
Are you making this up -- or are you just delusional?

 

Your rip-off (er. excuse me, unofficial app that simply loads coords onto the Geocaching website) has an iTunes store rating of 2.5 stars based on only seven folks rating it.

 

The official Groundspeak app has nearly 1300 ratings, at an average of 4 stars. The most current version alone has 91 ratings -- mostly 4 and 5 star.

 

AND... what your app does is awfully simple. Wanna bet GC hosts a webpage soon that does it for free? If they don't, I might -- anybody can...

 

http://www.paulhagon.com/blog/2009/07/01/g...and-the-iphone/

Edited by lee_rimar
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It does exactly what it says...
Ooh, I don't doubt that - I'm just doubting the "tonne of email" and "loving" you mentioned in the earlier post. Near as I can tell, few folks have downloaded it and those who bothered to rate it don't give it good marks.

 

"You must think we're all stupid here." <- (in)famous quote from the Garage Sale forum :rolleyes:

 

Take heart, even bad publicity will help draw attention to your product.

Edited by lee_rimar
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It does exactly what it says on the tin. Simply shows you geo-caches near you :-)

AFAICT, it doesn't even do that. It just works out your location, then sends you to a geocaching.com page with those coordinates passed in the querystring. The app doesn't show anything near you.

 

If the app itself is doing the display, then what you're saying is that you're screen-scraping the site, which is a violation of the TOS.

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Wanna bet GC hosts a webpage soon that does it for free? If they don't, I might -- anybody can...
Here ya go!

 

Rough around the edges, but serviceable. It's only meant to work on the iPhone but sorta, kinda works in later versions of Firefox as well.

Based on notes scattered freely around the web, so please share and improve as you see fit.

 

http://lee.rimar.googlepages.com/NCFREE.html

 

I can't promise that page will always be there, so here's the code for it...

 

<html>
<head>
<meta name="viewport" content="width=320, user-scalable=yes">
<title>Nearby Caches Free</title>
<script type="text/javascript">
function findPos()
{
 navigator.geolocation.getCurrentPosition(foundPos, noPos);
}
function foundPos(pos)
{
 var lat = pos.coords.latitude;
 var lon = pos.coords.longitude;
 window.location =
 "http://www.geocaching.com/seek/nearest.aspx?origin_lat="
 + lat +
 "&origin_long="
 + lon + 
 "&dist=100&submit3=Search"  
}
function noPos()
{ alert('Could not find location'); }
</script>
</head>
<body onload="findPos();">
<center>
PLEASE SHARE FREELY!
<p>Preparing jump to nearest Geocache page.
<p>Please be patient, it can take a little while!
</center>
</body>
</html>

Edited by lee_rimar
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Wanna bet GC hosts a webpage soon that does it for free? If they don't, I might -- anybody can...
Here ya go!

 

Rough around the edges, but serviceable. It's only meant to work on the iPhone but sorta, kinda works in later versions of Firefox as well.

Based on notes scattered freely around the web, so please share and improve as you see fit.

 

http://lee.rimar.googlepages.com/NCFREE.html

Awesome. Whatever database the geolocation service Firefox hooks out to thinks I live in the Garment District of Manhattan. I'm really at the other end of the state :D

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Whatever database the geolocation service Firefox hooks out to thinks I live in the Garment District of Manhattan. I'm really at the other end of the state :D
I'm pretty sure Firefox's guess is based on where your IP address is being dished out. Probably some concentrator at your ISP's data center. In my case, Firefox puts me in downtown Portland even though I live in a much less fashionable outer southeast neighborhood.

 

If you're not on an iPhone though, you could use the Loki (Skyhook) feature offered on the Geocaching front page -- look for the little "Locate Me" button to set it up.

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Whatever database the geolocation service Firefox hooks out to thinks I live in the Garment District of Manhattan. I'm really at the other end of the state :D
I'm pretty sure Firefox's guess is based on where your IP address is being dished out. Probably some concentrator at your ISP's data center. In my case, Firefox puts me in downtown Portland even though I live in a much less fashionable outer southeast neighborhood.

 

If you're not on an iPhone though, you could use the Loki (Skyhook) feature offered on the Geocaching front page -- look for the little "Locate Me" button to set it up.

Firefox uses Skyhook for its lookups. I'm sure if I registered my IP w/ Skyhook, it'd give a more accurate reading. At my office, my IP shows up 10 blocks from where I actually am.

 

On the iPhone, since you've got both Skyhook data and a GPS, you can get more accurate.

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I think I should probably come clean.

 

I've given myself 6 months to invest in building an iPhone application that would pay for the £700 investment in a Mac Mini and Apple developer license.

 

I'm 3 months into the project and Geocaches-Near-Me is my second application.

 

I am not trying to annoy you guys or anything, just trying to re-coupe my investment and learn a few new skills.

 

So at .59p a pop, this is my attempt to re-coupe my learning and expenditure.

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Mr. Jones:

 

That's an honourable enough goal, but you're not getting much love here because of how you've gone about it. There are a small handful of feature-rich Geocaching apps with loyal followers, yours doesn't do very much by comparison, and your self-promotion here was read as spam.

 

Just curious, how many copies have you sold? I've got a webapp I've often wanted to turn into a "real" app, but don't know if it's worth the developer/certification fee to get it up onto the iTunes store. I don't think I'd sell enough...

 

-Lee

 

See also: http://lee.rimar.googlepages.com/scorecard.html

Off-topic :P two-player score card for iPhone

Edited by lee_rimar
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Thanks Lee, for understanding.

 

Its early days yet for Geocaches Near Me, I haven't yet seen the financial reports from Apple (which they seem to publish for the period of two months in the past) .

 

Was it worth it, you may ask? We'll its taken me a tonne of time to learn Objective C, which has a steep learning curve. I've literally given it every evening to get to this stage. I've built two commercial apps so far. My first (Where U @) taught me about building interfaces understanding SQL Lite (iPhone's inbuilt database) and was all very different from the .Net background I've come from.

 

I guess being 'cheeky' and promoting my app here my have not been a great move...

 

Have a great weekend all.

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...reports from Apple (which they seem to publish for the period of two months...
Interesting -- I did not know you couldn't at least get some idea of how many downlaods you had until the payment came.

 

Have you had any feedback at all on Geocaches Near Me or Where U @ from users who've downloaded them? I'm surprised to see NO user ratings for your first app, and it's been out since mid July.

 

This doesn't bode well for the fledgling developer who hopes to strike it rich - or even break even on their iPhone developer's license investment - with a simple little app. BUT... the learning experience is valuable too. If you're not taking that into account, your ledger will be quite bit off.

 

I guess being 'cheeky' and promoting my app here my have not been a great move...
Quite. I noticed your blog entry on 22 Aug was titled "How to annoy" :anibad: Edited by lee_rimar
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Moderator's note: Commercial postings are prohibited by the forum rules in section 8.

 

While showing how trivial Gears and HTML 5 make geolocationally-aware apps is interesting, it's not directly related to the topic of the thread, Since the topic of this thread is forbidden, I suppose the only things left that would be on topic would get us nowhere, so I'm closing this thread.

 

I do have a simple request, though. Lots of forum old-timers participated in this thread. Instead of quoting links to commercial products that benefit the author (why did this not set of everyone's spam alarm?) please use the 'report this post' button to get a forum moderator involved to help keep the forums tidy. Thanx.

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