+GeoLobber Posted February 2, 2010 Posted February 2, 2010 All, Since a number of geocachers are getting notifications sent to their mobile devices these days, wouldn't it be nice to have the option of getting the coordinates included in the instant notification? I was thinking that it would be nice to be able to navigate to the cache without having to log in to the website to get the coordinates... so you are driving home, you get an instant notification of a new cache, you pull your car over (remember SAFETY FIRST!) and input the newly supplied coordinates into your GPSr and realize that it is on your way home. You can just navigate to the cache and, VIOLA! FTF! FTF! FTF! What do you guys think? Dev team needs to know if others would like this feature/option so SPEAK UP! Additional options to include in the instant notification could be provided as well, such as distance from your home coords, etc.
+Tequila Posted February 2, 2010 Posted February 2, 2010 This topic (dead horse) has been discussed forever. GS wants you to visit the website and read the listing. There can be very important info on the cache page that you should read before navigating to the cache.
+StarBrand Posted February 2, 2010 Posted February 2, 2010 A surprising number of new listings are retracted just minutes after publishing. This could lead to some serious issues if the FTF crowd goes racing for a cache that shouldn't exist. Also - the website just plain wants you to take a few minutes to go visit the listing page and actually read the details.
+Hitech MD Posted February 2, 2010 Posted February 2, 2010 All, Since a number of geocachers are getting notifications sent to their mobile devices these days, wouldn't it be nice to have the option of getting the coordinates included in the instant notification? I was thinking that it would be nice to be able to navigate to the cache without having to log in to the website to get the coordinates... so you are driving home, you get an instant notification of a new cache, you pull your car over (remember SAFETY FIRST!) and input the newly supplied coordinates into your GPSr and realize that it is on your way home. You can just navigate to the cache and, VIOLA! FTF! FTF! FTF! What do you guys think? Dev team needs to know if others would like this feature/option so SPEAK UP! Additional options to include in the instant notification could be provided as well, such as distance from your home coords, etc. No No No Not a good idea. As stated by others there is info on the listing that you need to know. Attributes, restrictions etc that you can't see in the notification. Also there is no link to the disclaimer which is important for the legal end of things for Groundspeak. It's bad enough that a lot of cachers don't look at the listing as it is. HiTech MD
AZcachemeister Posted February 3, 2010 Posted February 3, 2010 This topic (dead horse) has been discussed forever. GS wants you to visit the website and read the listing. There can be very important info on the cache page that you should read before navigating to the cache. What he said. The notifications feature is meant to notify...nothing more. If you want to see the details, then you will need to visit the cache page.
+GeoLobber Posted February 3, 2010 Author Posted February 3, 2010 Ok...so I take it most people are AGAINST coords being sent, eh? I had no idea that there were such objections to doing this -- although I have only see a few replies. I understand the need to go to the website to get further details and to make sure it hasn't been retracted. It just seemed like a nice option to add a bit more optional information to the notification. I appreciate the comments from all you guys!
+Markwell Posted February 3, 2010 Posted February 3, 2010 (edited) It's not so much that there are tons of objections. Just recently there was a thread that had tons of people saying they wanted it. Groundspeak knows there are tons of people that want it. They have said "no" (at least for now). So, we're just letting you know that the answer (for now) is "not gonna happen." <slight tangent in the form of a parable> There once was a mother that had two boys, one in first grade and the other not yet in school. The mother had a batch of freshly made cookies that smelled oh so yummy. Once the cookies came out of the oven at 10:00 a.m., the younger brother asked her quite literally every 5 minutes if he could have a cookie. He even tried to sneak one while mom wasn't looking. This went on all day. At 3:45, the younger son had frayed his mother's nerves to the point of exhaustion. He was sent to the neighbor's to play. At 4:00, the older son came home, smelled the cookies and said "Can I have one of these?" The mother pulled out a bazooka and said "NO!" Clearly it wasn't the fault of the second son who just walked into a situation and asked a simple question... Edited February 3, 2010 by Markwell
+Q10 Posted February 3, 2010 Posted February 3, 2010 Since a number of geocachers are getting notifications sent to their mobile devices these days, wouldn't it be nice to have the option of getting the coordinates included in the instant notification? I was thinking that it would be nice to be able to navigate to the cache without having to log in to the website to get the coordinates... In Denmark a person had set up a SMS-service to do this. So people are turning their cars and are driving for a new cache all the time here. They don't care about reading the cache-text - it's just finding the cache asap that counts. This is not good - for example if there are some important informations about getting to the cache. To avoid this you have to make for example a mystery or a multi. I appreciate Geocaching.com not sending notifications with cords. And I would appreciate it even more if Geocaching.com stopped robots to travel through their site collection informations to do this as well as collections numbers for creating statistic.
+pppingme Posted February 3, 2010 Posted February 3, 2010 Its interesting that all the arguments presented here could be arguments FOR including a .gpx in the notification. The better answer here is to just include a .gpx, all info is present, notes, attributes, all of it. As noted, people have already implemented work arounds, so gc may as well do it the best way and include a .gpx, that gives coords (what the users want) and includes the "must read info" (what gc claims they want).
+WRITE SHOP ROBERT Posted February 3, 2010 Posted February 3, 2010 I'm no expert, but with publications that sell advertising(and Geocaching.com is esentially a publication like a newspaper/magazine) the income from the advertisers depends on having more visits(readership/circulation) so they will and should always require a visit to the site to access the coordinates. In fact...PQs that are downloaded should all have an ad on the Cache page that users will see in their GPS(since the user isn't visiting back to the site). Fire away!!
+Markwell Posted February 3, 2010 Posted February 3, 2010 Its interesting that all the arguments presented here could be arguments FOR including a .gpx in the notification. I don't think you read them ALL... A surprising number of new listings are retracted just minutes after publishing. This could lead to some serious issues if the FTF crowd goes racing for a cache that shouldn't exist.
+Prime Suspect Posted February 3, 2010 Posted February 3, 2010 Its interesting that all the arguments presented here could be arguments FOR including a .gpx in the notification. I don't think you read them ALL... A surprising number of new listings are retracted just minutes after publishing. This could lead to some serious issues if the FTF crowd goes racing for a cache that shouldn't exist. And I bet 95% of the people who have an Instant Notify set up for "Publish", failed to also set one up for "Retract".
+pppingme Posted February 4, 2010 Posted February 4, 2010 Its interesting that all the arguments presented here could be arguments FOR including a .gpx in the notification. I don't think you read them ALL... A surprising number of new listings are retracted just minutes after publishing. This could lead to some serious issues if the FTF crowd goes racing for a cache that shouldn't exist. There are only 2 possible outcomes. I've already left, so retracted or not, I won't know until I get back home. I haven't left yet, so "retract" .gpx gets imported into my list, gets filtered (because its no longer active) and the cache never shows on my gps. The whole retracted caches isn't a valid argument against .gpx's, actually, it supports sending them.
+Markwell Posted February 4, 2010 Posted February 4, 2010 There are only 2 possible outcomes. I've already left, so retracted or not, I won't know until I get back home. I haven't left yet, so "retract" .gpx gets imported into my list, gets filtered (because its no longer active) and the cache never shows on my gps. The whole retracted caches isn't a valid argument against .gpx's, actually, it supports sending them. I guess you're not aware of how quickly some of these get retracted. Publish (which sends out the notification instantly), then sometimes less than 5 minutes later, the retraction happens. In the time you would have gotten the notification and then gotten to the site to look up the info, you wouldn't be able to access it because it was retracted. Sending the GPX when it's published isn't given the reviewers ANY opportunity to say "oops - I didn't mean to do that"
+northernpenguin Posted February 4, 2010 Posted February 4, 2010 Absolutely for notifications requiring a website visit here. I have caches placed in areas that, for example, are not permitted to be visited at certain times of the day. The last thing I want is to have an angry landowner on the phone when the cache gets published during a restricted time (ie: night), and has 30 FTF hounds roll through without reading the listing. As for including the GPX in notifications, that would be best served as an option. Not everyone has a huge data plan for downloading XML data. Then again, how hard is it really to click on the link and/or type in http://coord.info/GCCODE and get all the info (if you've got the data plan for XML, you prolly have a data plan for WWW) And yes, ads support the site, which supports our hobby. Maybe Groundspeak can include the listing itself with coords in the notification email for a monthly fee to recoup the loss in advertising traffic.
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