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Palmable Geocaching.com Data


teamwsmf

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I finaly got my eTrex and my Palm m500 talking to each other the other day and have begun exploring the amazing stuff you can do with the two devices tied togther.

 

No sooner did I start using the amzingly cool service over at http://www.pathetique.com/geocaching/ that encapsualtes localized sections of geoching.com cahe data into a Palm readable format than I find out the guy who is taking time out to maintain it is hitting some roadblocks set up by Jeremy from here at geocaching.com.

 

Given all the cool things this site has offred I dont see how it can be a case of geocaching.com not wanting cool services to spawn from it.

 

Jeremy, could somethign be worked out so one or two services like this can be "sanctioned" and even helped out? It will only make geocaching.com a stronger more helpfull tool for geocachers and it will actualy take some load off the servers here.

 

-tom

 

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TeamWSMF@wsmf.org

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Team WSMF ...have you considered some of the 'legal' alternatives, such as AvantGo channels?

 

Not quite as value-added as the pathetique.com/geocaching pages, which I admit do look nice, but they aren't manipulated by some 3rd party.

 

I can't speak for Jeremy, but if I recall correctly his concern in the past for people who take info from the site is due to the fact that that info, to some degree, is owned/copyrighted by Groundspeak, Inc. Additionally, that there is concerns over the accuracy (freshness) of the data. Buxley's maps have had this concern, displaying archived caches as a regular cache.

 

"Strictly hand-held is the style I go." --Beastie Boys

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Legal methods such as avant go? What Avant Go pays to allow you to DL the info? They don't. You can use Avant Go on any website, whether the web admin knows about it or not. But Avant Go is a pain. I tried it myself, was the first thing I tried. It sucks. Size limitations, and once I got the pages on my Visor, it would get hung up on whether or not I was logged on.

 

Frankly if I were the admins of this site, I would actually pay the guy who came up with the palmable site to have them maintain it here. It is frustrating that this site isn't set up for palm use already, after all the whole point of geocaching is using handheld devices to find where you are going, it only makes sense that all this data should be made readily available for the latest handheld gizzmo.

 

ummmm....not sure what to say here....so ummm, well errrr, uhhhh, well I guess that's it.

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I really really think that what infosponge did with his script and what is available at pathetic.com/geocaching should be incorporated to the geocaching.com website. The advantage of infosponge's script is that it is fresh everytime you HotSync. The advantage of pathetique.com's script is the format, nearest caches, difficulty/terrain translation to numbers, etc.

 

I see the DATA on geocaching.com to be public domain. Groundspeak did not pay individuals to post new caches, nor have I seen any legal mumbo jumbo about cache information becoming the property of Groundspeak.

 

Jeremy - I hafta agree with the others here. I think that you allowing pathetique or infosponge to gather information from the data then resent to others would actually reduce the pageviews on geocaching.com. Perhaps you can work with these guys to provide a service to us handheld users as a member's only feature. I kinda feel left out here. I have no other GPS other than the one that connects to my Visor. EasyGPS means nothing to me. Pathetique.com does.

 

As for misinformation, or untimely data, yes, it can happen (not with infosponge's script). We went hunting for a cache that was moved since my last download. Oh well - user beware.

 

Ultimately, you are in control. I just don't see how actively fighting off these scripts is helping geocaching. You've also been pretty quiet about this topic. Leaves us all wondering.

 

Go! And don't be afraid to get a little wet!

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quote:
Originally posted by Exocet:

 

Additionally, that there is concerns over the accuracy (freshness) of the data. Buxley's maps have had this concern, displaying archived caches as a regular cache.


 

Ahhh... but would "freshness" be a problem if the data was shared or regular updates given to those who had value-add sites like the Brian's Palmable or Buxley's maps?

 

Just a thought...

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First off, if the information I am posting and offering here is becoming "owned" by Groundspeak then I am going to have to reconsider my involvement here.

 

Take into account that I have, up to this issue, been a supporter of the site and Jeremy. I would hate to think that in this era of open projects, shared data collectives and protocols to make data more accessible rather than proprietarily closed I have some how funded something that seeks to do the opposite.

 

Second, I can grab this information myself, “legally”. I can run my own scripts, parse the data and stuff it on my palm pilot. So could everyone else. This would mean a great big load on the system. Or one or two persons who are so inclined could do it and folks can grab it from them. This lessens the system load and if Jeremy works with these folks the integrity and freshness issues would simply not be an issue.

 

Also, if it is not “legal” for others to pass on information posted here, then I am a criminal. I have passed on accounts of some caches, printout I have done, and even beamed my own notes page of cache cords and notes to others.

 

As I see it geocaching.com is a facilitation center, it is a common place for many folks to share information. If geocaching.com wants to become the regulatory institution of this data then maybe the source of this data, those who are posting caches, entries, and notes, will need to rethink their involvement in that regulatory practice.

 

Please tell me we are not going to go down this road. I have seen it and been down it with a myriad other data/community based projects and it never goes well once it goes that route.

 

I am sure this is all premature banter and that Jeremy will post that this is not the road being taken here.

 

Until then I reamin a geocaching.com supporter.

 

-tom

 

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TeamWSMF@wsmf.org

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I have been a user of Avant Go for a while. While its ok for somethings I find it severly limiting in many ways. Anything that falls outside ther "predefined" uses is a pain and is now becoming undoable.

 

I like Plucker. I prefer Plucker.

 

I dont think Plucker is an "illegal" method of getting information froma web site on to my Palm Pilot, and this includes geocaching.com.

 

Its all about choices.

 

-tom

 

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TeamWSMF@wsmf.org

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I usually just lurk here and don't post, but I too use the pathetique pages. I would like to know where Jeremy stands on this. I think they are of great use. Something similar to this would be a wonderful addition to the geocaching web site. I've been debating becoming a charter member and this is one feature that would definately sway my decission. I've been watching and it doesn't look like any of the local cachers in my area are becoming members so the members only caches aren't a deciding factor (YET). If these are the types of features that will be available to the charter members then i would like to know. Either way I will probably become a member anyway due to the many hours of enjoyment i have gained from the site but an idea of the direction things are heading would be nice. Any input Jeremy?

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Hi, I'm Brian and I run the Palmable Geocaching website at http://www.pathetique.com/geocaching/. If you're curious where I stand on this...

 

Exocet, I would love to use an "official" solution, but there really isn't one. The summer 2001 Forum has some talk from Jeremy about setting up an official AvantGo! channel, but that talk stopped and no channel was set up. I wrote to Jeremy last September or so, asking if there were another way to do it. No reply. No problem, Jeremy's a busy guy. So I wrote my own scripts instead.

 

For non-technical readers, I should explain that my scripts aren't doing any kind of "hacking" -- I've just written what is essentially a simple web browser. It submits page requests to www.geocaching.com, just like your Internet Explorer or Netscape Navigator does when you click on a link, but then instead of painting the screen with the data it gets back, the script simplifies it, cross-references it, and saves it onto my web server.

 

I understand the freshness issue, and I think it's a valid one. I've tried to strike a balance between keeping my data fresh and overburdening the geocaching.com server. I do weekly updates. Paper lasts longer than a week, so I think that PDA users generally have information that is as up-to-date as people who use their printers instead. And most web-to-PDA converters will wipe out old data when they get new data -- my PDA is actually more up-to-date than my GPSR, which holds waypoints for archived caches until I manually remove them.

 

I really liked infosponge's dynamic pages. It's too bad they went away. I originally avoided doing my pages that way, because I didn't want vandals to be able to use my machine to mount a denial-of-service attack against www.geocaching.com. I actually spent some time this weekend designing a dynamic version of my website, where you could type in some arbitrary expression ("zip(94536)-foundby(blscearce)" would show the caches in my area, omitting the ones that I've already found) and get a dynamic index. I've figured a way to save the results of searches and only go back to geocaching.com if the saved data has become stale.

 

So anyway, that's where I stand. I've had a lot of fun with this hobby, and I certainly appreciate all the work that Jeremy et al have done to create a central repository for all of our caches. I originally ran my scripts just for myself, but I opened my stuff up to the geocaching community at large as a (small) gift in exchange for the fun I've had hunting for caches, and in response to lots of people wanting a workable PDA solution. Jeremy is again talking about Palm apps, so maybe there will be something better and official along soon. But I hope that I can keep running my service for as long as geocachers find it useful.

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I guese the thing to keep in mind is that even if folks like Brian are stopped from running their scripts and making the prebundled packets of pdb goodnes available, the effort could well be taken up in a more distributed fashion.

 

Heck, just catpuring my browsers own cache of pages as I go thru the site and working them up into a bundled pdb would work. Not nearly as elegant and localized to just my area, Portland OR, but doable.

 

Of course with would mean there would be dozens or so of datasets flowing around. Versioning , date stamping and the like would determine whose is useable and whose is pewpable.

 

Now, not knowing the infrastructure of geocaching.com but assuming its a databse of some sort, all sorts of easy options come to mind.

 

For instance.....

 

XML based data dumps broken down by region and versioned to be refreshed once a week with client side parsers to make them into whatever format you want em to be (plam, html, ce, mdb, sql, etc)

 

A summary page with just the main information (cache id, coords, rating, description, hint) that can be grabbed as html. This could even be a nightly generated thing. Once its grabed it can be parsed on the client side in any number of ways.

 

A compressed cut of the raw db itself. Now that would be sweet. Then I could mine the data via a Brio query if I were so deranged.

 

Datawarehousing, its not a bad thing...its a good thing

 

Its all about choices though, and they all dont mean a heavy load on the system or a added workload for Jermey. Some of them mean opeing up the data (read only, remeber this is all just read only) so folks can mine it as they want it WITHOUT making jeremy do every little task.

 

-tom

 

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TeamWSMF@wsmf.org

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One of the things that's on my list of GeoBuddy 2.0 features is to do a HTML page that can be inserted into your scribbly thing. Granted, it doesn't have all the nice features of Brians index, but it will get you potentially more information than is in your GPS.

 

-E

 

--

N35°32.981 W98°34.631

13914_200.jpg

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AFAIK the Geocaching site runs on ASP's and MS SQL. Microsofts "new" .NET system would be EXACTLY what is required for J. to license the data access to other sites in a usable way.

 

Basically J. Creates an interface function that he publishes (Security on it of course) The function can expose whatever data J wants.

 

The other site subscribes to this function and from their point of view, it is a dll that is local that they access.

 

The underlying comms is XML over HTTP or HTTPS. (SOAP)

 

Rob

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I wish I knew what to say here. Thanks for all the nice comments from those who were using/testing my unofficial extraction pages.

My pages were 24-hour cached, i.e. if you requested the same cache page from geocaching.com in a 24 hour period, you got it from a cache instead of hitting geocaching.com again.

I submitted my site for official approval of what I was doing, and never heard back. The only confirmation I ever got of my e-mail was that my scripts were eventually blocked from getting to geocaching.com. icon_frown.gif

I'd be happy to license a data feed if that's what it takes...that would be much easier than screen scraping. Or better yet, perhaps this will be added to geocaching.com for members. I would be glad to contribute code, but I stay away from the Microsoft stuff so I'm probably not able to do so.

 

[This message was edited by infosponge on March 16, 2002 at 07:26 AM.]

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I wish I knew what to say here. Thanks for all the nice comments from those who were using/testing my unofficial extraction pages.

My pages were 24-hour cached, i.e. if you requested the same cache page from geocaching.com in a 24 hour period, you got it from a cache instead of hitting geocaching.com again.

I submitted my site for official approval of what I was doing, and never heard back. The only confirmation I ever got of my e-mail was that my scripts were eventually blocked from getting to geocaching.com. icon_frown.gif

I'd be happy to license a data feed if that's what it takes...that would be much easier than screen scraping. Or better yet, perhaps this will be added to geocaching.com for members. I would be glad to contribute code, but I stay away from the Microsoft stuff so I'm probably not able to do so.

 

[This message was edited by infosponge on March 16, 2002 at 07:26 AM.]

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Yep, m$ and .net are about to become pretty dang wide spread. The good news is there are folks working to make it a tad better to work with. There are a couple of open source projects I have heard of tryin to make tool to use .net resources.

 

Hopefully though things will staty on a simpler level, either soap/xml or even a mirrored datawarehouse solution.

 

Never forget, so long as it can be seen, it can be captured and manipulated. Screen scrapers, perl scripts and web hoovers can all mimic a user seasion and grab the oods. A bit more of a mess and resource hog than other solutions, but doable.

 

 

-tom

 

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TeamWSMF@wsmf.org

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I'd be fine with this being a members-only feature, since it means that those power-cachers that want to use something like this can support all of Jeremy's hard work.

 

quote:
Originally posted by eroom:

I can see this being a pay-to-use feature in the future. This is very sad. I'd give Jeremy a resonable doubt, but ...


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I love this palmable site...only one problem, there is no list for the Olympia area, an area I go. A bunch of the Olympia caches are in other palmable indexes, but some are too still a bit out of range for the cities that are listed. Also, I didn't see any indexes for central and eastern Oregon. Hopefully he will be adding these to his list down the road, because his palmable cache list is excellent.

 

ummmm....not sure what to say here....so ummm, well errrr, uhhhh, well I guess that's it.

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I too am VERY gratefull to Brian for setting me up with one of his scripts for AvantGo so I can download useable info for my palm.

This is definately one of the most handy ways of carying all the info you need with you on hunts.

 

I definately think that an official method of doing so needs to be provided for Members.

 

What I find most surprising about this whole thing is the absence of official comment from Jeremy on the subject.

 

The abscence of comment leads to speculation and inuendo as of the intent to provide a valid service to paying members, especially in light of the attempts to block the data from being mined from geocaching.com. This is NOT GOOD.

 

Come on Jeremy. We all support you and your efforts, just let us know the direction that this will go, so we can put to rest all the speculation on the subject.

 

Thanks

 

Buck8Point

-------------------------

If I can't Fix it, It's Definately Broke.

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It would definitely cost Jeremy an AvantGo premium to offer this service. The Standard List Prices (annually) are as follows:

 

0-8 Users: Free

9-99 Users: $1000

100-499 Users: $2000

500-1000 Users: $8000

1000+ Contact sales

 

That's a big spike from 499 to 500 users. But, frankly, I don't know that there would be more than 499 users. Perhaps.

 

If he had 500 charter members, that would bring in $13000. That'd leave him $5K for bandwidth & server space. icon_smile.gif

 

But seriously, I don't see the problem with 'outsourcing' the data.

 

And, yes, Jeremy's conspicuous absence from this topic does raise eyebrows and speculations. I hope he's working on it and wants to suprise everyone. Any other reason I don't want to even consider.

 

Go! And don't be afraid to get a little wet!

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It would definitely cost Jeremy an AvantGo premium to offer this service. The Standard List Prices (annually) are as follows:

 

0-8 Users: Free

9-99 Users: $1000

100-499 Users: $2000

500-1000 Users: $8000

1000+ Contact sales

 

That's a big spike from 499 to 500 users. But, frankly, I don't know that there would be more than 499 users. Perhaps.

 

If he had 500 charter members, that would bring in $13000. That'd leave him $5K for bandwidth & server space. icon_smile.gif

 

But seriously, I don't see the problem with 'outsourcing' the data.

 

And, yes, Jeremy's conspicuous absence from this topic does raise eyebrows and speculations. I hope he's working on it and wants to suprise everyone. Any other reason I don't want to even consider.

 

Go! And don't be afraid to get a little wet!

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That's the funny thing, we don't want "Avantgo"

 

What we are trying to gain is access to cache information while mobile.

The insanely high cost of wireless mobile networking (as of this writing) is prohibitive to most (40 cents a minute for me through my cell)

If this could be combined into a PRC file (PDB?) and carried with us, everyone would be happy.

I have zero loyalty towards Avantgo (except for grabbing The Onion) and wanted to clarify this for those who may not know of alternatives.

By the way, I'd have absolutely no problems with paying for this access. Above and beyond the member fees if needed.

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quote:
Originally posted by VentureForth:

It would definitely cost Jeremy an AvantGo premium to offer this service. The Standard List Prices (annually) are as follows:

 

0-8 Users: Free

9-99 Users: $1000

100-499 Users: $2000

500-1000 Users: $8000

1000+ Contact sales

 

That's a big spike from 499 to 500 users. But, frankly, I don't know that there would be more than 499 users. Perhaps.

 

If he had 500 charter members, that would bring in $13000. That'd leave him $5K for bandwidth & server space. icon_smile.gif

 

But seriously, I don't see the problem with 'outsourcing' the data.

 

And, yes, Jeremy's conspicuous absence from this topic does raise eyebrows and speculations. I hope he's working on it and wants to suprise everyone. Any other reason I don't want to even consider.

 

Go! And don't be afraid to get a little wet!


 

Why is everyone so crazy about AvantGo?

 

Just make the site Palm friendly to allow us to use whatever program/service we want to use to get the pages on to our Palm.

 

- Lone Rangers

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quote:
Originally posted by VentureForth:

It would definitely cost Jeremy an AvantGo premium to offer this service. The Standard List Prices (annually) are as follows:

 

0-8 Users: Free

9-99 Users: $1000

100-499 Users: $2000

500-1000 Users: $8000

1000+ Contact sales

 

That's a big spike from 499 to 500 users. But, frankly, I don't know that there would be more than 499 users. Perhaps.

 

If he had 500 charter members, that would bring in $13000. That'd leave him $5K for bandwidth & server space. icon_smile.gif

 

But seriously, I don't see the problem with 'outsourcing' the data.

 

And, yes, Jeremy's conspicuous absence from this topic does raise eyebrows and speculations. I hope he's working on it and wants to suprise everyone. Any other reason I don't want to even consider.

 

Go! And don't be afraid to get a little wet!


 

Why is everyone so crazy about AvantGo?

 

Just make the site Palm friendly to allow us to use whatever program/service we want to use to get the pages on to our Palm.

 

- Lone Rangers

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quote:
Originally posted by Choberiba:

That's the funny thing, we don't want "Avantgo"


 

Hear Hear! I totally agree. A .pdb solution would be best. What would be needed, though, would be a file easily manipulated by a freeware browser.

 

The two scripts mentioned before downloaded via AvantGo is the easiest solution. Plucker, etc., next.

 

Yah - if I could get a .pdb for my Visor as easily as I could get a .loc for a Garmin, that'd be WAY cool!

 

Go! And don't be afraid to get a little wet!

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I tried Avant Go, I hate Avant Go. Avant Go sucks. I now use ISilo. It is easy, and they don't charge web masters anything. So far as this palmable resource goes, it is not connected to Avant Go, can be used apart from Avant Go, and is easier than Avant Go. So the cost issue shouldn't be a factor. I haven't heard any rumblings even about the author of these scripts charging. He maintains a site at no cost to us with his Palmable Caches. (thanks so much!) and all I'm hearing here is a desire for him to be able to continue to do so, as the Geocaching site is putting up some obsticals, and we would like to see that stop, or see Geocaching.com work with him to insure that these palmable formats stick around.

 

ummmm....not sure what to say here....so ummm, well errrr, uhhhh, well I guess that's it.

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It's just the easiest and fastest method for me to Palm the cache pages.

 

Just tried iSilo. Confusing as heck. And it's not free.

 

Sigh. icon_rolleyes.gif Y'all go ahead and hate AvantGo. It works for me.

 

Go! And don't be afraid to get a little wet!

 

[This message was edited by VentureForth on March 19, 2002 at 01:17 PM.]

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It's just the easiest and fastest method for me to Palm the cache pages.

 

Just tried iSilo. Confusing as heck. And it's not free.

 

Sigh. icon_rolleyes.gif Y'all go ahead and hate AvantGo. It works for me.

 

Go! And don't be afraid to get a little wet!

 

[This message was edited by VentureForth on March 19, 2002 at 01:17 PM.]

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Avantgo would love it if all the end users fell over themselves adopting IT as the one way to get web info on the palm.

 

Then they turn around and charge the content providers because folks are using Avantgo to clip thier pages to thier palms.

 

SO what do you think the content providers will do?

 

Either turn around and charge money or find better ways for thier users to get the data...but if the avergage user of the site is convienced they cant use anything but Avantgo ..well its a freaking mess.

 

Think of it as the AOLization of net-palm web clipping.

 

If we support open non charged solutions then we get around all that.

 

If I were Jeremy I would NOT be looking to fork over money to Avantgo simply becuase folks wont use another app to clip geocaching.com.

 

I would be looking at ways to make the data avilable in a way that would not tax the system nor incur any further maintence costs, in time or money, on geocaching.com.

 

An offical set of mirrors of the db set up just to be mined seems the best solution. This is nothing new, many communities have done and are doing it.

 

But as its been said before, this is Jeremy's site. We can offer up all the adivce we want but its his choice to make. Ive been in the same postion on site I have run in the past.

 

-tom

 

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TeamWSMF@wsmf.org

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Well, I am not any kind of expert on how to make a web site do much, I'm just barely able to maintain a very basic site of my own, but, I'd just about bet that the ability that has already been exhibited by our good Jeremy is more than capable of handling a little bit of Palmability. If enough people express interest (especially those that have paid money, hint, hint) I'm sure that Jeremy would consider hooking up with Brian to make the Geocaching site "Palm Friendly."

 

I am looking forward to that myself. icon_biggrin.gif

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Well, I am not any kind of expert on how to make a web site do much, I'm just barely able to maintain a very basic site of my own, but, I'd just about bet that the ability that has already been exhibited by our good Jeremy is more than capable of handling a little bit of Palmability. If enough people express interest (especially those that have paid money, hint, hint) I'm sure that Jeremy would consider hooking up with Brian to make the Geocaching site "Palm Friendly."

 

I am looking forward to that myself. icon_biggrin.gif

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quote:
Originally posted by rodness:

Where does Pocket PC fit into all of this? I have an IPAQ but don't much about web pages since I haven't gone wireless and don't use for internet stuff.


 

Well AvantGo is available for the PocketPC so that is a option there. The other solutions discussed are generally PalmOS only.

 

Dan

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I suspect that the reason nothing "official" has happened here is the fact that AvantGo is so expensive. I would rather continue copying cache pages to my MemoPad (500+ synced already) than see so much of the Membership fees go to the robber barons at Avantgo. Their service is good, but it's not the ONLY one out there, and their service is worth nowhere NEAR what they seem to think it is worth.

 

I use Brian's pages, and love them. I swear by them. Thanks heaps. Looking forward to whatever might develop in the future, but for the present, these are great. Hope they last, and stay free.

 

bunkerdave

6327_1600.gif

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Hello Everyone,

 

I use Avant-Go and it works great! I use it through a totally free site called Heavens-above.com, they provide up to minute information for visible sattelite passes based on your location. You can't get a higher demand for up to date info than that. The main reason I am telling you this is that if another niche information site is using avant-go than perhaps they could help gecaching.com talk to the right people to get a more reasonable solution worked out with them.

 

By the way, you should check out heavens-above.com so that you can watch the space station or the shuttle go by with just your eyes, and be on the look out for a -8 magnitude iridium flare... truely an amazing site.

 

Talk to you soon,

-Roger

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quote:
Originally posted by rodness:

Where does Pocket PC fit into all of this? I have an IPAQ but don't much about web pages since I haven't gone wireless and don't use for internet stuff.


 

Not to sure because I dont own one. However, pocket pcs use Windows CE right? I would think that you should have a pocket version of IE available. You just need to get the webpage to your pocket pc so you can veiw it offline.

 

Thats what programs like plucker and Isilo do for the palm os computers. They take the html and convert it to a format that can viewed on the palm os computers.

 

- Lone Rangers

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--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Originally posted by rodness:

Where does Pocket PC fit into all of this? I have an IPAQ but don't much about web pages since I haven't gone wireless and don't use for internet stuff.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

I have used AvantGo with my IPAQ to load the pages for caches in my area. It is quite cumbersome and only somewhat workable. I am no longer doing it for this reason.

 

I would also like to express my support for some method of getting Cache info into a text only format (or some other small screen format) for uploading into hand helds.

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After placing my previous post regarding using AvantGo to load cache data into my iPAQ and the disapointing results I got an email from blscearce. I was under the impression reading this thread that his www.pathetique.com site was for Palm users only. Not so!

 

I now set up AvantGo to go to the pathetique site to get cache data for my area to download into my iPAQ. The pathetique site eliminates all of the extraneous graphics, tables, and logs leaving just the import cache info in an easy to read 'text' format on my iPAQ.

 

As a bonus when you click on a cache he also displays links to nearby caches. This will make it easy to use my iPAQ for caching rather than hauling a long a bunch of printouts for each cache I may attempt.

 

Thanks blscearce!

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quote:
Originally posted by Byron & Anne:

I'd really like to hear from Jermey on this one.


Hopefully he is busy making the site more palm pc friendly. icon_smile.gif

 

Jermey. I think all of us Palm OS and Pocket PC users would like to hear something from you on this subject.

 

- Lone Rangers

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quote:
Originally posted by Byron & Anne:

I'd really like to hear from Jermey on this one.


Hopefully he is busy making the site more palm pc friendly. icon_smile.gif

 

Jermey. I think all of us Palm OS and Pocket PC users would like to hear something from you on this subject.

 

- Lone Rangers

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Not to throw in a "me too!" comment, but, yes ...I, too, would like to hear Jeremy's comments on this topic.

 

Unlike others, I've had no problems using the AvantGo channels to locally store copies of the Geocaching.com pages. It works for me and thus I have no problem with it, but...

 

That being said, I definately don't want Jeremy to have to pay AvantGo's charges. A stripped-down version of the pages that iSilo, Plucker or some other AvantGo-alternative could access would be appreciated. I'd like to see a stripped-down version not only to help Jeremy save bandwidth costs for himself, but for those who can do without the images and especially those who do surf the geocaching.com website while out in the field.

 

BTW ...I do understand why AvantGo is charging. They're downloading data, which takes bandwidth, which costs money. No free lunches. But that's another topic.

 

I don't know how many of us PDA-using geocachers there are out there (should this be a poll?), but it's definately a feature *some* people want. As time goes on more people will be using PDA's. A locally-stored copy is a must - if you have a PDA, that is. An agreement of some sort should be arranged.

 

"What you do today will cost you a day of your life." --jabber's sig on /. and k5.

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Rodness just gave me his old Palm and I've seen the beauty of cache details in my hand. I've never been one to print out cache details since I prefer to "free cache", deciding on the spot which caches to go after. This is perfect. I've since reformated my caches to be more Palm friendly. I certainly hope that some of our membership payment will go toward paying J. to develop this aspect of geocaching.com.

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quote:
Originally posted by Exocet:

Unlike others, I've had no problems using the AvantGo channels to locally store copies of the Geocaching.com pages. It works for me and thus I have no problem with it, but...

:

A stripped-down version of the pages that iSilo, Plucker or some other AvantGo-alternative could access would be appreciated.


 

I've seen a number of recommendations to use iSilo in this thread, and also some comments that iSilo can be a bit complex. Let me add some (hopefully) useful suggestions.

 

The simply part is obtaining both iSilo for your Palm and iSiloX for your desktop PC.

 

What I then do with iSilo is to look for the caches in my area based on a longitude/latitude, and read one level deep from that result page (25 caches) so that I get the text description of each cache. In my area of Austin, TX, that creates about a 350KB file for my Palm. I had to tweak some settings inside iSilo to get this to work, so let me share an iSiloX document list called "GeoCache_Only.ixl" which performs the search around my home area.

You can load this into your desktop iSiloX and adapt to your needs. Here's how...

 

Within iSiloX, just do a File-->Open on the GeoCache_Only.ixl file, then double-click on the one document called GeoCaching. Go to the "Source" tab, select the one source URL shown, and right-click to edit the URL. You'll see in the URL the origin_lat & origin_long values which you can modify for your area.

 

Next, go the "Destination" tab and select your Palm as the destination for the URLs you'll be downloading. After that, say "OK" in the form and you'll be back on the main iSiloX page with GeoCaching still selected. Pull down Document-->Convert and wait for it to complete. Then HotSync your Palm and review the results.

 

Hope this helps. Good luck

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Let's keep it simple!

 

Let's take a step back, what we know is:

- there is a demand for a light-weight version of the current Geocaching.com data

(similar / identical to Pathetique)

- there are several ways of displaying / converting light-weight HTML pages on handhelds (Palm, Pocket PC, ...)

 

So: my suggestion would be:

- add functionality to the current pages so it becomes light-weight HTML (less tables, graphics, etc.). This should not be a major effort, plus it should not increase the load of the system.

- make it dymanic, e.g. the following to get the 25 caches closest to certain coordinates:

http://www.geocaching.com/pda?count=25&Y=52.523&X=5.5412

 

The discussion sofar is mostly about Avantgo vs. Isilo, we can worry about that later...

 

-Winfred

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As you can see, I am relatively new here. But, in following this thread, I figure I would chime in. I would think that with some of the talent that reside here, all Jeremy would have to do is ask and have more than enough volunteers to help him build a state of the art site. I heard mention of .NET, there is also JSP, and XML and even SOAP.

Being a web programmer myself, I can see a web-service solution and am willing to help out in any way that I can.

Jim icon_biggrin.gif

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As you can see, I am relatively new here. But, in following this thread, I figure I would chime in. I would think that with some of the talent that reside here, all Jeremy would have to do is ask and have more than enough volunteers to help him build a state of the art site. I heard mention of .NET, there is also JSP, and XML and even SOAP.

Being a web programmer myself, I can see a web-service solution and am willing to help out in any way that I can.

Jim icon_biggrin.gif

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Jeremy has been silent on this issue pretty much from the getgo. Even though right now, I know that he's been very busy, but this issue has gone un-commented by our fearless CacheWebMaster. There are several opportunities for palmable downloads. The problem has been that effective ones have been literally blocked by Groundspeak. That's where I think the mutual frustration is growing from. The other side of the coin is that Groundspeak wants to keep the data on this site proprietary - another touchy subject as the users believe (rightfully so) that the data is public domain.

 

Go! And don't be afraid to get a little wet!

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quote:
Originally posted by jroysdon:

As you can see, I am relatively new here. But, in following this thread, I figure I would chime in. I would think that with some of the talent that reside here, all Jeremy would have to do is ask and have more than enough volunteers to help him build a state of the art site. I heard mention of .NET, there is also JSP, and XML and even SOAP.

Being a web programmer myself, I can see a web-service solution and am willing to help out in any way that I can.

Jim icon_biggrin.gif


 

.NET = SOAP = (XML over HTTP(s)) + (vb/c++/js etc integration)

 

Rob

Mobile Cache Command

4525_1300.gif

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