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What is the plan for Waymarking Live API?


mcccliv

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I second this question.

 

The 2 biggest things that would make Waymarking get more use are:

1) smartphone apps for the iPhone and Droid

2) Pocket Queries

 

I'm happy to see the forums moved back here; the regular Groundspeak forums have a much nicer setup than the ones that were on Waymarking.com and it better integrates Waymarking with Geocaching.

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I second this question.

 

The 2 biggest things that would make Waymarking get more use are:

1) smartphone apps for the iPhone and Droid

2) Pocket Queries

 

Our Groundspeak leaders are well aware of this!

 

PQ's have been at the top of the feature request list since almost the beginning, I think.

Smartphone apps came later, but are definitely on the priority list.

 

The big thing is development time and resources to do this with a part of the Groundpeak family of "games" that does not directly generate revenue.

 

I'm not sure why PQ's couldn't be easily implemented, since they already exist on Geocaching.com. But, there's a lot I don't understand, obviously. Just seems that this should have been given a higher priority than some of the other things the developers spent time on for Waymarking.com. It is a feature I probably wouldn't use personally, but I understand that for many it would enormously increase participation.

 

Apps, I think, could be developed by third parties, as I believe they are for Geocaching. I think if one of the developers thought there was enough of a market for it to make it worthwhile, we would have one. Honestly, is our potential user base large enough to make development of iPhone and Android apps profitable? I don't know, but I'd love one since I finally jumped onto the Android bandwagon.

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Apps, I think, could be developed by third parties, as I believe they are for Geocaching. I think if one of the developers thought there was enough of a market for it to make it worthwhile, we would have one.

The challenge is that, as far as I can tell, there is no Live API that allows third party developers to connect to Waymarking database and query its content. Therefore, developing a third-party app is not an option. This is contrary to Geocaching where there is a Live API.

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Apps, I think, could be developed by third parties, as I believe they are for Geocaching. I think if one of the developers thought there was enough of a market for it to make it worthwhile, we would have one.

The challenge is that, as far as I can tell, there is no Live API that allows third party developers to connect to Waymarking database and query its content. Therefore, developing a third-party app is not an option. This is contrary to Geocaching where there is a Live API.

 

There was not an API for geocaching until fairly recently. I agree there won't be 3rd party apps until an API is released but seeing one was only recently released for geocaching one for Waymarking will lag that development.

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My personal observations and experiences point to two primary reasons for low Waymarking response (other than caching came first)

 

a) many cachers were put off by the seeming commercial market evaluation. How many McD's, Burger Kings, Taco Bells, etc.

 

B) My gripe - the interface is tedious. When I visit a new area, I hook up to the nearest wi-fi and pull the closest caches to my ipod app. VOILA ! I'm caching. Pics taken, logs written, trackables dropped, all from my little helper. Waymarking is as unfriendly to mobil use as it gets. Even trying to upload my pics gets tedious.

 

Long story short, IMHO Groundspeak needs to throw some effort at making Waymarking mobil friendly. Even some stripped down version like the geocaching Challenges App would help increase its usability.

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Seems to me that interest isn't going to go up until there IS an app. I actually tried to do this seriously for the first time today because I just started geocaching recently and thought "Hey, I end up in some interesting places that have cool stuff that has nothing to do with geocaching..." So I started looking at Waymarking.com each place we stopped, whether there was a cache or not. Then I realized I can't do it unless I have a computer. A: I can't meet most logging requirements because I can't upload photos with an iPhone. B: finding way marks near me is pain. I either have to use an app that tells me my current location, then manually search for near those coords or I have to get a zip code (also with another app) and then search using that and it tells me the thing I'm standing next to is 50 miles away. C: I can't make my own way marks, because again, I can't upload pictures from my phone. I actually visited something to the effect of 30 waymarks today, and logged 2, because the rest would have been pointless to log on my phone and I have no desire to spend an hour or more backlogging stuff on the horribly cumbersome interface on the web page. If there was an app, I'd definitely pay for it, but until then, I guess all those of us that use iPhones instead of computers are gonna be left out in the cold. Which is sad, because this looks like it would be really interesting and fun. As is though, with no app, it's too much like work.

And yes, I feel vaguely dumb saying the same basic thing as Captain Chaoss directly above me. But maybe if it get repeated often enough something will get done about it.

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I would be happy to pay the same ammount again to become a 'Premium Member' of Waymarking.com if it meant the cumbersome interface was worked on.

 

PQs and apps would be great but I think attention to the clunky site interface would be a good place to start. Its the simple things like having to select from drop down menus and click 'update' or 'submit' all the time.

 

As a newbie I returned home last night keen to post my first two waymarks. After the first took half an hour I gave up on the second. Simple things like the site not moving to the next stage of the process after my photo was uploaded. Its all pretty frustrating. :mad:

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Waymarking doesn't require you to be logged on to view. If an app found your location via the smart phone, and returned a list of waymark URL's near those coordinates. The URL itself is not proprietary, and it contains the name of the waymark. At that point, click through to use the Waymarking website in the cell phone browser. I don't see where one would hit upon the TOS in that process. I would consider it somthing akin to the indexing spiders.

 

Once I was able to determine where "near me" was with the first waymark, the existing waymark in the cell phone browser would allow me to expand. It's just a pain in the neck to get to the first waymark through the Waymarking.com interface using the cell phone.

 

I agree that the deeper functionality of Waymarking would be difficult to do with a screen scraping app, and would likely cause a problem.

 

Once upon a time, there were no API's, and screen scraping was the only way to get some things done.

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If it's only to get your current location and then pass over to Waymarking.com in an appropriate way then the situation is different.

 

This would not need any scraping and not violate article 5 of Groundspeak's TOU. I have an idea, but it needs some research. Sounds interesting ;-)

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This was my idea ;-)

 

But I don't feel like creating and testing apps for half a dozen different platforms and then go through the process if having it approved and published in all those stores. I was thinking about a web page using the geolocation API which is supported by most mobile browsers.

 

This week I have hardly any free time, but I am going to start soon.

 

And I am interested in your URL parameter analysis. Let's see if you have something I have not figured out yet (or the other way round).

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A potential source of revenue is travellers and tourists. Many categories, from Maccers to historical statues, would be of interest to visitors to a region.

 

I've had a couple of visitors recently using my waymarks as a Ljubljana travel guide. With Ljubljana being such a small city it's easy to condense the "Best of" into a set of waymarks.

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This was my idea ;-)

 

But I don't feel like creating and testing apps for half a dozen different platforms and then go through the process if having it approved and published in all those stores. I was thinking about a web page using the geolocation API which is supported by most mobile browsers.

 

This week I have hardly any free time, but I am going to start soon.

Woohoo! I have it working. It need some more work, but the base functionality was really easy. More soon...

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This was my idea ;-)

 

But I don't feel like creating and testing apps for half a dozen different platforms and then go through the process if having it approved and published in all those stores. I was thinking about a web page using the geolocation API which is supported by most mobile browsers.

 

This week I have hardly any free time, but I am going to start soon.

Woohoo! I have it working. It need some more work, but the base functionality was really easy. More soon...

 

It is finished and on line. See here: http://forums.Groundspeak.com/GC/index.php?showtopic=302069

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Why Groundspeak people wasted time on "challenges"??? Why didn't they spend time and money on stuff geocachers already liked?? Waymarking and Wherigo for examples...

 

It really is way much too long to add a visit on Waymarking. I love the activity. But until they give me an Android application, I stop visiting and adding waymarks.

 

Until then, I'll "grow the map" doing munzees...

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