Notifications

[+SafariBabe]

Why hasn’t geocaching joined the 21st century. Notifications are currently made via email or email-to-text. My carrier (AT&T) is doing away with email-to-text. Why can’t geocaching just direct text notifications without emailing to the phone number. This is supposed to be a tech game, but where is the tech in the notifications? Why can’t notifications be texted direct to my phone rather than dealing with this email to text nonsense?

[+barefootjeff]

20 minutes ago, SafariBabe said:

Why hasn’t geocaching joined the 21st century. Notifications are currently made via email or email-to-text. My carrier (AT&T) is doing away with email-to-text. Why can’t geocaching just direct text notifications without emailing to the phone number. This is supposed to be a tech game, but where is the tech in the notifications? Why can’t notifications be texted direct to my phone rather than dealing with this email to text nonsense?

 

Geocaching is an international game but most phone companies are still very 19th century about charging a premium for international SMSs. Each new cache published in a large city likely generates thousands of notification emails, so I would imagine sending those internationally by SMS wouldn't be cheap.

 

Perhaps installing an email app on your phone might be a solution?

Edited May 11 by barefootjeff

[Keystone]

The instant notification feature was rolled out in 2005, a time when email was the most popular method for "instant" electronic communication.  The infrastructure for this service hasn't changed very much, if at all, since it launched.

[+arisoft]

4 hours ago, SafariBabe said:

Notifications are currently made via email or email-to-text.

 

Email is very good protocol for notifications, because it is supported on every platform and anyone can use it to generate what ever messaging method they want to use now and in future.

 

Your problem seems to be your carrier. Because email is not related to your carrier you can easily replace the AT&T email by whatever fits to your needs. Some use Gmail client to get instant notifications without any delay, with custom notification tones for different kind of notification types.

Edited May 11 by arisoft

[+SafariBabe]

On 5/11/2025 at 8:20 AM, barefootjeff said:

 

Geocaching is an international game but most phone companies are still very 19th century about charging a premium for international SMSs. Each new cache published in a large city likely generates thousands of notification emails, so I would imagine sending those internationally by SMS wouldn't be cheap.

 

Perhaps installing an email app on your phone might be a solution?

Thanks. I do have an email app on my phone, but if I jumped at every email I received during the day, I would never get any work done. A new cache posting coming through SMS does tend to get my attention, 

[+SafariBabe]

On 5/11/2025 at 8:36 AM, Keystone said:

The instant notification feature was rolled out in 2005, a time when email was the most popular method for "instant" electronic communication.  The infrastructure for this service hasn't changed very much, if at all, since it launched.

Yes, isn't that my point exactly. For a technology company, they are not keeping up with the changes in technology and how people communicate. 

[Keystone]

@SafariBabe, the sole intent of my post was to provide historical context.  Sorry if you didn't like the explanation.

 

Over time, and rather gradually, the community has seen legacy services upgraded to modern UI conventions.  Examples include the logging workflow, the search functions and the account/profile page.  Perhaps someday the instant notifications service will rise to the top of the priority list.  In the meantime, the technology team appears to be quite busy.  How much more would you be willing to pay per year for a premium membership that would fund additional programming staff?

[+barefootjeff]

5 hours ago, SafariBabe said:

Thanks. I do have an email app on my phone, but if I jumped at every email I received during the day, I would never get any work done. A new cache posting coming through SMS does tend to get my attention, 

 

I use a separate email account for geocaching, so if I want those forwarded to my phone it's easy to set up. Most of the time I don't though, as I'd prefer to wait until I'm home and in front of my PC to look and new cache and watchlist notifications.

[+barefootjeff]

5 hours ago, SafariBabe said:

Yes, isn't that my point exactly. For a technology company, they are not keeping up with the changes in technology and how people communicate. 

 

Sending any number of emails anywhere in the world is essentially free. As far as I know, sending international SMSs isn't, in fact quite the opposite. Or do you only want this functionality for players in the USA?

[+arisoft]

12 minutes ago, barefootjeff said:

 

Sending any number of emails anywhere in the world is essentially free. As far as I know, sending international SMSs isn't, in fact quite the opposite. Or do you only want this functionality for players in the USA?

 

The new instant notification requires using the official geocaching App that receives the message.

 

5 hours ago, SafariBabe said:

Thanks. I do have an email app on my phone, but if I jumped at every email I received during the day, I would never get any work done.

 

The Email app can select which messages are important and should be notified.

Edited May 13 by arisoft

[+ecanderson]

16 hours ago, Keystone said:

@SafariBabe, the sole intent of my post was to provide historical context.  Sorry if you didn't like the explanation.

 

Over time, and rather gradually, the community has seen legacy services upgraded to modern UI conventions.  Examples include the logging workflow, the search functions and the account/profile page.  Perhaps someday the instant notifications service will rise to the top of the priority list.  In the meantime, the technology team appears to be quite busy.  How much more would you be willing to pay per year for a premium membership that would fund additional programming staff?

Perhaps to be fair to all, it may not be a question of the number of programming staff, but rather, the direction they are being given by management in the use of their time. 

 

It is one thing to stabilize and improve existing features that are known to be useful, but quite another to keep rolling out new bells and whistles at the expense of getting the existing features corrected and stabilized.

[+CAVinoGal]

18 hours ago, barefootjeff said:

 

I use a separate email account for geocaching, so if I want those forwarded to my phone it's easy to set up.

 

I, too, have a gmail account strictly for geocaching - and I've set up the new mail ringtone so it is unique to that account.  When I hear that, I know it's a geocaching notification.  Of course, it also notifies me of messages from the Message center, finds/logs on my owned caches, trackable activity and all that, but it's all geocaching related when I hear that special tone.

[+MartyBartfast]

I would definitely NOT want alerts coming to my phone as an SMS text, for me that's reserved purely for really important stuff and certain friends.

As per @CAVinoGal & @barefootjeff I have a specific account for geocaching emails, and I can choose what alerting/forwarding to setup for that account and it suits me just fine.