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Magellan "cache Her If You Can" Gps Adventure


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I just got this press release in my in box. Since it's a press release, I'll copy it here in its entirety:

 

Detective Work is All Fun and Games in Second Annual Magellan GPS Geocaching Contest

 

Cache Her If You Can' GPS Adventure Offers Family Fun and Big Rewards This Summer

 

SANTA CLARA, Calif., June 24 /PRNewswire/ -- Throughout the summer, thousands of friends and families in America will enjoy fun and adventure in the great outdoors -- hot on the trail of a fictitious criminal mastermind and searching for secret locations where treasures await. The Magellan® "Cache Her If You Can" GPS Adventure is a geocaching game that sends amateur crime-solvers on a weekly quest for clues in 30 cities across the U.S., competing for grand prizes from June 24 to September 1, 2004.

 

Found exclusively at www.magellangps.com, the second annual web-based contest hosted by Thales, global provider of Magellan GPS consumer products, is an ideal outdoor recreation activity that gets kids, families and friends of all ages out of the house to enjoy some fun and adventure while taking in the natural beauty of the great outdoors.

 

It also sets the stage for the introduction of the new Magellan eXplorist 100, eXplorist 200 and eXplorist 300 GPS receivers. Priced affordably at $99, $149 and $199 respectively, the compact, vibrantly colored handhelds deliver more advanced features, more powerful performance and more value than competitive products.

 

To play and be eligible to win, participants will need to have access to a GPS receiver and register at www.magellangps.com. There, contestants will enlist as agents and follow the contest's fictional storyline to assist the "Magellan Detective Agency" in foiling the sinister plans of the notorious "Stella DeCache" and her devious henchmen of "Organization X" before they're able to disrupt the game of geocaching.

 

Each week, clues posted on the website will ultimately reveal exact latitude and longitude coordinates for one or more locations, which contestants will enter in their GPS receivers so they can use it to guide them to a secret briefcase-like container hidden above ground on public property, like a park or forest. The first person to find the case and the top-secret reward document inside wins a grand prize, plus cool items they find in the cache container. Grand prizes vary from cache to cache and may include trips, outdoor adventure products or vehicle navigation gear packages.

 

For complete details on contest rules and prizes, see the official game website at www.magellangps.com. For information on Thales Navigation visit www.thalesnavigation.com.

NOTE: Magellan and eXplorist are trademarks of Thales.

For a copy of the Magellan GPS Geocaching B-roll or a Magellan eXplorist GPS review product loan, please contact Brian Rhea at 408-244-7432 or brian@rheacom.com .

SOURCE Magellan

CO: Magellan; Thales Navigation

ST: California

SU: PDT

Web site: http://www.thalesnavigation.com

http://www.prnewswire.com

06/24/2004 00:01 EDT

 

I, for one am glad that they are trying this again. There were a few trouble spots last year, but nothing that couldn't be fixed.

This year, it's a spy theme rather than the explorer theme of last year.

I'm ready to go.

 

Hey Garmin, when are you going to get in on the fun?

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A FEW problems, try badly planned, managed, and executed. I spoke with their marketing department at one point and I had very strong impression that they had not thought it through. And no one involved in the project were Geocachers, nor had they talked to anyone who did.

 

Hopefully they learned from their mistakes this time.

Edited by magellan315
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A FEW problems, try badly planned, managed, and executed. I spoke with their marketing department at one point and I had very strong impression that they had not thought it through. And no one involved in the project were Geocachers, nor had they talked to anyone who did.

 

Hopefully they learned from their mistakes this time.

Yeah, I thought for sure you would have changed your name to Garmin's#1 after that! :blink:

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Planet,

LOL ROLF. I really needed a laugh this morning. Yes after last years debacle I thought I might have change my user name, or at least move to France(oops, thats what Alec Baldwin was going to after the last presidential election). User name is based on the GPS I use.

 

It looks like they are using the same format as last year, a series of useless clues and then they will post the coordinates.

 

Pantalamon:

try this to see the case files:

You must have cookies and javascript enabled on your browser in order to access the Case Files.

 

To enable cookies in Internet Explorer:

 

On the Tools menu, click Internet Options.

On the Privacy tab, move the slider up for a higher level of privacy or down for a lower level of privacy. You must be on Medium-High or lower to use the login/registration page.

To enable cookies in Netscape Navigator you can specify how cookies should be handled by setting your Cookies preferences. The default setting is "Enable all cookies."

 

To change your Cookies preferences:

Open the Edit menu and choose Preferences.

Under the Privacy & Security category, click Cookies. (If no subcategories are visible, double-click Privacy & Security to expand the list.)

Set your Cookies preferences.

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Magellan,

 

Thanks for the help, but I have cookies enabled. I mean, who doesn't love cookies!

 

I was just wondering if excessive traffic, or some other nefarious enemy was keeping me from participating.

 

Pan

I tried to access the case files also and am not having luck.

I got the log in page twice and it stalled from there, and now I can't even get to the log in page.

 

I suspect it's traffic tho.

 

:lol::P;);):blink:

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I've got a couple of questions that I couldn't figure out from their site. Have the caches (those that have hints) already been placed or are they waiting for some period of time for the clues to become specific enough for an actual search to begin? Reading the initial clues was a waste. However, if the caches are already hidden, then there is a chance that someone may stumble upon them even before the organizers had planned. I can see it now; the Jones family of New Orleans out for a family picnic find a briefcase and claim the prize even though they hadn't heard of the game until they found the cache. Meanwhile the nice people at Magellan have five more weeks of useless clues they had planned on posting. . .

 

I hope this works for them. Two failed promotions wouldn't be fun to deal with.

Edited by LETaylor
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It's started! June 24, at midnight there were 3 "Cases" posted.

LA, PA, and maybe NM?

Hope this year's contest is better organized.

Yes, and I hope that the parts of the country that didn't get even close to a treasure chest last year can atleast be on the list this year.

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I want to disagree on when the caches are hidden. They are hidden BEFORE the

first clue to released, it may only be hours, but from e-mails last year it was clear that they "release" the box first... Looks like Penn, New Orleans, and NM for the first 3 cases !!! I'm for one am glad that Magellan is back !!!

 

Let's hope the NE cache is not left in the middle of RT 128 !!!

 

:o NH_Moose

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The original thread was " Magellan Contest ", I don't know how to make it a link :o

 

There was a MA cache around the end of July (21st maybe) that was found

with just the first few clues and there were 2 in CT, the first was lost-at-sea

on Labor day weekend and a replacement was placed about a week later.

 

The replacement CT cache I turned into a GC site called Magellan 2003 Salmon River. (GCGWG4)

 

The original Magellan clues and FTF log are re-created there.

 

Good hunting will !!!

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HOW DO YOU DECRYPT THE CLUES ON THEIR WEBSITE???

 

I'm a premium member, a Magellan 315 owner (won 2nd in the GeoJamboree 2 accuracy contest with it! :P ), have done a RJFerret night cache under me belt, and have 2 Jeep T.B.'s.......ALLOW ME TO DECRYPT!!!

 

whew, that felt better.....had to let it out after spending too much time on the Cacher if you can site.

 

Thx.

:o

 

Leslie

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Well heres to hopes that they got everything straighten out this time!

Matt, read that thread last year was a bomb shell.

Poor niot water tight conatiners. The messed up with the prizes. They hid the GA cache in NPS lands. They would give wrong cords. They would give wrong clues, the list goes on and on!

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Having interacted via e-mail with Magellan, one of largest problem from last year was that the caches were placed and located via (Degrees, Minutes and Seconds) and then coordinates were TRANSLATED into our standard i.e. Deg.Min.decmin!

 

If you have tried this, can end up "off" on the location. I seem to remember that they might have done the math wrong once or twice as well.

 

My other issue was it felt like a marketing firm person would fly in, look at a tourist map at the airport and drive to a spot!! At least that is how it felt !!

 

I'm not speaking out-of-school as I discussed all these things last year in hopes that 2004 would be better. I'm hoping that they did research ahead of time for each area and then placed the cache. The clues are written by marketing, they can be quite witty and obtuse, but they are based on what the placer saw in the area.

 

Hence the 2 "one way" signs from the Woburn park and ride !

 

NH_Moose

Edited by NH_Moose
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If they ultimately post coordinates, what's the point of the clues? And once they release coordinates, don't zillions of people converge on them in a giant, snarling knot of hungry geocachers?

Several of the Magellan 2003 caches were found on 1 or 2 clues, LONG before the final numbers.... It was a badge of honor to score w/o the numbers !!! In the case of the 2nd CT cache, there were 4 finds within an hour, and several parties were in the Salmon River State forest the day before, because of the clues.

 

I think in several other hunts there were 10-20 people within minutes when they

had the numbers posted.

 

I enjoy the hunt, even if I'm not physically there, it makes me think!

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Any of you LA cachers think the reference to "the old waterway" is an allusion to Interstate 10? I believe the New Basin Canal, or the old waterway, was a connector from Lake Pontchartrain to New Orleans that was used for most of the waterborne commerce entering New Orleans from the lake back in the mid 1800's. The New Basin Canal was later filled in and most of its route is now either a park or is occupied by Interstate Highway 10.

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If they ultimately post coordinates, what's the point of the clues? And once they release coordinates, don't zillions of people converge on them in a giant, snarling knot of hungry geocachers?

 

From a marketing standpoint, the point of the clues is to build up hype and increase web traffic.

 

From the point of a participant, the clues might get you there before the coords are posted, or at the very least allow you to be nearby when the coords are posted.

 

I was first to the ultimate CT prize last year by correctly interpreting the clues--after logging, the next arrivals came 8 minutes later, having staked out a different park.

 

In that case, over the course of the next hour or so fewer than a half-dozen separate caching groups arrived.

 

So I guess the answer is yes, "zillions converge in a snarling knot of hungry geocachers"--what could be more fun??? (Although geocaching can't truely be competitive, the Magellan hunt, er, 'Adventure', definately is!)

 

Enjoy,

 

Randy

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Way to go Magellan. I know that last years game had a few bumps in the road, but not all caches are perfect. At least they are willing to try. I don't see Garmin or even Groundspeak taking chances like this.

 

Nuwati

As far as Groundspeak goes, guess you really can't please everyone, can you. One half are griping that the Yellow Jeep TB deal (which involves probably 10x the amount of prize money as the Magellan hunt) and the old Project APE caches are too commercial and ruining the game. The other half wants more of it.

 

And as far as Garmin vs Maggie: I would much rather have the manufacturer add real features all geocachers can use everyday, rather then a few caches full of coupons for hats. If Magellan REALLY wants to support geocaching, show me a GPS with screens like this:

pt-Geocache01.gifpt-Geocache02.gifpt-Geocache03.gif

 

How about at least adding geocaching icons like almost every Garmin has had for years? No, this is not about Magellan supporting geocaching, this is all about Magellan promoting (and trying to sell more of) Magellan GPSs.

Edited by Mopar
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"I continued up the old waterway" Probably meaning going up from the lake toward the city.

 

"I’m sure the information is somewhere toward the South" The south end of the New Basin Canal ended near the present site of the U.S. Post Office on Loyola Avenue, right next to New Orleans Union Passenger Terminal. This area is between the French Quarter and the Uptown area where the air would likely be "filled with vapor and jazz."

 

OK, what do you think?

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And as far as Garmin vs Maggie: I would much rather have the manufacturer add real features all geocachers can use everyday, rather then a few caches full of coupons for hats. If Magellan REALLY wants to support geocaching, show me a GPS with screens like this:

 

Off-topic, but if the compass screen doesn't also show at least the last 3 digits of both the current position and the destination position at the same time, then I think it has failed a basic test for geocaching field use.

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If they ultimately post coordinates, what's the point of the clues? And once they release coordinates, don't zillions of people converge on them in a giant, snarling knot of hungry geocachers?

After LOTS of online research, I drove, in the middle of the night, from Warren, OH to Detroit, MI area for the cache that was in Rouge River Park last year, in anticipation of the final coords being released. After driving up and down the park, I finally settled on a place to park and waited. Turns out, that once the coords were released, I was parked 400 feet from the cache and I still got beat out by Trippy and someone else from MiGO. But it was a blast to watch people coming into the park, obviously looking for the treasure. If you can eliminate some parks from an area, make an educated guess and go look! Like it has been mentioned before, a lot of caches last year were found before the coords were released. Then there was the first Pittsburgh cache. Final coords put it right smack in the middle of some poor old couple's garage. A few of us tore out of Settler's Cabin Park (where, it turns out, the cache was all along) and went to look at it before we realized the coords were grossly out of whack. The police even got involved, citing some people for trespassing. But Magellan got things straightened out, thanks to the Leprechauns. Magellan even put together a second cache for the Pittsburgh area to make up for the boo-boo. Keep your fingers crossed, study the clues (but not too hard) and go look!

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And as far as Garmin vs Maggie: I would much rather have the manufacturer add real features all geocachers can use everyday, rather then a few caches full of coupons for hats.

I concur. I had an opportunity to "play" with a Garmin 60CS (or was it SC?) and the thing blew me away. That it has a built in Geocaching mode is a strong indicator that the manufacturer knows which side the bread is buttered on. I mean, I am sure that commercial equipment and marine spreads around more of the profit sharing, but considering how fast Geocaching is growing, to ignore us shows a sad lack.

 

As for other commercial entities such as Jeep, I think it is great that they recognize us as a market that is already spending money to play outdoors, that we are utilizing technology to do it shows a that we (some of us, anyway) have a measure of disposable income and that using another aspect of our "game" is a great way to get our attention and promote their products.

 

On the other hand, the fact that they diss on "all of those other SUV's with that crazy yellow color" in their commercials, and then chose yellow Jeeps for their Travel Bugs makes me wonder if some marketing lop considers this a way to ditch a large number of promotional swag that would make them look bad any other way. Or maybe not.

 

Either way, it is nice to see that Geocachers are getting recognition - We hunt for boxes in the forest! Hear us ROAR!

 

RedwoodRed - Who is currently working on a Geocaching presentation for a group of 60 people...

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Magellan even put together a second cache for the Pittsburgh area to make up for the boo-boo.

 

Same in CT, the first "went missing" before anyone could hunt for it, they placed another the next week!

 

Sure, mistakes were made, but when it was critical, they made up for it. Corporate integrity? Sure enough...

 

Enjoy,

 

Randy

 

PS: Garmin gets kudos too, their covering my non-warranty eTrex blew me away--impressive.

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I've been trying since last night, and all I get is the HTTP 500 Internal server error page. Matter of fact, I've gotten that same error twice on their home page. I once got to the login page and then nothing. Someone needs to update their servers before putting on a promotion like this!

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I've been trying since last night, and all I get is the HTTP 500 Internal server error page. Matter of fact, I've gotten that same error twice on their home page. I once got to the login page and then nothing. Someone needs to update their servers before putting on a promotion like this!

I can get to the login screen, then it says "This page can not be displayed"

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If they ultimately post coordinates, what's the point of the clues? And once they release coordinates, don't zillions of people converge on them in a giant, snarling knot of hungry geocachers?

I agree.... it seems like it would be a race in the end, not a hunt. Let's hope they continue to learn from their mistakes and also to listen to our suggestions.

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Way to go Magellan. I know that last years game had a few bumps in the road, but not all caches are perfect. At least they are willing to try. I don't see Garmin or even Groundspeak taking chances like this.

 

Nuwati

As far as Groundspeak goes, guess you really can't please everyone, can you. One half are griping that the Yellow Jeep TB deal (which involves probably 10x the amount of prize money as the Magellan hunt) and the old Project APE caches are too commercial and ruining the game. The other half wants more of it.

 

And as far as Garmin vs Maggie: I would much rather have the manufacturer add real features all geocachers can use everyday, rather then a few caches full of coupons for hats. If Magellan REALLY wants to support geocaching, show me a GPS with screens like this:

pt-Geocache01.gifpt-Geocache02.gifpt-Geocache03.gif

 

How about at least adding geocaching icons like almost every Garmin has had for years? No, this is not about Magellan supporting geocaching, this is all about Magellan promoting (and trying to sell more of) Magellan GPSs.

Hear hear! I agree, and I want one of those Garmins too. I was reading the press release of the eXplorer and I got to tell you, an accuracy of 3 meters sounds WAY to good to be true, even under ideal conditions.

 

Bear and Ting

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...I got to tell you, an accuracy of 3 meters sounds WAY to good to be true, even under ideal conditions.

 

How do you figure? My plain-jane Merigreen gives me that kind of accuracy except in the worst conditions. I set a waypoint to the exact spot in the driveway that I always park. Every time I come home, it says that I am no more than 10ft. from that waypoint, and more often than not, less than 6 feet. That's 3 meters or better...

 

But that's a little off the topic. Has anyone been able to get to the pertinent pages yet? I still get the error page anywhere but 'home' page.

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...I got to tell you, an accuracy of 3 meters sounds WAY to good to be true, even under ideal conditions.

 

How do you figure? My plain-jane Merigreen gives me that kind of accuracy except in the worst conditions. I set a waypoint to the exact spot in the driveway that I always park. Every time I come home, it says that I am no more than 10ft. from that waypoint, and more often than not, less than 6 feet. That's 3 meters or better...

 

But that's a little off the topic. Has anyone been able to get to the pertinent pages yet? I still get the error page anywhere but 'home' page.

Granted... I still think in feet and 3 meters is not that bad. But, how much tree cover do you have in your drive too. I mean, on a clear day with no obstructions, ANY GPSr could be that accurate.

 

As for the site, as of 5:55pm CST, I am in and there are two NEW missions posted.

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